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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 3, 2025

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I dunno. Democratic Israel outperforms its neighbors in battle cartoonishly. Neither Ukraine nor Russia is really a democracy, but Ukraine is much more democratic than Russia and punching well above its weight comparatively.

Germany knocked out so many countries, so quickly, mostly due to surprise attacks and incompetence.

If Germany was able to surprise France after a good 9 months of Phoney War, then something was really wrong with France. Britain had years to notice that Germany was building up a powerful army and yet couldn't manage to get enough troops to France in time...

Israel isn't really that liberal, they're more like Britain in the early 19th century or (ironically) Nazi Germany. Liberal countries don't conduct opportunistic border revisions, evict people and settle their land. Liberal countries don't sterilize Ethiopians. Liberal countries don't launch sneak attacks on their neighbours. You wouldn't see Americans storming a military base to protest the imprisonment of soldiers accused of raping civilians.

https://www.aa.com.tr/en/middle-east/israeli-party-leader-calls-for-jailing-lawmakers-after-protest-over-gang-rape-of-gazan-detainee/3288858

I dunno. Democratic Israel outperforms its neighbors in battle cartoonishly.

HBD. Every time.

And since someone is already typing "North Korea", let me just state that national IQ is a ceiling, not a floor. A sufficiently awful government can ruin any country, but no government can ever redeem a low IQ country.

Israel's HBD advantage during its three existential wars is overstated- 100 IQ Arab Christians made up a proportionately much larger part of Jordanian and Syrian society at the time and Israel's HBD isn't that impressive because Ashkenazim aren't a majority of the population.

HBD. Every time.

If you would like to argue that Germans are the runts of Europe and simply genetically predisposed towards losing world wars, i would not argue against you.

Germany: we may lose the game, but we always beat the spread.