I don't know to what extent there are established precedents for when a topic is worthy of a mega-thread, but this decision seems like a big deal to me with a lot to discuss, so I'm putting this thread here as a place for discussion. If nobody agrees then I guess they just won't comment.
What is this place?
This website is a place for people who want to move past shady thinking and test their ideas in a
court of people who don't all share the same biases. Our goal is to
optimize for light, not heat; this is a group effort, and all commentators are asked to do their part.
The weekly Culture War threads host the most
controversial topics and are the most visible aspect of The Motte. However, many other topics are
appropriate here. We encourage people to post anything related to science, politics, or philosophy;
if in doubt, post!
Check out The Vault for an archive of old quality posts.
You are encouraged to crosspost these elsewhere.
Why are you called The Motte?
A motte is a stone keep on a raised earthwork common in early medieval fortifications. More pertinently,
it's an element in a rhetorical move called a "Motte-and-Bailey",
originally identified by
philosopher Nicholas Shackel. It describes the tendency in discourse for people to move from a controversial
but high value claim to a defensible but less exciting one upon any resistance to the former. He likens
this to the medieval fortification, where a desirable land (the bailey) is abandoned when in danger for
the more easily defended motte. In Shackel's words, "The Motte represents the defensible but undesired
propositions to which one retreats when hard pressed."
On The Motte, always attempt to remain inside your defensible territory, even if you are not being pressed.
New post guidelines
If you're posting something that isn't related to the culture war, we encourage you to post a thread for it.
A submission statement is highly appreciated, but isn't necessary for text posts or links to largely-text posts
such as blogs or news articles; if we're unsure of the value of your post, we might remove it until you add a
submission statement. A submission statement is required for non-text sources (videos, podcasts, images).
Culture war posts go in the culture war thread; all links must either include a submission statement or
significant commentary. Bare links without those will be removed.
If in doubt, please post it!
Rules
- Courtesy
- Content
- Engagement
- When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
- Proactively provide evidence in proportion to how partisan and inflammatory your claim might be.
- Accept temporary bans as a time-out, and don't attempt to rejoin the conversation until it's lifted.
- Don't attempt to build consensus or enforce ideological conformity.
- Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
- The Wildcard Rule
- The Metarule
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
The "holding" vs "running" argument is funny, but it really just kicks the can down the road -- Trump's probably hoping until votes are being counted for the general election, but Colorado specifically already has had recent lawsuits over Secretaries of State making orders related to election processes weeks before the election, and there's no reason it couldn't happen in the primary season, too.
Ruling specifically on Trump's eligibility as a matter of legal fact has the problem where it's both too much into political questions for a few members of the court, and simultaneously not enough to actually table the problem. The same approaches can and have migrated to other politicians, and as the emoluments clause fandom demonstrates, there's always some new fact pattern to bring.
Congress having to act would remove a lot of further legal gamesmanship, but I dunno how well it would appeal to most of the Court. At the simplest level, the approach Trump is advocating would not just allow but encourage a situation where a candidate was cleanly and clearly the winner of a state and then the House of Representatives reject that state -- and while I'd recognize some schadenfreude in a reversal, the spectre of Jan 6 isn't something that they're forgetting. Especially given the extent Baude/Paulsen and the lower courts here have rejected due process concerns or even argued that the 14th Amendment overrides earlier test in the Constitution, there's also a lot of really bad problems that could fall from Congress having the power to
declareinsurrectionists by law.More options
Context Copy link