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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 20, 2024

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I don't really understand what you think animals are or why they wouldn't have awareness, will, and volition. It seems pretty clear to me that they do.

You argue that they are animals, and yet you are unwilling to treat them like animals. Why?

Compassion, which I have for plenty of other animals as well.

Your "guidance" didn't work before and won't work now.

It didn't? I think it did.

My care leads me to wish to leave them alone.

I think that would be incredibly cruel.

Your care demands domination, and has led to this disaster every step of the way.

I just have no idea what you're talking about.

I don't really understand what you think animals are or why they wouldn't have awareness, will, and volition. It seems pretty clear to me that they do.

We can cage animals indefinitely. We cannot cage humans indefinitely. It's a bit unfair to claim that no state based on slavery has ever survived long-term, because no state has ever survived long-term, but states that came to depend on slavery consistently experience serious, long-term problems with stability caused by trying to keep a large population of hostiles intimately intermixed with their society. To the extent that this has been maintained for any significant length of time, the tradeoffs pretty clearly aren't worth it.

Compassion, which I have for plenty of other animals as well.

Your compassion for other animals results in benign neglect. Why is that not good enough in the case of blacks?

It didn't? I think it did.

Slavery resulted in catastrophic failure in Haiti, and it resulted in a less-catastrophic but still quite thorough failure in America. Slavery demands repugnant levels of tyranny over fellow humans, such that slavers couldn't convince non-slavers to adopt the practice or even to tolerate it long-term. Doing horrible things to blacks to keep them from doing possibly-less-horrible things to each other is not an obvious win, to put it mildly. "domestication" since then has been a complete failure. The black underclass remains a mess. Harsh measures aren't an improvement, and less-harsh measures clearly don't work. The premise is invalidated by the accumulation of actual evidence. We should let the blacks choose whether to follow society's rules among us, or follow their own rules among themselves. Those who wish can be productive citizens, and the rest can do as they please away from the rest of us, black and white alike.

I think that would be incredibly cruel.

Then make your case to the blacks themselves, and let them choose voluntarily if they agree with you. I doubt they're interested, but am happy to be proven wrong.

I just have no idea what you're talking about.

People justified slavery, claiming it was for the slaves' benefit. It wasn't, and that's why slavery brings serious, unsustainable problems wherever it is implemented. People have claimed and continue to claim that some people are fundamentally more people than others, and that the lesser sort can be manipulated and shaped according to their betters' preferences. This view is unsupportable from an evidentiary perspective, and disastrous from a historical perspective.

Consider the Swiss. They do not enslave, and they do not rule. They keep to themselves, defend themselves, and let the rest of the world enjoy their benign neglect. Why should anyone prefer to do other than as the Swiss do?