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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 1, 2024

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Speaking as plainly as possible, would it be fair to say that your argument is that Conservatives should refrain from employing one of the core political tactics of Progressivism for the last, oh, sixty years or more, a tactic that has been enormously successful and has directly contributed to the current social dominance of Progressivism, with the full understanding that Progressives will never reciprocate in any way, and that the failure to reciprocate will never be punished in any way? If not, what's the distinction I'm missing?

...On the one hand, one might reply "well, when you phrase it that way, it sounds terrible." On the other hand, sometimes the reason a thing sounds terrible is because it is terrible.

Similarly, I’d find it wrong if and when a progressive Supreme Court limited gun ownership rights in a conservative state.

What does "wrong" mean to you? Like, they've absolutely done exactly that before, and they absolutely will do it again. What follows?

It doesn’t seem bad if Texas is the Wild West and Hawaii is East Asia when it comes to gun policy.

I agree that this would be most agreeable in the abstract. But why do you believe that we can get there from here, in any meaningful sense? If so, how? If not, why advocate a "solution" that you yourself do not believe will actually solve the problem?

I personally endorse the "sanctuary" approach. I think Conservatives should actively and collectively dismantle respect for authority and law not their own, that they should systematically stonewall and impede the ability of distant outgroups to play any significant role in the governance or regulation of their communities. This appears to me to be the "what follows" to the attitude you seek to be displaying above, because "local majorities overrule global majorities" is absolutely not how things actually work now or have worked in the past. But on the other hand, until they're actually able to achieve that state, how do unilateral concessions help to secure the general rule?

they should systematically stonewall and impede the ability of distant outgroups to play any significant role in the governance or regulation of their communities

One hopeful trends in the past few years is many sheriffs declaring they won't enforce certain gun laws. Legislators may do as they please, but this is a regular capacity mag and regular rifle "sanctuary county".

I don’t really disagree with you. I have no problem with conservatives ‘playing dirty’ in practice. I just lament the fact that the US moves ever further away from the ideal of a confederation of states that allow each other a great deal of internal liberty in the design their own societies. Fighting that, I think, starts exactly with the ‘sanctuary approach’ you discuss, ignoring decrees from Washington where appropriate and daring any progressive president or congress to send in the tanks.

The thing, of course, is that ‘sanctuary cities’ are so abhorrent because they represent a state or city’s participation in external security, which is one of the very few policy areas in which the federal governments enforcement of practice upon the states is completely justified as an inherent property of a sovereign political union.