site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of July 22, 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.

That’s one way of framing it. Another way is that a family of four with two adults gets the exact same voice as a family of two with two adults. Maybe the default is wrong as it shrinks the voice of larger families. Maybe the family of four should have a larger voice relative to the family of two.

That could be seen as righting a wrong instead of harming the childless. Perspective matters.

Also if you think kids are on net a good maybe you want to try to raise the status of families. Giving them more of a vote would make politicians cater more to families raising the status of families.

These are all arguments for why this would be a good policy choice. They are irrelevant to the question: would these policies weaken the power and reduce the resources of the childless considered as a class?

Just as "We should have more black people here" is quite obviously a statement of at least relative reduction of the white people that are here already, "we should give more power to the child-rearing" involves taking power away from the childless. This is the closest we get to a true political statement of dislike.

I don't think the policy is bad, or necessarily very partisan-impactful, provided that the various details are resolved in a way that isn't an obvious power grab. How are the votes of the children of divorce assigned? Can a non-citizen vote for their citizen child in cases of immigrants with birthright-citizen children? What about a widowed non-citizen voting the interests of her citizen children with an American father? Can parents who are incompetent to vote by reason of felony convictions or other disqualification still vote for their children? What do we do with parents who are domiciled in a different location from their minor children? The devil is in the details, and the resulting decades of lawfare over the details, but it isn't inherently a bad policy.

My point is that it is framing. Just like a child tax credit is functionally the same as saying childless pay more taxes. No difference.