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.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Americans are the proud inheritors of the British tradition of government by consent. As with every social institution in such a society, the rules can be set by the most local institution according to the local custom. And can be changed if the custom changes.
Rights are a lot less messy when you give up on the destructive idea that they can be positive and restrict them to the specific traditions of Englishmen. As Clarence Thomas is fond of explaining tersely.
No, you're just unhappy with the English tradition and would like a more ideal and logically consistent form of Liberalism that is untenable.
You are sick of the malady of the French Revolution and will only dissolve any society you get control of in a futile attempt to reconcile equality and liberty.
This is not possible, and it is not desirable.
The idea that one should shrug and accept tyranny in the face of such contradictions is not American. The American way is to embrace an optimistic negotiated compromise and entrust the future to make good on the spirit of that compromise.
It is certainly not to have the State figure out the rational answer to a problem and have people conform. That's the Continental way of doing things, with its managerial demands for universal standardization and its enforcement at the point of bayonets. One must ask: what the fuck is a kilometer?
@IGI-111, you're French, right? I would be very interested in your opinions on the nature and consequences of the French Revolution if so.
I am. And the sort of universalist integration talked about here is acceptable to the French because we have built the necessary social mores and institutions to make sure that it doesn't destroy our society. Painfully so.
Consider for instance that in France it is illegal to fire someone for political opinions expressed out of work, that there is a powerful culture of debate where people from the far left and far right regularly confront their ideas in public and that we have dozens of political parties instead of just two (none of which have a majority right now).
It is often said that every bad idea comes from France. But the truth is really that the French are an infohazard. We, in our infinite Statism, allow ourselves to philosophize about everything and decide complex social theories that ultimately don't affect the conduct of State, because somewhere somehow, our leader will say "let's be serious now" and do the right thing as opposed to the ideological thing, in Bonapartist fashion.
People who use our ideas don't have this luxury. They go to the Sorbonne, think all the radical leftism is fully applicable and go back to Cambodia to kill half the population. Foucault and Derrida were popular in their circles but ultimately benign until Americans took them seriously. And so goes for Proudhon, Sartre and Sorel.
I have too much to say about the French Revolution, good and bad, but the most spiritually important seems to me that France has killed a king that was central to how its tradition worked and has been looking for Great Men as a substitute ever since. And the more benign the men that rule us ("normal" as Hollande said) the more despised they are, and the more dysfunctional we grow.
I think this scar has left us in a weird unstable position with a sort of contradictory fervor for a republicanism that never satisfies, but we make it work thanks to the wealth of history we can draw from.
You sometimes hear a similar idea from russians, who complain that they weren’t vaccinated against western brain viruses like marxism and so got it particularly bad. Then again that’s germany, and they can’t really say they managed to only express a benign form of 20th century ideology.
Germans got that one from us too I would argue. Their role in the continental ecosystem is to take something thought up by somebody else and bring it to it's logical conclusion.
In this case Marx took what he called French "utopian socialism" from Proudhon and made it far more practical and structured by making it more "scientific" and marrying it with Hegelian dialectic, as you can see in The Poverty of Philosophy.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Sure, so if the local custom changes to disallowing race segregated spaces (as America has done) then that idms fine and dandy. Abd then if they decide trans women can use womens bathrooms that is also fine and dandy?
I agree that is a description of how the world operates. But it doesn't give you any information on how to decide if the local consensus is good or not. The local consensus is the local consensus is both true and not terribly helpful.
Plus the English tradition (itself obviously only important if it is the local consensus) does include positive rights.
Regardless society is quite capable of compromises, so while it may not be possible to perfectly reconcile equality and liberty, the most sucessful nations do make the attempt and perfect is the enemy of good enough.
The only thing that matters is consent.
Segregation was ended by the force of bayonets. That was unjust. Even if segregation itself was an ill.
A healthy society would have sought to reconcile the races through means of discourse rather than force. And would not have created the ressentiment that animates racial tensions in it today.
I am precisely denouncing the notion you are so fully avowed to that you don't notice it: that of universalism.
The English tradition is peculiar, not universal. Your neighbors may not decide to live as you do. This is not cause for alarm and demands they change to suit you. Insofar as their relationship to you is proper.
As the English are fond of saying: mind your own business.
You'll note that such an arrangement is a lot more compatible with fair lives for transgender individuals than the universalist battleground where that have to win out some political argument to be allowed to exist, but it demands that they do not seek to upend society.
It does not. Or you would be able to name them.
But segregation was also IMPOSED by the force of bayonets. No-one was asking black people if they consented to it. Doesn't their consent matter?
And while I am not English (rather British) I lived in and worked for the government in England for a number of decades.
The right for anyone too old or too infirm to be housed and fed by the state stretches back to the 1300's, was codified in various laws from the 1600's onwards in one form or another, and birthed the modern welfare state. Also the right to petition the government, the government can't just let you speak against them (covered by free speech and assembly), but put in place measures to listen. Even if they don't have to act. Which birthed the modern day MP's surgeries where constituents can go and talk to their representative face to face. Which is why in the US taking about the right to petition:
"But the majority of state constitutional petition provisions — in 32 states — frame the right as a positive one (an entitlement), rather than a negative one (a restriction on the government)."
It's true that negative rights were certainly more common, but it was by no means exclusive, and even some of the negative rights stretched into positive ones, the right to a fair trial, in English tradition requires other citizens to serve on a jury. So you are entitled to people doing something for you, even if they would rather not. To stand between you and the state before you can be jailed.
There is no right to be associated with. Blacks had much more solid grievances in the systematic destruction of their own institutions, or indeed the original source of this whole mess in being imported as slaves.
I also question the assumption that they collectively desired, at the time, to destroy segregation. The MLK answer to the question was the one supported by power, and one that profits the needs for standardization, but was it really the most popular on the ground? Black nationalism was no less prolific ideologically. It simply didn't have the ear of USG.
In any case, the proposed solution is to remove imposition on either side and let people have segregated and non segretated communities as they please. Which you'd only object to if you don't actually care about consent.
I knew this would eventually come to the holy NHS. But public charity, even if it is expected doesn't raise to the level of a right.
People would look badly upon an English ruler that did not take proper care of the elderly, they probably would not fight him to the death on this alone.
As for rights to political participation, I find it silly to view them as positive given how they are framed and justified in every foundational document as a protection against tyranny.
Well sure there is we were just talking about it. The right to free association. And of course that wasn't the worst thing done to them, but if you think segregation shouldn't have been done away with without consent then their right to free association should not have been removed without consent. You can't have it both ways. And it doesn't matter what they wanted collectively does it? If a single black or white person did not want segregation then their rights were removed. And therefore when their rights were restored with the removal of segregation they were just going back to the status quo.
As for voluntary segregation people can do that today. Many areas in the US are either exclusively or almost exclusively segregated. You just can't use race when offering services, and you can't have legal segregation that the government will enforce. It is now up to you to avoid black people (or vice versa), and if that means you have to move rather than them, then that is the right you have. You just can't legally force someone else to move. Your beliefs, you have to be the one to make the effort to abide by them. You want no black people in your neighborhood, you have to move neighborhoods, you can't make them move. Otherwise, you are trying to force people to act a certain way to accommodate your beliefs. You are not entitled to force people to change their behavior. You are entitled to move to rural Montana or Amish country or wherever you can find that meets your criteria.
We're not talking about the NHS by the way holy or otherwise. That is healthcare not housing and feeding, which is administered by entirely different bodies, primarily local governments. The right to healthcare is a relatively modern invention. The right for people in England to be fed and housed if they could not do it themselves is hundreds of years older. It is heavily framed within English common law AND statutory law. Whether people would fight to the death about it is not the definition of a right, otherwise the right to bear arms or the right to freedom of speech both of which have been restricted are also not rights.
This is a negative right that protects your freedom to refuse to associate or to associate with willing people without it being prevented by the State.
Some greengrocer who would serve blacks and whites equally in the same establishment would not break this, but neither would one that only serves one of these groups. And if all greengrocers in your area serve the group you are not part of, your right has not been violated either. At least not under the traditional English conception of such things.
There are pubs in Britain with centuries old signs on the front that say "no x allowed".
It is only later universalist developments in liberal political theory that would qualify this state of things as a violation. Because they care about result rather than process.
The idea that you have a right to participate in somebody else's business by virtue of your existence is actually a violation of freedom of association.
Hence this is only contradictory if we accept your conclusion, which I, and many Libertarians and Liberals, do not.
This is wholly untrue. The Civil Rights Act makes this functionally illegal. You cannot setup a village of only your group and only hire people who are part of it. The only exceptions made for this are for tribes and other such minority groups that setup treaties or special status.
If you so much as try to setup Orania in the US, your wife gets shot in front of your children after Feds entrap you on bullshit gun charges. And if you actually do set it up, your women and children get burned alive by conveniently disappearing incendiary grenades.
Correct. Because to do so is to step over someone else's right to free association as I pointed out in my example. What you can do is move to an all white area. What you can't do is stop a black person moving in. Nothing stops you moving to another white area and another. Because your neighbors have the right to associate with black people even if you don't want to, and black people have the right to associate with them. That is the part you must come to grips with. Your neighbor has the right to sell his property to anyone including a black person. Therefore you are the one who must take steps if you have this particular belief. Like a vegan going to a Thanksgiving dinner, you have a right not to eat the food, you do not have the right to demand other people also stop eating turkey.
And yet, if I buy all the land myself or in a compact with people that refuse to sell it (this is how Orania actually works), I still get killed by feds. Curious.
In any case, your line of argument is absurd because it is applicable to any contractual limitation. And I don't see you particularly miffed that non compete clauses or HOAs exist, despite them being clear violations of your conception of freedom of association.
I think you simply desire the state limit what contracts people can sign because you don't like certain kinds of contracts and certain kinds of contractors. Not because they actually violate anybody's rights.
Why shouldn't a vegan be allowed to ban meat eating at his Thanksgiving dinner, exactly? Or setup his own commune of vegans that kicks out people for meat eating? I say that the naked truth is that you have imperial designs of how this vegan hypothetical should live his life because you fear the popularity of veganism may threaten the meat supply and are therefore locked in a political struggle that has nothing to do with freedom and everything to do with domination.
Ancient traditions are specifically evolved as a remedy for this problem, mind you.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
What about habeus corpus or the right to trial by jury?
Negative rights self evidently. You are not to be arbitrary imprisoned.
That this demands extra effort from the State is not to be confused with the demand to continuously provide you some resource or work as a privilege.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link