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Culture War Roundup for the week of March 4, 2024

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Well, but at the same time it's a pretty common pattern for adherents of a larger and milder ideology to be defensive of a narrower circle of extremists: you'd be hard-pressed to get Muslims to oppose Islamic extremists, FOSS adherents to denounce Stallman, normie medieval Christians to shun anchorites, or standard leftists to shun Antifa. There are many reasons for this - extremists provide an ideal to aspire to (if you were willing to dedicate everything to the idea, this is how far you could go, isn't it romantic?), show that your ideology is feasible even when taken to the extreme, make your own version of it look like a reasonable compromise (and if everyone more extreme than you is cut off, then eventually you will be the extremist), and serve as an important counterweight to the outgroup's dangerous extremists ("A monster, but our monster"). I figure that outspoken Christians can serve as this for our much larger set of secular rightists - they probably are united in thinking that the West was better off back when everyone was unified in Christian morality, and so they look up to the religious with admiration even as they lament that in their own blackened hearts they can no longer muster genuine belief.