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Culture War Roundup for the week of February 20, 2023

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Why do you care? How does it affect your life or the lives of anyone you care about?

You could just as well ask this about most of the things that people typically discuss here. Most of the topics that you bring up here, I suspect, also do not really affect your life or the lives of those you care about that much.

Do you have any relatives or loved ones who are even remotely likely to end up dying in a similar matter?

I do not want to go into too many personal details but in short - no it is not likely. However, I have certainly known or at least known-through-friends people who were treated by the criminal justice system in a way that I disagree with. One was jailed briefly for criticizing incompetent cops to their face. Another was imprisoned for years for drug transportation, and in my view almost all laws against recreational drugs should not exist.

In any case, I can sympathize with people who are hurt by the criminal justice system even if I personally do not know them.

Your attitudes towards recreational drug use are totally alien to me. I have no idea why anyone would have your attitudes and I have never seen a good argument in favor of them that did not boil down to being pro-authoritarianism/pro-social engineering. And I am not pro-authoritarianism, although I am also not some kind of unrealistic libertarian. I think that obviously some authority is necessary for society to function, but I prefer to limit it and the idea of using state power for social engineering - which the war on drugs basically is - is distasteful to me just as it would be if, say, a communist state did it. Again, obviously some degree of state-imposed social engineering is necessary for a society to function but I prefer to limit it and certainly the idea of using force to prevent people from consuming mind-altering substances seems absurd to me, as absurd as say would be the idea of using force to prevent people from wearing certain styles of clothing or the idea of using force to prevent people from consensually having sex with certain other people.

It is hard for me to understand the mindset of pro-authoritarians. It is almost like trying to understand some different species.

Hard-heartedness cannot be imposed without authoritarianism.

Does this mean that we should let violent people run wild without trying to stop them? No, not at all. I am not anti-police. I am for competent police who do a better job of using the minimum of force than the current police do. If that means we need to fund the criminal justice system more so that they can hire a higher quality of person, I am for it.

Should George Floyd have been executed for breaking into a woman's home and holding her at gunpoint? In my view, no. I am absolutely against capital punishment if for no other reason than that it occasionally kills innocent people. Should he have been imprisoned for life? That is a different matter, and I think that "yes" is certainly a reasonable position to have on that question. There are decent arguments pro and against. People do change sometimes and lifetime incarceration is a very harsh sentence to impose. On the other hand, it is clear to me that letting people who have a track record of gun violence back on the streets is not fair to their possible future victims. So I am not sure about this issue.