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 -
This line of reasoning is thoroughly unconvincing as long as Lincoln remains a beloved historical figure.
Having briefly spent some time on confederate twitter, I noticed the typical progressive low-effort culture war snipe is some variation of "we Sherman'd you once, and we'll do it again."
The threat here is quite explicit: You belong to the empire, independence and self governance -even democratically enacted- are a form treason, which is so heinous as to justify killing civilians and burning their houses down. (bonus points for Ukrainian flag in username)
This isn't limited to the worst elements on twitter or the left. Tom Cotton claims the confederate flag is a terrorist symbol while helping to spearhead efforts to aid Ukraine.
It's a very common strategy in the leftwing/neocon playbook to trot out Libertarian principles when it suits them and abandon them when it doesn't, that is almost certainly what is happening here. Scott, for example, noticed the CSA/Ukrainian dissonance and just decided to ignore it in typical Scott fashion (IIRC).
Yes, indeed, it would seem only the United States is to morally grounded enough to forcibly annex independent states on behalf of minorities, according to Americans anyway.
The Confederacy was not annexed. There was no disagreement before the war that the South was part of the United States. The disagreement was over whether the South had the right to secede.
Russia may claim that Ukraine is and always has been part of Russia, but the Ukrainians obviously do not agree, and neither does the rest of the world.
I agree that prior to secession it is clear the South was part of the United States.
But immediately after secession but before the war is ended is this sort of fuzzy area where the winner gets to declare the legal state after the fact. It turns out that the secession was illegal and the South was always part of the US, but only in retrospect after they lost. Had they won, then the moment secession was declared would have been the moment an independent nation was legally formed which would have meant that Lincoln's actions would have been an invasion by any reasonable definition.
This puts your second paragraph in context.
Whether the Ukrainians agree or not is no more relevant than whether the Southerners agreed or not. What actually matters is what force Russia/The Union are capable of projecting onto their reluctant citizens.
The only guiding principle here is "It's okay when we do it, it's bad when they do it." just as it always has been throughout human history.
Ukraine had UN membership from founding of UN...
The CSA was not recognized by as a country by others, even by UK. Post-1991 Ukraine has decades of peaceful life and got recognition by everyone.
Sure, that's a valid point, but in practice recognition is largely enforced through whatever borders a polity is capable of maintaining militarily (or having another nation maintain on their behalf). South Vietnam and South Korea are good examples of this playing out post WWII, their differing outcomes being a result of how their respective wars played out. Had Russia enough power to project their will, it's not clear to me that the rest of the world wouldn't just quietly drop recognition of Ukraine, since it wouldn't serve any benefit to them. (Thankfully for Eastern Europe, this doesn't seem to be the case.)
For the CSA's part, every other country remained neutral. CSA had powerful trading partners in Britain and France and they opted to wait to see how it played out, not wanting to upset trade deals with an emerging nation in the event of a CSA victory, or hurting relations with the Union by backing a rebellion in the event of a CSA loss. This is a similar diplomatic stance that the US held towards Europe as well, attempting to remain neutral as possible in 19th century European wars.
More options
Context Copy link
That's a very bad argument. If, for example, Kurds can carve out and keep a Kurdistan for themselves, it's theirs. If the UN doesn't recognize it, that's an argument against the UN, not Kurdistan.
...but it seems to me how it works in practice.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
This view is not consistent with the requirement that the states be re-admitted to the Union. Of course, what actually happened is the North, being the victors, did what they wanted, consistency be damned.
More options
Context Copy link
Then you've conceded the point. Russia is making ahistorical claims; "Putin claims Ukraine belongs to them" is not some ambiguous claim that only becomes true or false depending on whether or not Russia wins. We know Ukraine does not legitimately "belong" to Russia, regardless of whether Russia succeeds in taking it. Obviously if they take it then they win, ownership being 9/10 of the law and all that. But we disagree on the universal legitimacy of "might makes right."
It's entirely relevant when you are making an apples-to-oranges comparison like this.
The question of whether a population is allowed to secede is not the same as the question of whether a population is allowed to resist being annexed.
Casting the Union in the same role as Russia and Lincoln as a direct equivalent to Putin is understandably an attractive proposition for Confederate apologists, but the Confederacy was not in anything like the same role as Ukraine.
No, that is not the only guiding principle here.
I may not have been clear, I do not believe "might makes right" is morally correct. I think we are in agreement here. If you are making a narrower Sovereign Citizen adjacent argument then I would love it if you would expound on that because I don't think I've ever read anyone on the motte argue that before. If it's some third thing then I don't understand your post. Ownership is 9/10s of the law if the guy with the most guns says it is. I don't endorse this point of coarse, I would prefer if I could avoid federal taxes by claiming status as CSA citizen, but the guys with the guns say otherwise.
I don't understand your point here. (Sorry, I may be a little slow). This seems closer to the sovereign citizen thing.
Has claiming "You do not have the right to invade and annex me" ever prevented anyone from getting invaded and annexed? What does it mean to be "allowed" to resist being invaded an annexed? Who is doing the allowing?
I'll repeat here what I posted further downthread to Steffari:
...
Hmm, I never really considered myself a "confederate apologist". I think most of the modern criticisms are largely accurate, they just pale in comparison to the deeds of the yankees, who subverted the will of a democratically enacted government, deposed them and installed their own, then proceeded to spend the next thirty years culling the native population. That you consider these to be beloved heroes and good people on the right side of history is the point I was attempting to make to Steffari about the principles held by westerners.
I am not sure where you're getting Sovereign Citizen from.
Obviously, countries can and do invade other countries without "permission." We generally consider that a bad thing.
Our point of disagreement is that you think people being forcibly prevented from seceding is the same thing as being invaded and conquered, and while I realize Confederate apologists think this is true, I think there are convincing moral, legal, and historical arguments to the contrary.
This kind of hyberbolic straw man is a very annoying and disingenuous rhetorical gambit. I am not very sympathetic to the CSA, but no armed conflict is ever that black and white, and I would not agree with anything as simplistic as "the Union were all beloved heroes and good people on the right side of history." Do I think the Union was, for the most part, in the right? Yes, just like I think Ukraine is in the right today for resisting a Russian invasion, but that doesn't mean I think Ukrainians are all good-hearted heroes and innocent victims or that I'm unaware that Ukraine was and is an extremely corrupt and by many measures oppressive country itself.
Don't project lack of principles onto other people with this sort of flat characterization.
The point can be made without bringing Lincoln into it. If you were to poll liberals and ask "Nation A finds out their neighbor Nation B is has been raiding and enlsaving members of a foreign nation. Do you think it is morally acceptable for Nation A to invade and annex B in order to prevent this from occuring?" My priors here are that you'd get an overwhelming yes, in direct contradiction to the claim Steffari made.
Sorry, I meant the general you, since you are arguing on behalf of a society that does think those things. I don't doubt that your personal views are more nuanced. What I don't understand about your point of view is whether you believe secession was simply the incorrect mechanism for the Southerners to use or if you hold a more general stance that the Southerners should not be allowed to self govern (but the Ukranians can).
I don't agree that you'd get an overwhelming yes, and I think the specifics would matter. Liberals might generally be in favor of "armed intervention to prevent slavery," but they tend to be against "invasion and annexation."
I do not think the CSA had a legal right to secede from the United States. I strongly believe all nation states should recognize individual citizens' right of exit, but that doesn't include taking national resources and geographical territory with them.
Your equivalency hinges on Ukraine being legitimately part of Russia and the existence of Ukraine as an independent nation being an act of secession. Again, Putin may see it this way, but I do not see why we should accept Putin's interpretation over that of the Ukrainians. I don't think it's a claim that stands up historically or in material terms.
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
More options
Context Copy link
It was not Lincoln trying to adjust the borders of the United States unilaterally. It was the Confederacy that tried to do that. Lincoln was all about preventing that happening. If there's some equivalent to Confederates here, it would be the DPR/LPR separatists (though of course they're not equivalent, there's multiple differences there, too).
It was after WW2, and due to WW2, that the current international system, along with its respect for existing borders, was born. To my knowledge America has not annexed new territories since WW2.
Huh? By democratically seceding? Why do Ukrainians have a God given right to an independent polity but the southern states do not? Do you imagine that if the South had not fired on Fort Sumpter, Lincoln would have moved the troops out eventually and respected the will of the Confederate peoples?
Yet our historical mythos remains unaltered in a post WWII order (despite many other historical events getting revamped to match modern morality). Actually its much worse, confederate statues and flags were far more tolerated prior to WWII than they are now, we have gone in the opposite direction. It's all "who whom".
The war of course started not with the secession itself but with confederates attacking federal assets (Fort Sumter.)
I'm pretty sure holding military assets in a foreign country against their wishes is an act of war itself, so it started before that.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Ukraine's independence has been formally recognized - by the global community, and most crucially by the Russian Federation, in its role as the continuation of the centuries of Russian statehood and as the state that de jure assumed the role of continuing the Soviet Union's role in the said global community. Indeed - again, de jure - Russia and Ukraine have been separate subjects for 100 years now, first within the Soviet Union and then, after the said state stopped existing, as independent countries, even if de facto Soviet Union might have been just Russia by another name. When Russia is violating Ukraine's sovereignty, it is doing so in explicit violation of treaties and structures it has formerly recognized as valid. Indeed, even now, Russia recognized Ukraine as an independent country, even if it claiming large parts of it as a part of RF.
Confederacy, on the other hand, was never recognized as independent, either by US or any other country. That's the crucial difference.
The actions of the North, to be clear, were "in explicit violation of treaties and structures it has formerly recognized as valid". The constitution does not give the president the right to send troops to forcibly abolish the existing democratically elected government in the case that they choose to secede, and my ancestors would not have signed it if it did. It was originally a free association of states, not unlike the EU (and my state has an almost identical population to your country).
Typically, when you send troops into a place to depose the existing government and install your own puppet government, we call that "invasion". You can characterize it differently, if you wish, such as "quelling a rebellion", but this your original point was that Russia was violating a modern guiding principle for the international order, which was "Don't invade and annex other countries". That you are willing to split hairs over exactly what counts as an invasion instead of leaning in on the more general principle of "People ought to be able to self-govern, if they so choose, and attempting to force them into your polity is wrong" further reinforces to me the idea that no such principle actually exists in the modern world.
No matter how you characterize the American Civil War, it did not happen during the current post-WW2 world order, which is what I'm talking about here - the world order characterized by an international opposition to invasion for annexation, that opposition being the result of preceeding history.
My point is that we didn't end up in a world that was opposed to boat tipping on principle, but rather other effects came into play that made tipping the boat a generally undesirable activity. In other words, I think you are mistaking description for prescription.
The evidence for this is that modern society venerates people who conquered and annexed their outgroup using very similar rhetoric to Putin, and I believe they would very likely do it again if the situation allowed for it.
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
At that time the supremacy of the federal government over states hadn’t been established. It was much more like the European Union today. The civil war would be akin to Brexit happening and the EU declaring war on the UK. The notion of federal borders versus state borders was in question.
The US of this era was obviously already more federal a country than EU of the current era for the simple virtue of having a federal army, including the possession of forts like Ft. Sumter.
Even the specific interpretation of US constitutional arrangements before and leading up to the American Civil War - a topic where there are and have been multiple legal interpretations, then and now - is immaterial here, though. The 1800s was an era when countries, including the US, generally considered annexation by force to be a valid method of expanding their power. This led to a considerable amount of warfare and suffering, culminating in the World Wars. This is justifiably considered to be very bad, and the international norm of not considering annexation by force to be valid is a vast improvement. The precise threat of Russian invasion of Ukraine is taking a considerable step towards a return to the Bad Old Times, should it be approved by other countries.
If we agree annexation by force to be bad, how do we feel about annexation by secession? By treaty? By demographic shifts due to birth rates and/or migration? By cultural invasion?
Once all the borders on Earth are set in stone as far as war is concerned, Power will find another way to get the territory it wants. It skirts legibility if all methods legible to the law are blocked. It fights unseen wars through peacemongering. It still consumes all as fuel, as rust is slow fire.
Getting countries to utilize their quest for power through means other than open warfare and annexation is a feature, not a bug.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Well I’m specifically referring to your point that it was the confederacy trying to adjust borders and not the states.
While I agree that the EU today is weaker than the Feds then; States Rights were still a thing then and wasn’t a settled issue. The constitution itself only about 80 years old would have been geared more towards the borders being the states properties.
I do agree no changing borders has been a mostly a good thing atleast by force. Though it is different with breakaway republics doing it democratically.
It just feels like an incorrect interpretation of history that a states land at the time was the property of the states and not the Feds. That was very much in debate at that time.
Even today I am not convinced that a right to secession does not exists in the Constitution. And it really just comes down to who has more powerful ability to project force.
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