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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 16, 2024

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I agree with most of your post but disagree that the way forward is for the law to not recognize race, etc.

These are relevant. You can’t have a country by not recognizing that it belongs to a particular people or in the harder arrangement of a multiethnic country, peoples.

Cultural Marxism uses as part of its toolset the idea that evil forces create this idea of race, gender and other dinstictions.

It is the ideology that says you can't discriminate against women and men should include women in their organisations. And then demands female exclusive organisations. You don't do the later, but the first has been an important component of it.

Trying to not see race, religion, gender leads to that and becomes oppressive in its own right. What are you going to do about people who do see race, religion, gender, or ethnicity? Do you genuinely have the stomach to go against Jews or Indians who do that and force them to not see ethnicity, or race? Because what I have seen is that in practice this doctrine ends up with double standards and tolerating highly tribal groups like Indians and Jews. The later which have obvious powerful NGOs in their favor, which makes the whole idea of the law not favoring race, contradictory with seeing them as oppressed by this arrangement. It would require the law to crush those organizations and to pressure very woke demographics like Indians and Jews to change their behavior. It is actually a good thing and not oppressive for women and men to have male and female exclusive groups.

Maybe it would be a good idea if in the labor market we saw more gender, and we encouraged women to take more the nurturing role. To be fair, the fact that this is more, and not entirely, is itself a compromise to the direction of what you say. But I wouldn't consider what I advocate to be cultual marxist, even though it isn't 100% the opposite. It rejects the idea of leveling the differences as a goal, and considers it stupid and destructive.

Having people prioritize their family first, is not inherently exploitative, so long they don't act in a parasitical manner against other families. In fact it is laudible to care for your people and work to plant trees that your descendads will enjoy. An atomising antisocial, every man for himself sentiment would be worse. Why shouldn't male only organizations exist as they used to.

The problem with cultural marxism, isn't that they see race, but that they are very biased and parasitical in favor of their ingroup, and destructive and don't respect the value of nations, families, and many more for their outgroup by using the motte and bailey of "it is bad in general" and then tolerating it and supporting it for the ingroup under the idea that we will not see race only when white supremacy is defeated.

This is a bit nuanced because people who are a little ideologically divergent but part of the same team because they are more blatant tribalists do exist with people who might buy more into the universalist anti-traditional identities framework.

Another element of nuance, is that there is SOME room for opposition to maximalist identity essentialism of the conservative sort, and in general. What i find to work best, is basically a wise mixture, that definitely is completely against these mentality that we reach utopia by destroying distinctions, that has been used to retain dinstictions that favor progressive in group and desttroy other ones, some very necessary for well functioning of society. Where heterornomativism or native ethnic identity are undermined under anti-identitarian claim, while LGBTQ or foreign nationalism is promoted.

A good society will be heteronormative and would see the distinction and prefer promoting straight behaviors.

But in line with the idea that some liberalism might be tolerable and compatible with promoting better ends, it shouldn't imprison homosexuals for example. And there are gray areas that are up to debate, even if the level of social liberalism and the bias that cultural marxism has for its favorite identities and against its hated identities, some core to society, is wrong.

To further elaborate on an example: if women take sufficiently the nurturing role, they lose job opportunities, but they gain a greater connection with their children, are more likely to have them and earlier, and enjoy from that. Society also benefits from having enough children to replace it self, something very basic.

This isn't an exploitative arrangement when considering the benefits both for those involved but for society in general, and requires seeing characteristics and their relevance. However, it is possible as I argued for objections to be made against a certain too conservative arrangement, and not be unwarranted, (like the fantasy of the Handmaiden tale) but we are in the situation were it is excessive social liberalism and bias in favor of those identities and disregards of favorite identities that is the primary issue.

Do I have a solution that is simple, yes and no. I think on some areas you should see such distinctions, in others you should see it, but as part of other important things and not the priority.

Same with family. I am going to listen to a foreign scientist who is working in a manner that shows competence, and proffessionalism. But I wouldn't let him take over my country.

Ethnicity, race, property, family, all these are important. I work to provide an inheritance for my family, not for foreigners who are equally smart to my children, to enjoy the efforts of my labor.

Not the only things important, I believe it is important to recognize the importance of such issues to other groups too, and is part of international justice. And wealth, good interpersonal relationships (both weal and such relationships actually necessitates taking the other categories into consideration because foreign groups will screw you over if you have no ethnocentrism), learning from foreigners, and more also have their own importance.

Having borders, nations, gender roles, is different than trying to colonize and destroy a hated ethnic group, while replacing their historical figures, and forcing them to hate themselves and demonizing any positive identity as evil.

Part of its destruction is the disrespect of valuable nuclear families, ethnic communities, the masculine role in society, the disrespect of the value of pro natalism, of society being mainly heteronormative (whcih is superior than a society that have incrased homosexual behavior). Anti-conservatism is part of the tool set for breaking up the bonds of the outgroup, and not allowing them to be a healthy united nation that would oppose parasitism at its expense. That this is an unworkable arrangement matters, and is an additional problem of cultural marxism.

I’m not suggesting for ten seconds that the solution is to make race or gender “not exist”. To the contrary I think they exist in a strong sense via cultured preference and whatever else you choose to name. What I’m suggesting is that those with power stop noticing and certainly stop catering to these notions. If a woman applies to be a programmer, that’s fine, she can do whatever she wants. But she shouldn’t ever expect to have a leg up on getting a position simply because she exists and has a vagina. The laws and policies should not be giving special treatment to anyone. We shouldn’t concern ourselves with whether enough of a given demographic is obtaining certain goals. That’s their job to work that out.

And as far a# culture goes, I’m firmly in favor of having one culture that people generally abide by. You can worship anything you want, but you may not undermine the cultural norms of the dominant religion. You can speak any language you like at home, but we aren’t going to translate or hire dozens of speakers to accommodate your lack of English skills. We value hard work, and being on time, and studying hard, if you don’t want to work, fair enough, but you get nothing from the rest of us. We will be teaching our culture here. Your culture is okay, but we aren’t going to accommodate the entire culture to what you want.

International affairs are a bit different, and in that case I agree with nationalism— a country should primarily look after its own national interests and avoid treaties and wars that don’t serve their interests.

Well, you are kind of promoting a version of a new soviet man here but I will agree that you aren't promoting privileging progressive identity groups and in fact oppose that. However what you are promoting had been part of the playbook of the cultural marxist arrangement even if you oppose the preferential treatment.

Problem is that, it might in fact be detrimental for society for women to prioritise education and work over being mothers. It is a bad value, to not care about that a Just because you are dogmatic about opposing that, doesn't make it a good idea. This isn't to say that there isn't value in various facets of equal treatment. For example if a foreign tourist is attacked by a native drunk driver, you punish the native drunk driver equally as if they harmed anyone else. Even in gender roles, there is a difference between being dogmatic here in favor of not taking such issues into consideration, and trying to maximize differences in the labor market.

We should care about important things more than just treating everyone equally. And that is different from avoiding parasitical arangements. It isn't a bad idea that should be restricted because we follow some marxist dogma of equality under the law, to give parents for example incentives to have children and benefit them by giving them tax breaks.

Not caring if your nation is taken by other nations, destroys your ethnic community and historical legacy and is an example of indifference to cultural and ethnic destruction.

Just because you claim is irrelevant, in a situation where it is stigmatized precisely by much of this faction, to be ist, doesn't make it irelevant for people to become foreigners in their own land. Humans are collective group, and even as individual are prefferably not to suffer the misfortunte of their own nation, being harmed, replaced, them becoming a minority in their own land and foreigners.

It neglects something important and makes what you want of no prefferential treatment, a complete impossibility as you will be outnumbered by groups who come here to get resources from you, and lord over you, and not only take preferential treatment, but also disminish the native culture both by ridicule, and replacement invited by people who share their bias and want their vote.

Plus, the fact that groups carry within themselves this kind of grievances makes this whole idea of an even handed law an impossibility, if the system plays dumb about this fact. People who favor their own group and want to screw over the native ethnic group are going to get their way, unless the system can name names. You haven't done that, so how are you going to stop a system that privilidges groups the Jews, Indians, when you argue that they are going to be targeted?

The reality is that a country that doesn't have the courage to stand for its own people, and compromises by claiming to want new soviet man type of ideology which is already the bailey of cultural Marxism, is not going to stop preferential treatment for groups progressives favor.

Promoting a single unified culture has been a part of every national movement since the Greeks and Romans. Calling “treat everyone in society as legal equals and insist on a unified culture” is a concept that would be as close to universal as can be. The Romans insisted on the unification of their territory into being Roman. Major business and cultural exchanges were in Greek or Latin. If you wanted to be an elite, you better learn to speak the language. It was the same with unification of various countries in Europe— the French promoted Frenchness, the British promoted Britishness, the Russians promoted Russian culture. Peter the Great was not Marxist by any stretch of the imagination. He was a Russian Czar promoting the culture of Russia.

I think as far as people suddenly becoming “strangers in their own land”, again, this isn’t some weird new idea that nobody ever thought about until Marx came along. There have always been subcultures and ethnic groups on the outs in any given society. It’s how a unified culture tends to work, you go along with the culture or you are at least somewhat on the outside. I and my near kin would be on the outs in lots of cultures. The Chinese are not going to look kindly on a bunch of white Americans suddenly showing up in their country, nor would they tolerate a situation in which such groups demand infinite carve outs for their particular cultural preferences. I don’t think that legally forbidding someone to practice a religion makes sense, but that doesn’t mean that it should be perfectly legal to do things that the rest of society finds abhorrent in public under the guise of “my religion or culture.”