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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 21, 2025

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This is what I was trying to express, but much more succinct; this is what red tribe has seen over and over and over, and many of them are coming to the realization that there are no ways to enforce that the blue tribe actually keep their promises.

To be clear, I do not want a war between red and blue; I want to be left alone, and to leave other people alone. Blue tribe at the moment appears to have adopted the mindset that there can be no 'agree to disagree', and that they must instead must threaten to destroy me unless I am constantly affirming their decisions, and they are willing to use the full force of the government to make me do so. (For what it's worth, I think this is one of the reasons that the blue tribe hates Trump so much - I think he's willing to use the full force of the government to enforce his desires, and there are a number of people who voted for him specifically to do that, and because they perceive his desires as overlapping with their own).

One of the hardest lessons I've had to learn in my cold dead libertarian heart is that there can be no 'peacefully agree to not use power against one another.' Power will always go to those who want to seize it, while it exists. If you want a credible way to defuse the situation? Splinter the power that lets the sides enforce their will upon each other, so that no one can take it and use it on the other.

Power will always go to those who want to seize it, while it exists.

I'm certainly no libertarian, but isn't this the essence of libertarianism -- that power is so seductive and so oppressive that the only way to deal with its abuse is to limit it to just what's absolutely necessary, so there's less power to abuse? It seems to me like you're just growing in your convictions rather than having to learn a hard lesson.

I believe the libertarian solution to "people are abusing the power of the public library" is something like "abolish the public library." (This is also one of the reasons I think the American right and left are closer to each other in terms of general views on liberty than they think -- the right-wing solution to corrupt US government agencies is to abolish them, the left-wing solution to corrupt police departments is to abolish defund them.)

(I may have misunderstood you, and you were saying that your "cold dead libertarian heart" became that way because of this lesson, rather than saying that it startled you and you had to figure out how to square it with your libertarianism. If so, disregard.)