site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of February 14, 2024

This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.

Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.

We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:

  • Shaming.

  • Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.

  • Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.

  • Recruiting for a cause.

  • Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.

In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:

  • Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.

  • Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.

  • Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.

  • Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.

On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.

7
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Forget Americans for now, what do you make of Europe and their "infinite flood of sub-Saharan Africans and Arabs" (as opposed to Mexicans and Guatemalans) predicament? I'm a libertarian too, and I see it as something that obviously puts the existence of (Western) European civilization as such in peril. I think there's a problem with priorities here.
If self defense is illegal...
if carrying pointy objects of wrong shape, let alone firearms is illegal....
if freedom of association is outlawed...
if natives are heavily taxed, but foreigners are subsidized...
if you live in an anarcho-tyranny state and the "authorities" are happy to prosecute natives for violation of one of the arcane regulation clauses written down in one of the many tomes of legislation, but are terribly afraid to investigate, prosecute, sentence, let alone deport a Muslim foreigner for rape and plunder...

letting open borders be used as a weapon against you seems rather short-sighted, even if in a better world something as crude as building a wall and physically removing aliens from your country might be less practiced.

Right. If you and I share a house, I can't tell you who to be friends with but I can get pissed when you invite them home. And it seems fair to forbid you to bring guests without vetting when so many of them break things, pee on the furniture, and refuse to leave.

Sometimes government can really pile on the messes. They've certainly done similar things with medical care in the United States.

If they caused all the messes in the first place, should we really gonna trust them to fix the latest one?

If they caused all the messes in the first place, should we really gonna trust them to fix the latest one?

Do you have a proposal how it should be fixed, then?

I can understand a position of a libertarian who argues that municipal fire brigade ought to be dismantled, and people should buy insurance of private fire-fighting companies: two alternative, realistic solutions are presented, and their respective pros and cons can be weighted.

Arguing against state enforcing border control on the grounds that they are going to mess it up is different, because without border control, the end result is no migration control at all (not much different from the mess-up). Unless you have a plan for private migration control.

Well, as I was saying - anarcho-tyranny.
Governments create a mess by deliberately not trying to fix it, while using its full capacity to "solve" certain problems that make the aforementioned mess worse. A more classical state, unlike anarcho-tyranny, would at least have borders in order. I think even the segment of the Right that likes to scowl at "lolberts" will concede that open borders would be more practical with some or all problems I listed in my first comment fixed. Anyway, what would you like to dispute? Unless you're saying that France/UK/Germany with migration policies of Poland would make the problem worse, I don't think we disagree about anything.