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PaperclipPerfector  10mo ago (text post)   26200 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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One might also question the morality of, say, a territory that was a net benefactor of federal aid for years then seceding without making up for it by paying for what it had gained through its previous association with the rest of the country.

This is easy to game by manipulating numbers.

There's a classic example where Democrats claim that the government spends a lot on red states when the truth is one or more of general infrastructure used by nonresidents such as interstate highways, military bases that protect the nation rather than the state, blue inner city areas in red states that eat up expenditures, and blues who move to red states to retire so the expenditure and revenue get counted for different states.

It also runs into the problem of "benefits" that are harmful, that can't be rejected, or both. "We paid police to enforce all those drug laws against you. Society benefits when drug use is reduced. You didn't pay us back for those benefits when you seceded!"

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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."

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