site banner

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 3, 2025

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.

6
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

just say the former process of granting citizenship was unconstitutional

Do you even need to go that far? As I understand it, they could simply say "Their citizenship was not guaranteed by the constitution, but it was not banned and we already chose to grant it"

Do you even need to go that far? As I understand it, they could simply say "Their citizenship was not guaranteed by the constitution, but it was not banned and we already chose to grant it"

But you didn't. The statute granting citizenship to Americans born in the US uses identical wording to the 14th amendment. And the statute can't be changed by executive order either. If "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" does exclude children of illegal immigrants, then Trump signed an executive order ordering the Department of State to continue issuing passports to non-citizens born before the date of the order. There are also non-citizens with passports, SSNs, etc, and a lot of citizens who no longer have documentary proof of citizenship.

If Trump and Eastman are correct about the meaning of "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" then the government has been misapplying the law for decades and the resulting mess requires urgent Congressional action to fix. Cynically, the executive order is a trial balloon to get the constitutionality of the whole thing in front of SCOTUS quickly and they are planning to do the work of abolishing birthright citizenship properly once they know it won't be thrown out.