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Hieronymus


				

				

				

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joined 2022 September 05 03:25:51 UTC
				

				
					
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Also I assume that this rests on a bedrock of "carbon dating is fake/wrong"?




Yes, young-earth creationists are skeptical of carbon dating as applied.  Carbon dating relies on the ratio of Carbon-14 to Carbon-12 in the atmosphere being more or less constant, and YEC tends to doubt this.  Among other things, assuming the level of cosmic radiation has remained consistent, an earth less than 10,000 years old should still be gaining more Carbon-14 than it loses to nuclear decay.


I am afraid I don’t know enough to critique or defend the objection intelligently.  But since you asked, I summarize.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


I guess there's also a possible world where The Indian Justice is actually intrigued and tries harder to come up with a theory that sort of comports with the gov't position and lets him give Native Americans 14A citizenship?




Indians were given citizenship by statute a century ago.  Given that they're aIready citizens regardless, this hardly seems worth losing sleep over.  I'm clearly missing a piece here.  What else does this tie into?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
And probably again after the flood, depending on the knowledge of Noah's sons


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
My curiosity is piqued.  I couldn't find it, but if you have a link it'd be fun to watch.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
As the gal in the story tells it, he has fallen prey to vice and she to folly.


I think there's a pretty strong argument to be made that it is easier to address folly than vice.  But even if it isn't, it would be unsurprising if the two had very different explanations.  And, for many vices, the temptation is obvious even to us who disapprove.


That said, there are two possibilities that could make them parallel in an interesting way.  One is that her folly is motivated by vice; this is very plausible, and it would be easy to explain why the narrator left it out.  The other is that her motive for folly is obvious to some distaff Mottizens in ways it isn't to other Mottizens of either sex; in that case it would be helpful to spell it out for us.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Do you know of a (trustworthy – that's the hard part) source for stats on this?  My recollection is that women are more likely to lash out physically, but men are more likely to do injury, but women are more likely to use weapons.  But I don't remember my source, and I find most sources on the issue to be at least a little questionable.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 30, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Come on, man.  I know that creationists are one of the traditionally iconic outgroups in rationalist-adjacent spaces.  And I find Hegseth pretty frustrating myself.  But if you asked Pastor Doug Wilson (de facto leader of CREC) whether there have ever been any peoples without metallurgy, what do you think he'd say?  Do you really think it would bother him at all?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Thank you.  That explains some things about Internet distributists and also gives me some things to think over – not least the difference between red and blue state dynamics regarding your second paragraph.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You've lost me with the references to particular schools and thinkers.  I can't promise to pick it up right away, but I'm likely to have some more reading time soon – is there a source you'd suggest starting with?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Reversing Roe v. Wade is a real win.  Rooting out gender theory and DEI is a real win.  Gutting much of the permanent bureaucracy, which drags society left regardless of the president, is costly but also a real win.


The folks who called even Mitt Romney a Nazi were going to throw mud at anyone who vaguely looked like he might try these things.  Some of the criticism (not all) is genuinely deserved in Trump's case – but, deserved or not, it was already priced in.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I wonder if you are significantly older or younger than I am, because I take the historical context very differently.  I've laid it out at length elsewhere, but I perceive the acceptance of Trump as a discontinuity in response to the behavior of previous conservative politicians, not a continuation of the same.


Politicians in the Reagan tradition claimed to embody conservative principles; some got closer than others.  But they were pretty consistently willing to sacrifice everything in exchange for an extra 0.2% GDP growth.  After years of that, and the experience of a resurgent progressivism seeking to impose its social mores, the conservative right had to choose between a leader who was personally conservative and a leader who would fight – hence Trump.


I'd hoped that Pence would evolve into a leader who could do both, but that's not how things played out.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
How are you using distributism here?  You seem to mean something smaller scale or more grass roots than I am accustomed to.


I am used to seeing distributism proposed as a full-scale alternative to socialism and capitalism.  Distributism in that sense seems unachievable in an industrial or post-industrial society; it will eventually reduce to capitalism or socialism, depending on how you treat the accumulation of capital.  A small-scale approach is far more interesting.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think Fire tablets are pretty popular with parents, because they are cheap and able to be locked down.  My understanding is that there is kind of an uncanny valley of restriction though – that there is a mode appropriate for very young children (with individual books and such managed by parents as shortcuts on the home screen) but that the step up from that is too big a jump.


I am not a parent, so I don’t have that experience myself, and I don’t envy parents having to find the intersection of what is wise and what is reasonably possible.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I am not sure whether you are asking about the problem or the fix, but I don't think the confessional is involved in either case.  As far as I know, most states exempt the confessional from their mandatory reporter laws but not pastoral advice.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Everyone is trained as a state mandated reporter.




I understand why a Catholic would draw that particular line in the sand.  The bishops demanded discretion and then abused the heck out of it at the expense of the children under their care.  The obvious fix is to deny them that discretion.


But this raises church-state and child welfare issues that are not theoretical.  For example, spurious child welfare investigations are a real harm, and the mandatory reporter system guarantees them.  (They are not on the level of clerical pederasty, for sure, but those who have been through them do not trivialize them.)  Trust is another casualty:  If you know a father whose temper shows too much in the discipline of his children, would you encourage him to talk to his pastor?  If his pastor is a mandatory reporter, you probably shouldn’t; maybe this is less of an issue for Roman Catholics, where priests are rarely family men, but it is an issue for Protestants.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Point taken.


“Values differences” is an interesting phrase, and I think the way you used it here suggests some differences in deeper underlying ideas, but I can’t quite get at them yet.  I’ll think on it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


How many priests are Right Wing Icons?




There’s Marcial Maciel, but he’s an outlier.


I was going to leave well enough alone, but I want to partly push back on your post and partly on FtttG’s.  I am working from memory and partial understanding here, and I welcome corrections.


It’s important to note that a supermajority of Roman Catholic sex-abuse cases were sexually active gay priests canoodling with underage teenage boys.  There were other cases and other victims, but those set the tone.  So part of the coverup came from networks of sexually active gay priests, and some sexually active straight priests, who were already accustomed to covering for each other, and whom an investigation might implicate in adult but compromising sexual activity.


The other factor I can see is the social mores downstream of Roman Catholic ecclesiology.  Rome teaches that, ordinarily, salvation is mediated by the church defined by properly ordained hierarchs in communion with Rome.  To their credit, many of the hierarchs seem to take this seriously; it’s not just an excuse to gather power.  One of the consequences of this is that anything with the potential to alienate someone from that hierarchy is a threat to his soul; even the R.C. bishops not involved in sexual immorality sought to lesson the scandal, in both colloquial and theological senses, and that often looked like a coverup.  When Pope Benedict tried to restrict Cardinal Theodore McCarrick’s public activities, McCarrick defied him, because – well, what could Benedict do without exposing his misconduct?


To be clear, this does not contradict R.C. ecclesiology, which would take a biblical or theological argument and not a pragmatic one.  But I think the scandal is a strong practical argument against clerical celibacy, which led to such an overrepresentation of gay men in Catholic ministry, and which is a discipline imposed by a decision of the Roman Catholic church and not a dogma it is bound to.


It would be straightforwardly consistent with R.C. doctrine for pope and councils to allow the ordination of married men, as is routinely done in the Eastern Rite Catholic churches and occasionally done for married Lutheran and Anglican pastors who convert.  I suspect that Rome could also allow already-ordained priests to marry without any change in doctrine, although I am not certain of this, and it may be unwilling to accept the hit to ecumenical relations with the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches.  (To my outsider’s eye, Counter-Reformation statements on marriage played pretty fast and loose with the distinction between illicit and invalid, and I am hesitant to draw too many conclusions.)


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


If pastors preaching chastity can get handsy, it's not the values being taught, it's the power and the hierarchy.




I think it’s just normal human sin.  I don’t know the base rate, but as I recall pastors are significantly less likely to abuse children than school teachers.


That list was a weapon in the culture war.  There are some progressive (by evangelical standards) people and organizations whose M.O. is to ignore base rates, ignore any exculpatory evidence, and accuse denominations or institutions of being shot through with sexual abuse, then demand checks and balances that subvert the denomination’s polity.  The people they want to grant new power over doctrine and practice are consistently from the progressive wing of the denomination, and they always think that the right way to address sexual abuse is by moving the denomination closer to the broader culture.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of March 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But you see a lot of people with an agenda trying to defang the war effort or get it cancelled or whatever.




It would be helpful if you could give much more specific examples for those of us who haven't been following domestic political developments as closely as you have.


But, that said, I think the tendency to rally political opinion around the flag in wartime is generally far too strong.  If it's been counterbalanced by modem partisanship then that's worrying, but worrying for what it says about partisanship rather than for any other reason.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Customers do not like you asserting your ideology over their needs.




I don't share historic OpenAI's or Anthropic's concerns about being paperclipped by an accidental AI god, so I disagree with many of their positions on AI ethics.  But both Microsoft and the DoD made business agreements knowing and agreeing to respect the other party's principles, and both reneged the moment it was inconvenient to keep their words.  I can't really respect that, any more than I can respect the business leaders who appealed to their people's ideals as long as it was convenient and then sold them out for money.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 16, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
The Sparta piece was an outlier.  The social-cultural-political spin of ACOUP keeps me from reading it regularly, so don't take this as an unqualified endorsement, but most of his pieces are not that bad.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of February 2, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Yeah, it was a different world playing against your friends on the LAN.  I don't play modern shooters, but I do miss that.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Friday Fun Thread for January 23, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I suggest a Manhattan and a chrysanthemum.  For the Manhattan, I find that Martini & Rossi sweet vermouth goes well with a high rye bourbon, while the more intense vermouths that are beloved of craft bartenders, like Carpano Antica, really want a rye whiskey; both ways are good.  The chrysanthemum is delicious and lower proof as cocktails go, because its base “spirit” is dry vermouth, but you have to like the two or three dashes of absinthe to appreciate it.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 12, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


By way of example, because I guess this is what schools do now, or maybe just my daughter's old school, "Please walk away" was the prescribed phrase kids were told to use when another kid was bothering them. Sounds polite right? Your inner monologue reading that probably made it sound as nice as can be, yeah?




Not at all.  My first impression is to read it as either a condescending sneer or a threat of violence, depending on the tone.  It’s crazy that someone would offer that to children as a social script.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of January 5, 2026
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think that we in the modern West struggle to understand these things because we have lost the understanding that intentionally tempting someone is a sin, and we have lost the ideas we need to discuss two people sinning against one another.


This can result in some unexpected and kind of weird Shiri’s scissors.  Take the Baby It’s Cold Outside discourse:  As the song is written, the male singer is trying to convince the female singer to stay the night by offering her a series of plausible excuses to do so; she kind of wants to but knows she shouldn’t, or at least that she’s expected not to.  His tone is best described as playfully predatory.


That breaks people’s minds.  Since there is no longer any socially acceptable category for culpable seduction, everyone tries to collapse the wave function into either “cute coming of age story” or “rape.”  About ten years ago I heard a middle school choir (ages 11–14) perform the song with cigarettes and booze removed but sexual implications left altogether intact.  On the other hand, people have been decrying the song’s radio play for years now on the grounds that it glorifies rape, which is the only moral category many people have for predatory sex.


Much of the yes-means-yes advocacy seemed to me to come from the same place.  College girls had sex that they came to understand on some level was Not Okay.  They (often correctly) accused college boys of exploiting them, and the boys (often correctly) pointed out that the sex was consensual.  There is a natural temptation for everyone to claim innocence by projecting all the guilt onto the other party, but in this case the kids didn’t have a fighting chance: Their elders had robbed them of any moral categories outside “rape” and “not rape.”


So yes, I have known the Christian woman who sleeps with her boyfriend and, when asked, points out that this is what is expected of her to continue the relationship, and I acknowledge that this a real temptation placed upon her.  I also know that she has a normal libido, and that on some level she was using the expectation as an excuse to do what she wanted to do.  Her responsibility doesn’t render him innocent, and vice-versa.


I will certainly not claim to know how socially conservative secularists should navigate the current landscape.  Both men and women have said that trying to do the right thing often feels like a sucker’s bet, and I believe them.  I think that we in conservative churches can start by dating and marrying only sincere fellow believers, which we should be doing anyway.  But that doesn’t address the underlying issue.