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PaperclipPerfector  9mo ago (text post)   18980 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of January 29, 2024

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Fresh Moms For Liberty Scandal Just Dropped

Clarice Schillinger, a former Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, is facing charges of assault, harassment and furnishing minors with alcohol, including vodka and rum, in connection to a September party she hosted in her Bucks County home, according to a police complaint obtained by Newsweek.

From what I can gather from reading the newspaper on the topic, she appeared to be running the local Party House. Police reports state that they had been called to her house for underage drinking multiple times in prior weeks. She threw a birthday party for her daughter, perhaps larger than usual?, and things got a little out of hand. Schillinger and her boyfriend provided both liquor and beer. Schillinger drank with the teens, including playing beer pong and pouring shots. Schillinger and her boyfriend, separately, punched different teens while trying to restrain them from leaving the party. Schillinger supposedly yelled "THE ONLY THING I ASK IS THAT YOU DON'T LEAVE."

While underage drinking, and providing minors with alcohol as an adult, is of course illegal in the United States, Schillinger appears to have been attempting to do so responsibly. She wanted her kids to drink at her house, under supervision, and to keep them there until the morning when they had sobered up to avoid drunk driving. Kids drinking under parental supervision are obviously safer than kids drinking in the woods or in an empty house. Kids who drink and don't drive home are safer than kids who drive. The altercations alleged seem more like (politically motivated?) throw ins than serious assaults, no allegations of serious injuries, more like horseplay than violence.

This comes after an earlier scandal involving an OG founder of the group and her husband, the president of the Florida GOP:

...it was reported that an unnamed woman claiming to be a friend of the Zieglers filed a report with the Sarasota Police in early October claiming that Christian Ziegler had come to her apartment and raped her, after a planned threesome between the victim and the couple fell through after Bridget Ziegler became busy at the last minute.

The Ziegler's confirmed in interviews that the pair had a prior history of group sex with the woman involved, but Mr. Ziegler (obviously) denied any wrongdoing. Ziegler was, however, at the woman's apartment at the time alleged. The prior history reduces, though obviously does not eliminate, the odds that this is a politically motivated hit-job. More likely to be a case of sex being a full contact sport, with some degree of hazy consent violation in there. The bigger story than the alleged sexual assault in the papers has been the confirmed threesomes.

Thoughts? Some of mine, disorganized:

-- Everyone, regardless of their politics and their opinions of alcohol or group sex, needs to recognize that this is why laws and social customs that pry into people's personal lives are bad. If Ziegler committed assault, prosecute him, but various New York headlines about the sex lives of a middle aged Floridian couple are gauche at best. When we pass laws that allow people to be prosecuted for actions in their personal lives, we open political dissidents (of all stripes) to these kinds of criminal prosecution attacks. I don't really know any details of this particular case, but rape laws that make proving innocence essentially impossible open political avenues of criminal attack that are indefensibly broad. We've already seen this happen to Assange, where it is physically impossible for him to prove that he used a condom and it remained on throughout the sexual act, and that was leveraged to force him into hiding. Irrational underage drinking laws make criminals of normal, normatively moral American teenagers, and criminalizing "furnishing minors" makes felons out of parents who are trying to engage in harm reduction. Ordinary Americans should not have an adversarial relationship with the cops, where we find that ordinary Americans have an adversarial relationship with the cops it is the law that is wrong.

-- This does bring to mind my general joke about the Moms For Liberty and adjacent content police in public schools: if anybody wants to remove or ban a piece of media from the public school library, their own child first needs to come in for an interview. If it is found that their child knows what "bussy lmao" means or the lyrics to WAP, the book can't be banned. Physician, heal thyself! If you aren't protecting your child in your home from all these "dangerous" things, why should anyone else care about it?

-- On the other hand, it strikes me that both women were engaging in libertine behavior in what is "generally" a responsible and rational way. Schillinger tried to protect the teens, who were probably going to drink anyway, by supervising them and making sure they didn't drive. Ziegler was engaging in non-monogamy, but in the context of a committed marriage. Maybe the MFL types really do believe that these things are a-ok for consenting adults, but not for minors. Maybe they really do want to teach kids about fraught topics in their own way, rather than by rote in school? Just this possibilty makes me infinitely more sympathetic and amenable to MFL.

-- Does the median Moms For Liberty donor care about this? Is this behavior seen as hypocritical by the people who support MFL, or merely by liberals who are confused about their actual values? Is MFL low-key a Vulgar Wave organization, advocating for tits-and-beer 90s liberalism once kids are of age? Or is this a hypocritical look behind the curtain? Does the personal behavior of the organizers matter if they are doing good work?

-- The fact that the conservatives seem to be publicly having more fun than liberals seems meaningful doesn't it? I'm not sure how, but it does.

-- On an apolitical note, prominence in literally any field is once again proven to get you fresh trim. Someone commented to me after seeing the movie that it was weird to them that Oppenheimer, a probably-autistic physics professor, was able to have a wife and a mistress. I replied that he was brilliant and recognized as brilliant and prominent by those around him. That made him sexy. We see that over and over with people like Kissinger, Oppy, Falwell Jr. Even being prominent for advocating a return to moral conservatism will get women to engage in wild sex with you, despite the obvious factors.

Another little line buried in the Ziegler case:

Police said Ziegler was cooperative throughout the investigation and provided them a copy of the sexual encounter, which he recorded on his cell phone. In a statement released January 19, police said "the video showed the encounter was likely consensual."

NPR of course framing it to prove that recording sexual encounters without consent is a 'lil rapey!

In a Nov. 2 interview with detectives with his attorney present, Ziegler said the sex was consensual and that he had recorded it. He said he then deleted the video, but after the accusation he recovered it and uploaded it to Google.

This is all very much like the hockey players with video of consent from last week.

I don't understand why Apple's Vision Pro is generating any buzz. It's pretty clear we need wearable & discrete recording devices for whenever someone whips out their cock, way before we need to watch 5 basketball games at a time.

various New York headlines about the sex lives of a middle aged Floridian couple are gauche at best

The headlines are fine unless you believe in extreme UK-style libel laws (and even there tabloids report on these things), it’s any actual legal action that is presumably debatable.

In any case, social conservatism doesn’t really exist in America anymore. Of course Republicans are swingers and sexual degenerates; their king is, but even Ronald and Nancy had their pasts, come on.

The fact that the conservatives seem to be publicly having more fun than liberals seems meaningful doesn't it? I'm not sure how, but it does.

This misunderstands the objection to sexual libertinism. It’s not ‘hard’ to have this kind of fun. Sex is easy, it’s just a question of correctly evaluating one’s own attractiveness and finding partners on that basis. Provided they have sufficient humility, even ugly people can get laid all the time, or they can pay for it.

In this case, the Republican in question, while schlubby, has a pretty wife, which I’m given to understand is the most important thing in swinging circles (especially for ‘unicorns’ who could, after all, find a more attractive single man if they wanted that).

The headlines are fine unless you believe in extreme UK-style libel laws

"Gauche" doesn't mean "illegal" from what I understand.

In any case, social conservatism doesn’t really exist in America anymore.

...on the elite level (although if you're watching from so high above, it might be all the same, I suppose). Just from following zoomer detransitioners I heard more than enough stories of conservative communities that are a bit too much for me, even after I made my turn toward being a trad.

Physician, heal thyself!

Sadly the GMC frowns on self-prescription, or you bet I would.

I agree that this all appears to be a motivated hit job, I don't know why Americans are still so anal about underage drinking under adult supervision, but god knows that trying to stop drunk teens from leaving your house till they sober up shouldn't be a criminal offense.

And I find it dubious that a man (and wife) who had a regular tryst with another woman is likely to have committed rape, but since said woman is the one filing the report, I remain in a state of withholding judgement.

I don't know why Americans are still so anal about underage drinking under adult supervision

I think HBD is a perfectly reasonable explanation for this: the people who left Europe had a genetic predilection to have problems with vices (you only get a stick up your ass about alcohol in 2 circumstances- either your God tells you it's bad, or you can't handle it yourself and have the opportunity to leave for a land where there isn't any), and the natives never evolved the genes that down-regulate alcohol addiction. Mix them together and you get a temperance movement strong enough to enshrine itself into the toughest law in the nation to change.

Americans also have a general hatred of the underaged for some reason and I haven't fully managed to figure out why that is yet- maybe a combination of parents being worried about the above effects in their children, a genetic predilection to overreact to anything risky/fun (Puritanism), and being fans of Old Testament-style property rights over children due to the dominant religion espousing them for most of the country's history?

“Predilection to have problems with vices” isn’t the most complex idea that I’ve seen attributed to genes, but it’s got to be close.

What advantage does this explanation have over boring old culture?

Eh, susceptibility to addiction was something I heard was partially genetic, which seems not crazy—any genes affecting the neurological reward system would presumably matter? It would of course have substantial behavioral effects, and so could easily be selected for or against.

That said, I see no reason to believe this hypothesis.

The puritans weren't "I hate the risky/fun", they were more, "your life should be ordered, in its entirety, towards God's will." Of course, in practice, that still meant they were opposed to an extreme number of things. In general, uprooting one's life is a high-risk endeavor, so any selection would be the opposite way.

I'm led to understand opposition to alcohol was a 19th-20th century thing, due to a relatively serious problem with drunkenness. Note that anti-alcohol stances are usually associated with Baptists, who became popular later, rather than the earlier puritans, presbyterians, episcopalians, etc.

"Vices" is maybe too vague to be productive but physiological addiction is something we have to some extent genetically tracked. Here's a government link suggesting that half of alcoholism is genetic (https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alcohols-effects-health/alcohol-use-disorder/genetics-alcohol-use-disorder). Some estimates suggest higher numbers.

Unlike "I like math" or "I'm a nervous person" which both may be genetic but are much more complicated, addiction tends to be associated with clearer markers for things like genes that increase or decrease metabolism for something, or established enhanced response from such and such neurotransmitter.

Addiction is (slowly) starting to move into the realm of personalized medicine where we give people recommendations like "you need more vitamin B6" or "this chemotherapy drug/psychotropic/blood pressure medication is going to work worse for you."

That's not to say I agree with OP however, I figure cultural tendencies (see: Irish drinking stereotypes) are doing just as much or more of the work.

I find bias towards alcoholism (or addiction, or whatever) plausible. I don’t think there’s such good evidence that it applies to Puritans, let alone caused the teetotaler movement. There are several obvious candidates for a cultural mechanism, but the OP just kind of skims over them in favor of an HBD explanation.

Yeah again saying I don't really agree with OP, but I do find it very plausible that American culture is significantly informed by immigrant communities that had a problematic relationship with addiction (ex: Irish, Borderers, Puritans (in the sense they hated that shit, would need evidence that such things were for cause)) and that generated and informed our toxic attitudes.

As an example, American pain and discomfort tolerance is overall pretty low with respect to seeking pharmacological intervention (notoriously noted in the opioid crisis but you can also see it with our OTC pain killer usage).

“Predilection to have problems with vices” isn’t the most complex idea that I’ve seen attributed to genes, but it’s got to be close.

Even if so, it's no point against it.

What advantage does this explanation have over boring old culture?

It holds between families within the same culture.

It’d be more compelling if it held between families without the same culture, no?

And I’d say complexity is a point against it. East Asian diets don’t contain much dairy, but I wouldn’t say this reflects a predilection against raising cattle. There’s an easier explanation.

Edit: I’m realizing that the OP might be arguing for a white European predilection towards alcoholism, rather than against vice. I think that would be a more credible mechanism. But I also don’t see that it’s supported by the historical record, in which European settlers are not the ones collapsing into alcoholism.

Seems unlikely. People drank a lot in colonial America, something like three times as much as moderns. My understanding is that the Puritanesque turn against alcohol was a reaction against that, and was carried along by one of America's regular religious revivals.

Perpetual youthfulness is highly valued in the US. Actual youth are a reminder of how us olds fall short. Envy is therefore a simple answer.

I don't think HBD is a good explanation here. A hangover from Puritan culture seems far more likely, what with the countries that White settlers came from being far more more liberal with their dispensation of alcohol today.

In fact, the US seems more anal about it than it has ever been since the Prohibition days, I doubt anyone would have gotten into trouble for serving drinks to teens in a private domicile more than a decade or two back. I'm under the impression that if teenage drinking was curtailed, it was mostly in the context of them throwing their own parties or trying to order drinks outside while underage.

You'd also expect HBD, if appropriate, to cause a general aversion to drinking for adults too, and the average American is no stranger to drink.

In fact, it's postulated that the Asian Flush is attributable to evolutionary pressures to reduce alcohol consumption, with how easy and abundant rice wine was. Yet they still make drinking a primary form of recreation in China, Korea and Japan, for all that they find it hard to handle their liquor.

And the Natives are an utterly minuscule sliver of the population, and I doubt they have been a primary concern of general temperance movements since the 1800s. I attribute it more to the general erosion of freedoms for American teens in the past few decades, as is true for younger children who were once expected to roam the neighborhood freely even when absolute crime rates were much higher.

I attribute it more to the general erosion of freedoms for American teens in the past few decades, as is true for younger children who were once expected to roam the neighborhood freely even when absolute crime rates were much higher.

I’ll go further; the electronic leash specifically makes underaged drinking harder the same way it does every other form of ‘bad’ behavior. If I cared about underaged drinking I would think this a good thing(I don’t).

I never understand the hypocrisy angle, and it always seems to me to be used 100% in bad faith.

I'm a parent and have several vices that I'm not proud of. I don't want my children to have the same vices, so I teach them that those vices are wrong. No parent wants their kids to grow up hooked on anger, alcohol, drugs, or porn. For each of my vices, if I could go back in time and prevent myself from ever getting hooked in the first place, I would do it, even for the vices I "enjoy." It would have been better to never have known those corrupting pleasures. But I can't. Sometimes it feels like having a chronic disease. So I scratch the itch every so often and do my best to endure the temptation otherwise.

Even if the Zieglers don't feel guilty about having threesomes and don't intend to stop, I don't see how it undermines their organization. Perfect morality and zero hypocrisy is an intentionally impossible demand. I don't think the Zieglers believe that having threesomes is morally preferable to not having them. It's possible to realize that you have a broken moral compass and at the same time to work hard to ensure that the people you love most in the world, your children, don't end up like you. So this pearl clutching seems ridiculous to me. Let he who is with sin cast the first stone.

To more fairly apportion the blame though -- the reason these hit pieces are published is because there's an unfortunate section of the red tribe who "thank God that they were not made like other men" and will drop support for this group over this. Luckily I think this group is shrinking, but it must still be effective -- they're certainly not publishing these to convince blue tribers.

I am Catholic from a Catholic culture. Damn, I would be very surprised if the conservatives did not engaged in drinking games and threesomes!

I always found hilarious how, in Protestants and Anglo-saxon countries, you are expected to behave in private as you behave with your public persona. I understand that the accusation of hypocrisy are easy to do in these cases and are a fruit too sweet to not pick it, but still it does not registers in my brain.

Does the Catholic culture not teach that God sees all, even your private life, and that it is God's judgment that matters, not the public's?

Yes, but it also about one of the main differences between Protestants and Catholics, the division and opposition between Faith and Works.

In Catholic teachings, salvation come both by faith and work. It implies also that, if you are not a good Catholic (as everyone else, because we are all sinners) at least you can find salvation by work (helping your communities, joining the public rites etc).

That is why you encounter two peculiar phenomena here that I do not see in protestant countries;

  • Atheist youngsters, often females and feminists, helping with public rites (celebration of the Saints, community and city-based religious and folk festivals etc), mantaining churches and other location of cult, or simply art-posting on Instagram how amazing all of this is.
  • Absolutely debauched public figures, often divorcees, people with illegitimate sons or multiple partners, cheaters and partygoers, all of them publicy sustaining the Church and the rites that I said before, and nobody batting an eye.

That is why it is absolutely hilarious when someone try to import protestant behavior here, like intersectional feminists trying to persuade ours that we need to burn churches, or local politicians (often left-wing) yelling at the population that drinking or partying or whoring is immoral, and being systematically ignored.

...

You've still gotta go to confession and genuinely repent man, and that comes with making genuine attempts at not fornicating.

It implies also that, if you are not a good Catholic (as everyone else, because we are all sinners) at least you can find salvation by work (helping your communities, joining the public rites etc).

I think there has been a misunderstanding of Catholic doctrine somewhere.

I know that both faith and works are necessary. But the facto... That is why I used "implies"

I'd go further and say it isn't even necessarily hypocrisy to simultaneously be opposed to taxpayer funded gay cartoon porn in public schools and also enjoy gay sex acts.

Physician, heal thyself! If you aren't protecting your child in your home from all these "dangerous" things, why should anyone else care about it?

Huh? And why do you think the kid didn't learn it from the other kids at school?

Does the personal behavior of the organizers matter if they are doing good work?

Yeah, that's a tough one. I'd say it matters, but it's not absolute, and has to be decided case by case.

Huh? And why do you think the kid didn't learn it from the other kids at school?

I'm not understanding your point. If X wants to remove some book from the curriculum for sexual explicitness, but their kid has already been exposed to similar content outside the classroom, I don't know why learning it from their peers would make it logical to remove the book from the curriculum.

Everyone please stop spending my tax dollars on gay cartoon porn in public schools. As an entirely separate matter we can consider the crassness or explicitness of the rest of the curriculum.

And to go further: I do not consider "but some suburban moms are kind of bi" as a justification for spending my tax dollars on porn for kids.

What's the purpose of the classroom? Why does something being taught to kids outside school justify teaching it inside school?

If you are more exposed to something you are more likely to develop those thoughts, behaviors, vices etc.

If I went to Ibiza and people were doing heroin that doesn’t mean I need to approve of Heroin being sold at 7-eleven. Let alone I want Heroin sold at the Lunch counter in elementary school.

I'm mostly saying it makes no sense to say that the parents failed to apply their own standard, if the kids are in the school's custody for better part of the day where they are surrounded by other kids who might not share their parent's values. I don't see how "physician heal thyself" applies here.

But I think I can even defend the version of the argument you presented. There's a difference between learning something on your own or from your peers, and learning it from an official institution. If my kid starts talking about 72 genders because they learned about it on tumblr, it's a lot easier to deal with then if they learned about it from every single adult in a position of power.

I don't know the group involved and I'm not interested in the political fighting, but I have to keep reminding myself that "minor" in this context means "under 21". Whereas the legal drinking age here in Ireland is 18*, so if there were a bunch of 18 year olds at the party, it would be "so what?" over here.

I don't think the description of the party sounds great, I think the job of parents is to be "not while you're under my roof" but yeah, it can be explained as trying to control it with "if we don't supervise or permit it, they'll just go elsewhere and get drunk anyway and get into trouble".

As for the non-monogamy, not going to touch that with a ten-foot bargepole.

*Legal age; actual age of having your first drink seems to be around 15-16, which seems about right for the stories of drunken teens the morning after celebrating the results of their Junior Cert.

I still laugh thinking about a college trip I took to Bilbao in Spain, our professor took us to meet a high school teacher friend of hers, and we talked to the class of high schoolers. It was funny realizing that the high schoolers could drink legally and I couldn't in my home country.

This is a situation where it’s illustrative to look at the alternative behavioral choice. A 17 year old whose parents do not allow her to host a party with drinking will instead attend parties where no responsible adults are present. These parties will probably include drugs and sexual harassment by strangers.

The “don’t leave” was made to sound like they were trapping the kids but it was certainly more about preventing them from driving drunk. Which, again, some percentage of teen drinkers will do after attending a party without adult supervision.

Eh, depends. The endorsement of parents could definitely make a difference.

And, of course, hosting a party with drinking doesn't mean they won't also go to the other hypothetical party, unless you're deliberately scheduling parties to conflict or something.

This is a situation where it’s illustrative to look at the alternative behavioral choice.

That's what I find so interesting about the situation: that argument of "harm reduction" is exactly the argument that Moms for Liberty's opponents are typically making. MFL (and its allies) largely argue against early/LGBT/overly-explicit sex-ed on the basis that kids shouldn't do that so they shouldn't know about it. Liberal arguments are that kids will do it anyway so they should be educated about it so they do it safely. We've precisely flipped our valences.

On parental control: did each child (30-40 by police report) show up with a signed permission slip? Was each parent aware of where their child was going and what they were doing? Or were the teens mostly there without their parents' permission?

You see where this all gets slippery, I hope. I see the harm reduction argument she would make, but teen drinking is also not an inevitability for all kids, and making it less convenient makes it less common. Marginal kids are drinking/not-drinking based on how easy it is to get alcohol and get a place to drink it, even if some kids are going to find a way regardless. Much like it's obvious to me that doing too much PRIDE bullshit in the classroom will probably increase the amount of homosexuals coming out of that school marginally, even if there will still be gay kids if you don't do any PRIDE education; holding regular ragers at your house probably causes some marginal kids to drink who would not have otherwise been drinking, because now they're invited to a party where otherwise they might not have been or because they feel comfortable going there or because their parents are ok with them going to a party with Mrs. Schillinger, even if it is true that some kids would still drink regardless. I was drunk less than five times in high school, based on my later behavior in college I've not doubt I would have been more likely to drink had there been a convenient Party House in our school system.

I think this analysis completely skips over the fact that public K-12 education is compulsory. Attending some wine mom's parties are not. Likewise, introducing kindergarteners to the gender/sexuality spectrum is way off the fucking mark of when that lesson would be age appropriate, if you agreed it was appropriate at all for compulsory K-12 education. Having teenagers drink at roughly the same age teenagers have always drank as long as humans had alcohol gets a big fat meh from me.

Source for the above claim about gender spectrum bullshit in kindergarten

In his kindergarten classroom, one teacher in western Massachusetts using “Rights, Respect, Responsibility” introduces the idea of gender as part of an exploration of identity. He explains that people use all sorts of pronouns: he, she, they, ze. He introduces the terms transgender and gender queer but doesn’t fully define them because that is too much for kindergartners, said the teacher, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because his district did not authorize him to speak publicly.

He talks to students about anatomy but declines to classify various body parts as male or female. “We don’t say a penis belongs to a man,” he said. It belongs to a human, he explains.

And he makes clear that even if a doctor proclaims at birth, “It’s a boy!” that baby may not be a boy. “Someone who was born a boy may not feel they are a boy.”

I think this analysis completely skips over the fact that public K-12 education is compulsory.

No, it isn't. If you don't want your kids going to public school, you don't have to send them.

You are required to do something that you call education, and public schools are the lowest friction way to do that. But the unschoolers get away with it, you can too.

You are required to do X. X costs a lot of money. The government will provide free X and will generally make it the easy default.

What percentage of people choose not government X?

Not only that, but you can opt out of certain curricula. There was always some religious kid who had to leave the room when we talked about sex in health class, presumably to pray for our souls.

I was unaware I could opt out of English class.

I think this analysis completely skips over the fact that public K-12 education is compulsory. Attending some wine mom's parties are not.

I'm not sure I did. The question here isn't whether attending those parties is compulsory, it is whether I as the hypothetical parent of teenagers in her neighborhood in suburban PA, have control over my kid. If parents don't let kids drink at their house, then as long as I ensure that my kids are overnighting at someone's house with parental supervision, I can be confident they won't be drinking. If other parents are allowing kids to drink at their house, I now need to investigate every time my kid overnights somewhere else. My freedom is restricted by that.

((My, largely unrelated, view on compulsory LGBT education is that it's a complete waste of fucking time and money, but also likely to be highly ineffective at inculcating values in kids. My advocacy for local schools has been to implement elective courses in bible study, I'd LOVE to see an AP Theology course.))

I'm not sure I did. The question here isn't whether attending those parties is compulsory, it is whether I as the hypothetical parent of teenagers in her neighborhood in suburban PA, have control over my kid. If parents don't let kids drink at their house, then as long as I ensure that my kids are overnighting at someone's house with parental supervision, I can be confident they won't be drinking. If other parents are allowing kids to drink at their house, I now need to investigate every time my kid overnights somewhere else. My freedom is restricted by that.

You have a funny definition of freedom. You seem to be defining it as freedom from something existing anywhere in the world. Or perhaps just an hours drive from you. To me, I see a clear and bright line between wanting to free from compulsory exposure to something odious, and wanting to be free from incidental or hypothetical exposure.

I don't have a teenager... yet. But vetting the households of her friends is already a key part of our lives. Maybe we're being controlling. Maybe we have an unhealthy fear of how bifurcated America has become. Maybe it's a perfectly healthy fear. Only time will tell.

You have a funny definition of freedom. You seem to be defining it as freedom from something existing anywhere in the world. Or perhaps just an hours drive from you.

Or freedom as the tendency for things to go to their proper place and stay there. Look, I don't actually care if teenagers drink. I think potential co-ed sleeping arrangements at that party are a bigger concern and drinking brings a profound meh. But you have to have a default about it, and taking for granted that they shouldn't, then hosting teen drinking parties should be fraught. Why? Because society has to have defaults about all sorts of behavior, and opting out of defaults carries friction. "He is sovereign who sets the null hypothesis" and all that. You can move to a nudist colony to opt out of the societal default of pants(or a sarong, whatever). I will not stop you. But it is quite a bit of friction towards living a pantsfree life. And there's thousands of defaults on issues more controversial among non-weirdos. Like drug use, which is what we're talking about.

I happen to think that defaults should be virtuous and prosocial. I don't particularly view teen drinking as bad, but imposing friction on doing bad things is, to me, definitionally freer than imposing friction on doing good things, because you can't do neither. We live in a society and societies have norms.

Now it looks like moms for liberty's sworn enemy is doing its damnedest to establish a societal norm of "everyone is a gay gendergoblin", and it is in no way hypocritical to oppose that societal norm(which is in fact highly stupid and probably destructive), while also undermining the social norm of "teenagers don't get to use alcohol". I agree with that set of values. But it is also in no way contrary to freedom to punish defectors.

You have a funny definition of freedom. You seem to be defining it as freedom from something existing anywhere in the world.

Not really, isn't this the core debate over anarchotyrrany? It's fairly uncontroversial that enforced law and order increases freedom for law abiding citizens, the question is where we set the laws and how intense the enforcement should be, what acceptable levels of law-breaking and over-enforcement are. I, and certainly my wife, have more freedom in NYC in a world where the NYPD enforces the laws than I have in a world where they don't.

You might disagree that underage drinking is bad, I might disagree with it. But there is no indication whatsoever that a democratic majority of voting Americans disagree with it. The most recent polling I could find indicated that just 10% of Americans favor a drinking age of 18, let alone lower than 18. Back in 2014, 77% of Americans opposed lowering the drinking age to 18 while 60% favored more strict penalties for underage drinking.

Allowing parents to serve alcohol to minors, to other parents' children, restricts the freedom of other parents to allow their teenagers to move about the world as freely as possible and with as little supervision as possible. It narrows the universe of places that parents can be confident their kids will be safe from something that the vast majority of parents think is dangerous.

I've heard enough from libertarians about "positive freedoms" to refuse that. They have the freedom to choose from the options they're given with regards to how much they let their kid be unsupervised. What others are allowed to do is not within the realm of "freedom".

What others are allowed to do is not within the realm of "freedom".

I would assume that @FiveHourMarathon would think that they have more viable options than they did before, if suldenly everyone decided to prevent underage drinking. That proliferation of choice seems like freedom.

And, of course, the subjective experience would feel freeing.

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Allowing parents to serve alcohol to minors, to other parents' children, restricts the freedom of other parents to allow their teenagers to move about the world as freely as possible and with as little supervision as possible.

That's like saying that allowing people to publish blasphemy restricts the freedom of everyone else to be in a world free of blasphemy.

A 17 year old whose parents do not allow her to host a party with drinking will instead attend parties where no responsible adults are present.

This is the sort of argument a judge will quote sneeringly at the parent's sentencing.

Looks like a generic hit piece. Moms for Liberty has become a new bogeyman of late, so that I am constantly hearing about scandals and hypocrisies. But why should I care?

I don't generally have a problem with adults introducing children to drink. Maybe the parents of some teens involved would disagree. It's a nuanced social complication. A few key details could make me go one way or other. But why should I care? Even if MOM is recklessly teaching kids to drink, I don't see why this rises to the level of story I have to have an opinion about.

I think by this point, nobody cares because to me, these are isolated demands for rigor chastity that are only being brought up because of the conservative nature of the group. These kinds of events happen all the time around me. Parents would rather the drinking that will happen occur with responsible adults around rather than turning into a drunken drug fueled orgy without adults present. It’s definitely something that happens on all sides. And because of this and similar stories, I’m pretty immune to the pearl clutching articles about “did you see what [outgroup member] did? Don’t you want to distance yourself from people on your side who are doing [thing that most people do]?” Like if she’d hired prostitutes for a bachelor party, okay that’s at least out of the ordinary and something that most people wouldn’t be okay with.

While underage drinking, and providing minors with alcohol as an adult, is of course illegal in the United States,

There are some subtleties to this (which aren't terribly relevant to the described incident): my jurisdiction allows parents (or guardians) to provide alcohol to their supervised minor dependents, as well as spouses. Obviously not to whole parties, though.

It's highly unlikely that any jurisdiction would excuse parents providing their children with alcohol if those children then became intoxicated enough to result in the police being called.

I don't think so. It's explicitly legal in Wisconsin for parents to serve their children alcohol. The situation you describe would probably result in trouble for the disturbance, but not serving alcohol to minors. How could it, when it is legal for that to happen?

My goodness, adult men plying their underage wives with booze. I bet they even get up to certain activities afterwards! I wonder if there's any discourse around on this topic that's as ridiculous as I would think it to be.

The law expects it to be 21 yo’s married to 20 yo’s. I mean technically speaking I could marry a 16 year old and get her drunk, but it’s not the median case(and IIRC married 16 year olds have smaller average age gaps in their relationships than married 20 year olds).

Oh, I meant "underage" in the drinking sense. I still think the idea that people can consent to marry, have kids, or kill for armed forces but are pretty questionable when it comes to beer is absolutely bizarre, which I guess that plays into how I find the spousal drinking laws amusing.

It seems like most people don’t expect serious enforcement of the drinking age, anyways. Honestly that’s kind of dumb; as Europe shows teenagers drinking isn’t that bad, but the American habit of ‘just not enforcing anything unless you’re annoying’ is probably a bad habit to get into.

The American reality is different than the European reality in that many places in the US you are easily mixing drinking with driving. Places like NYC are more relaxed since a 20 year old isn’t driving anywhere.

Drunk driving is about as dangerous whether the person behind the wheel is 16 or 21 or 30 or whatever.

Of course. I think the idea is a 30 year old would be less likely to drink and drive (who knows if true)

The US does expect serious enforcement of the drinking age, but a lot of people still haven't adjusted to that now-decades-old reality. You can get an adult criminal record for underaged drinking, and "party moms" can be and are jailed on felonies for providing the booze.

I have seen responsible adults who set up safe and sane parties for the younger people in their lives that include some alcohol and looking the other way on pot to dissuade them from going to more dangerous parties elsewhere. This is generally good and fine.

I have also seen adults who set up ragers with so much alcohol and drugs and party equipment that the young people in their orbit are inevitably drawn in, at times and frequencies where no other alternate 'dangerous' party would have otherwise existed, with the intent to party with the young people to relive their youths and feel still young and active and desirable, often involving some level of sexual predation or at least inappropriateness.

And then there's a spectrum between those ends, of course. And the central question seems to be where Schillinger and her boyfriend fall on that spectrum, with all the colorful details added onto the basic fact of the party existing being evidence towards the bad end of the scale.

Of course enemies will preferentially leak and frame details to make it look as bad as possible, but if true, the 'police being called multiple times in a few weeks' thing seems objectively verifiable and pretty decisive here. Parents who are just trying to keep their kids away from other dangerous parties by hosting parties themself don't need boozed-up-minors call-the-police-for-niose-complaints parties every week, kids should not normally have other opportunities to attend parties of that magnitude every week regardless.

But, you know, we don't actually know all the real details, just 2 competing motivated narratives, so who knows.

I like that one too.

Yeah, I don't support the people. I support the policies. And if they are advocating and scoring victories for keeping Gender Queer out of middle schools, and not letting schools secretly socially transition children without their parents knowledge or consent, they have my support. They can live whatever debauched lives they choose. Their policy preferences aren't that nobody should ever read Gender Queer, transition, drink underage or have orgies. They are that these things have no place in a public, compulsory institution like K-12 schools.

It's same muddling of what "hypocrisy" is when leftist accuse Republicans of "banning books". Gender Queer is not banned, unlike Dr Seuss books which got unpublished and pulled from secondary markets. It was deemed inappropriate for school libraries. It still exists. It's "banned" in the same sense that vintage Playboy's aren't in school libraries.

My first thought is that there is absolute no tension or conflict between the Moms for Liberty position that parents should substantially control what schools teach and having leadership that is permissive with underage drinking and group sex. Contra the position that MfL is a group of lunatic right-wingers, I think they are actually sincere in their position that parents should be determining values rather than schools. Despite the snarky "family views indeed" from columnist Scott Maxwell, it is actually entirely possible to promote family values while having a personally kinky sex life or thinking it's fine for teens to play beer pong. If we weren't so deep into red-blue bullshit, pretty much everyone I know on the Blue Tribe side of things would think this is fine.

On your last point, I looked up the people involved, and... wow. Christian Ziegler is a rather dumpy fellow. Christian's wife, Bridget, is absolutely beautiful, particularly for a woman in her 40s. I don't know if this was supposed to be a hit piece, but the screencaps of her making faces at a board meeting sums it up. But now you tell me that not only does the portly fellow have a stunning wife, he was apparently regularly finding threesomes with her? I swear, if this whole thing was flipped around, the Blue Tribe would just be making fun of the Red Tribe for being jealous of Christian's life.

Christian's wife, Bridget, is absolutely beautiful, particularly for a woman in her 40s. I don't know if this was supposed to be a hit piece, but the screencaps of her making faces at a board meeting sums it up.

Holy shit you're right.

This feels like such a stretch.

The central innovation of the Florida school curriculum lockdown controversy was the right starting to call anyone on the left who tried to help trans teens or teach anyone that gay people are a thing that exists 'groomers'.

Furnishing minors with alcohol and/or drugs so that you can lure them to your house and have drunken parties with them is quintessential actual grooming behavior, like, it's literally what actual groomers do to actual minors to actually statutorily rape them.

Which, I'm not saying that full sequence of events necessarily happened here, but come on. If your side is going to make the entire argument center on who is or isn't a groomer, 'my boyfriend and I throw drunken parties every week for local minors where we get wasted with them and get in psychical scuffles with them' cannot possibly be spun as a good look.

Furnishing minors with alcohol and/or drugs so that you can lure them to your house and have drunken parties with them is quintessential actual grooming behavior, like, it's literally what actual groomers do to actual minors to actually statutorily rape them.

Well at least we all agree on what groomers are now. Although personally I think that's a mistake on your part.

It says "Moms for Liberty" right on the tin -- I do think that the confusion is related to a misapplication of the (artificial) Red/Blue team dichotomy. If it were "Moms for Jesus" or something I could buy some hypocrisy-based attack, but she seems to be living well within her moral framework here?

Well, what's true is, 'arguments as soldiers' is partially an inevitable result of our two-party system, and in some cases is actually a sadly effective and pragmatic tactic that you're sort of forced to play into if you don't want the other side to beat you with it.

To whit: You can say that the Red/Blue team dichotomy is artificial, but the Democrats/Republicans dichotomy is not. People trying to have political stances and agendas that don't fall along that dichotomy may be perfectly valid and reasonable and good, but they're also in a very real way irrelevant to teh exercise of power. The person appointing the next Supreme Court Justice is going to have either a (D) or an (R) next to his name, and that's what will determine how the game of politics cashes out in actually affecting people's lives for the next 50 years.

So: Sure, Moms for Liberty and the Ron Desantis (or whoever else you want to use as a stand-in for the 'teachers are groomers' movement) are different people with different personal politics, so to an extent it's not surprising or scandalous at all if their rhetoric disagrees with each other in fundamentally contradictory ways.

ON THE OTHER HAND: They are both republican-aligned movements that are trying to promote Republican policies and put more (R)s next to more names in government.

If the broader republican movement is trying to convince us they're right using two different arguments, and those two arguments directly contradict each other, doesn't that mean that there must be some flaw in their platform, the the broader ideology overall is inconsistent and misleading in some way, that something is rotten in Denmark, and anyone who is on the R side should be noticing that some of their soldiers are pointing their guns the wrong way and get confused and self-reflective about it?

Even if the two arguments are reasonable on their own and are aligned with the ideology of the individual person making them, the fact that both are then being taken up and spun into the larger Republican narrative alongside each other, indicates a flaw in that platform.

(and, I shouldn't even have to say this, but obviously this all applies ceteris parabis to Democrats and the left, this is a general problems with politics)

To whit: You can say that the Red/Blue team dichotomy is artificial, but the Democrats/Republicans dichotomy is not.

You misunderstand -- I'm saying that this is not an issue that cuts cleanly across party lines. There are many left-ish people who are not comfortable with the orthodoxy vis a vis trans issues, and there are Republicans (I'm thinking fiscally conservative urban types) who are probably fine with it.

For most of these people it is not important enough to impact their vote, so long as it stays off their lawn -- but putting it into schools plants it squarely on the lawn of every parent. So we shouldn't be at all surprised if the opposition does not fulfill the classic grumpy church-mom stereotype that is typically in the drivers' seat at socially conservative organizations. (say, anti abortion ones)

So we shouldn't be at all surprised if the opposition does not fulfill the classic grumpy church-mom stereotype that is typically in the drivers' seat at socially conservative organizations.

Well yeah, because these are liberal organizations in opposition, not traditionalist ones (who look like that) or progressive ones (who also look like that, except with an unnatural hair color).

In this case, the liberals have finally started to notice just how rotten the skin suit of sex-positivity progressives are currently wearing is. (30 years too late, but better late than never.) And while they're still kind of stupid- the ultimate way to defend their "we're banning these books from the library" is to argue from slave morality and insist that they actually be good enough to justify their content (1984 wouldn't be the same commentary it is without the depictions of sex therein; if you think they're either gratuitous or disrespectful to women, then you are part of the problem don't understand Orwell)- I'm not surprised that a faction that's been taking its victory a little too much for granted hasn't put on its best face yet (not that it can; liberals don't believe in best faces).

It says "Moms for Liberty" right on the tin

And yet, most of their advocacy revolves around banning books and curricula discussing LGBT, trans and civil rights issues:

Accompanying that letter is an 11-page spreadsheet with complaints about books on the district’s curriculum, ranging from popular books on civil rights heroes to books about poisonous animals (“text speaks of horned lizard squirting blood out of its eyes”), Johnny Appleseed (“story is sad and dark”), and Greek and Roman mythology (“illustration of the goddess Venus naked coming out of the ocean...story of Tantalus and how he cooks up, serves, and eats his son.”) A book about hurricanes is no good (“1st grade is too young to hear about possible devastating effects of hurricanes”) and a book about owls is designated as a downer. (“It’s a sad book, but turns out ok. Not a book I would want to read for fun,” an adult wrote of the owl book in the spreadsheet.)

...

At one juncture, the group implores the school district to include more charitable descriptions of the Catholic Church when teaching a book about astronomer Galileo Galilei, who was persecuted by said church for suggesting that Earth revolves around the sun. “Where is the HERO of the church?” the group’s spreadsheet asks, “to contrast with their mistakes? There are so many opportunities to teach children the truth of our history as a nation. The Church has a huge and lasting influence on American culture. Both good and bad should be represented. The Christian church is responsible for the genesis of Hospitals, Orphanages, Social Work, Charity, to name a few.” MFL’s Williamson County chapter also takes issue with a picture book about seahorses, in part because it depicted “mating seahorses with pictures of postions [sic] and discussion of the male carrying the eggs.”

So painting them as being about Liberty in any meaningful sense of the word, other than Liberty being a red-tribe codeword, seems patently dishonest. Their objections to content are often explicitly political and coded red-tribe. Some of the shit that was banned in Florida schools a few years ago was hilariously inoffensive.

As for the OP, whatever. I don't really care. But if people bothered to look at the context, I'd expect most to at least get a chuckle out of the fact that people clutching their pearls at the idea of their child being exposed to the idea that gay people exist then get schwasted with them on the weekend in between threesomes.

And yet, most of their advocacy revolves around banning books and curricula

I agree that it's a bit ironic, but I wouldn't go so far as to say dishonest. In context I'd defend it as 'freedom not to have one's children indoctrinated into the state religion' -- school is mandatory and funded by all sides of the political spectrum after all. I don't think it's unreasonable to demand a neutral curriculum -- although they seem a bit nutty and I'm sure that I wouldn't want to defend their specific choices of books that should not be taught in school. (much less whatever straw version of them that the D.B. has cooked up)

In context I'd defend it as 'freedom not to have one's children indoctrinated into the state religion'

Indeed; mask mandates are also pro-liberty as they give people the freedom to not worry about getting COVID in the train. Censorship gives LGBT and minorities freedom from hate speech. Jailing Donald Trump will give us freedom from fascism and neo-nazism.

Censorship is inherently illiberal however you try and dress it up. That doesn't make it bad. There's such an aversion to censorship that when we actually decide we want to engage in it we have to lie to ourselves and dress it up as some freedom or another.

school is mandatory and funded by all sides of the political spectrum after all.

Better argument for the curriculum. Bad argument for book bans. Nobody is forcing your child to look at those books any more than anyone was forcing the other high school kids to go to that party.

I don't think it's unreasonable to demand a neutral curriculum

Whew. Good luck with that one, man.

I take freedom of speech pretty seriously. I'm tired of people trying to dilute it into describing the process through which state runs schools decide how to apportion the limited space they have in school libraries and school curriculum. No one is banning books, that's a false framing. People are saying they don't want the state to use their tax money to buy books to make available in buildings their tax money spent constructing for the purpose of indoctrinating their children. If I write or love a book I have zero right for the state to put that book in public schools and I don't have any idea where the belief I might have such a right comes from.

The exact right process to decide which books go in such a building is the local government and that precisely the process these people are lobbying. How else could it possibly be?

You don't seem to be engaging with Chrispratt's initial point about the dishonesty of the org name. If the 'freedom not to have one's children indoctrinated into the state religion' is liberty, then anything can be liberty. Can you name an example of a political issue that cannot be framed as liberty in this way? I agree with you that determining curriculum is not anti-liberty. I disagree that it is honest to call it pro-liberty.

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Hell, the books aren't even censored. If somebody wants to go buy their drawn child porn at Borders for their kid, they'll get the full experience.

This in a way reminds me of Bastiat’s claim against statists. He said something to the effect if we object to the public funding of education the statist believes we object to education.

Their objections to content are often explicitly political and coded red-tribe.

But the content they object to is often political in its aims and coded blue-tribe. Being pro-liberty does not require them to support the woke reading list over the maga reading list.

I don’t see how you can position your side as apolitical, when they proudly proclaim political aims for their own changes, endlessly purging curricula on grounds of sexism, racism, hetero-and-cisnormativity, etc .

But the content they object to is often political in its aims and coded blue-tribe. I don’t see how you can position your side as apolitical, when they proudly proclaim political aims for their own changes, endlessly purging curricula on grounds of sexism, racism, hetero-and-cisnormativity, etc .

I wouldn't claim it as apolitical, and I wish you wouldn't call it my side.

In some cases I'd agree with you, in others I would disagree. In still others we would get bogged down by semantics about 'making things political.' I could argue that children sitting at desks is a weapon of the white supremacist state to keep down PoC and that they need to go, and MFL would fervently oppose that. In this example I'd argue that the MFL position isn't political at all, it's just...keeping desks in school. The same way that for some of these books, I don't think it should be controversial at all that they're available in the library.

But all of that is somewhat beside the point. The comment I replied to was describing MFL as if they're some objective and principled group that supports liberty and freedom of choice. The reality is that they're anything but.

Jkf wasn't calling mfl objective and principled - hell like he said it says "Moms for Liberty" right on the tin.

Moms for Liberty, not principled autists for liberty. The idea they are principled and objective is an expectation only blue tribers hold, red tribers don't have to lie to themselves about women to that extent. I mean, it's pretty bad for red tribe too don't get me wrong, but not at the level of expecting a group of Floridian moms to be principled and objective.

Chris has me blocked so this is me mostly yelling at clouds, but:

  • Removing books from a school curriculum cannot in any reasonable way be considered "banning"

  • The linked article does not link to primary sources, where I can confirm MFL is portrayed accurately. The link to Galileo, MLK, and sea horses do not lead to where the claim was made, but to years old articles from the Daily Beast itself, about Galileo, MLK, and sea horses.

In addition, given how gay people (who I have effectively zero problems with) have been perpetually used as a wedge to justify the normalization and protection of the trans phenomenon, I would be terribly close-minded to not consider expelling them from course books if I thought it ultimately wasn't worth the tradeoff, at least under these conditions.

If Dems keep up the taunts of "So now what, you're gonna deny that gay people exist?", they may end up having a real Fucked-Around-Found-Out moment. There's a lot of things I might be tempted to sacrifice if they're going to be cynically propped up as shields against me.

Removing books from a school curriculum cannot in any reasonable way be considered "banning"

'Deplatforming is not censorship' is a stance I held and defended vociferously during the Cancel Culture debates, but I think the tide has sailed on that one, as they say.

  • -10

For clarity, am I supposed to pretend you aren't who people say you are or not?

You do you fam.

It seems to me there is a very big difference between a public institution endorsing controversial things for kids and calls to deplatform (eg remove from Twitter or prevent someone from speaking at a university).

I can be for the freedom to engage in consensual sex for money. I can at the same time believe that institutions can try to discourage prostitution. Similarly I can be against kids having sex and making that illegal without there being a contradiction.

Sure, there are principled reasons to treat the situations differently, of course.

I was just responding to a very specific form of semantic argument about how to define words like 'censorship' and 'banning' and so forth. Arguments that don't rely on those semantic distinctions and the emotional associations we have to them are not affected.

Yeah, it was a wild ride to see the same people argue for cutting off access of willing adults to messages they want to hear, suddenly turn around to declare it's beyond the pale for parents to curate what their children get to see.

Sorry, which platforms that have zero children on them were people being deplatformed from?

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I will stand on parents supervising teens drinking isn't bad, but teachers telling pre-teens that they might be trans is. I have zero trouble holding those thoughts in my head. I don't generally like the term "groomer" and don't even think it's politically useful, but I do think "helping trans teens" is almost uniformly a Bad Thing for teachers to do.

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