Other than culture and the law, was there some important reason for the Spartiates to declare war on the Helots every year?

Other than culture and the law, was there some important reason for the Sanhedrin to drag Yeshua bar Yosef in front of the Roman procurator?

Other than culture and the law, was there some important reason for the sons of Louis the Pious to divide the empire amongst themselves so that the divisions never healed?

Other than culture and the law, was there some important reason for the Bishop of Constance to have Jan Hus burned at the stake?

Other than culture and the law, was there some important reason for the English aristocracy to overthrow King James II?

Culture and the law are what it’s all about. Mostly culture.

These discussions have led me to conclude that we’re all snowflakes, and maybe that’s a basis for some common ground. We all hurt and we all are disadvantaged–and we all have some advantages unfairly denied to others. We all need “safe spaces” and we need to be listened to.

I admit it’s not a one-for-one, equivalent thing. Someone like me, for example–a white, straight, college-educated cis-gendered male raised in the US in the Christian tradition and blessed with an upper middle class income–certainly has many more advantages than most others. And for those who don’t have the advantages, it’s not just a question of hurt feelings, it can be, and regretfully often is, a matter of life or death. I get that.

I’m not sure how to achieve this common ground that I claim exists. This persistent debate of who is the most snowflakey, however, probably won’t help. I imagine three likely results from such a debate:

1. The person being called a “snowflake” might actually become introspective and see your point, maybe start to take stock of themselves. While I suspect that will fail to happen much more often than it will happen, it probably will happen for some people. Some people will see the light. In those cases, that’s a good thing.

2. Likeminded people, presumably liberal anti-Trumpers, can gain satisfaction and even strength by rallying around the “they’re the true snowflakes” cry. Considering the situation we’re in–where the house is on fire and the first priority is to put out that fire–maybe that’s not a wholly bad thing.

3. The persons being called a “snowflake” may retreat into a defensive posture. They will call the snowflake-naming for what it is–name calling–without acknowledging the underlying truth. They may find more persuasive certain cults of strength, to demonstrate that their will is strong and can triumph over adversity, or they may find find strength in their white identity and white pride. That’s not the point of the snowflake-criticism. Someone who goes that route is probably proving the name-caller right and demonstrating their own weakness, their own snowflakery. But the satisfaction of being right probably pales before the consequences of what one has been proved right about.

For those who adopt option 3, the blame is theirs and not the name-caller’s. They make their choices and must be resisted or argued against. But I don’t think we should make it easy for them to make that choice. I also think option no. 2 is a perhaps not so distant cousin to option no. 3. I’ve been reading your blog posts for quite a long time. I think many of them, when they comment on the mistakes liberal inclined people tend to make (and even certain points made in this particular blog post) serve as warnings against the liberal bubble that we often find ourselves in.

https://www.gq.com/story/inside-federal-bureau-of-way-too-many-guns

The special snowflakes who run gun shops sometimes keep their registrations of sales on toilet paper because even writing down what they sell to whom is too much to bear.

Can I point out that this is an argument against laws against murder, assault, embezzlement, etc., in certain interpretaitons: you could look at *any* law and judge it a failure if people continue to commit the crime that the law circumscribes. In fact, in very few other cases do we do this. Quite the opposite. If the murder rate rises, if there are more reported assaults, if there are more break-ins, we usually treat it as a straightforward problem: improve law enforcement. Invest more in it, improve the ways in which we share data, improve prevention, etc. Only with mass murders committed with guns by white men, do we say, “Laws don’t work! Don’t bother!” or “Laws aren’t the solution, we can’t enforce the ones we have!” No one responds to an epidemic of house break-ins by saying, “See, this shows that there’s no point to having laws against house break-ins, because we can’t enforce the ones we have.”

In fact, neither does federal law. US Code 18.922 should have prevented this man from owning weapons, let alone pasting pictures of his weapons on his facebook page. The ATF should have been all over this guy *YEARS* ago.

You can pass all the laws you want, but if there is no willingness to *ENFORCE THE LAWS ALREADY ON THE BOOKS* then you might as well pray to the flying spaghetti monster to have Scotty Beam you up- there ain’t no intelligent life left down here.

What is not small is the catastrophe of this historical moment. That a nation with so much possibility, so much hope, so much to give to the future, should be now gripped so tightly by cruelty, fear and triumphal malice is one of the great tragedies of human history to this point. The President exemplifies it, but he is not where it all comes to rest. It comes to rest with the people who at every turn and at every moment bare their lightly bruised flesh and insist, against all common sense, that they bleed from stigmata. Who look to every pointless massacre that they wish to excuse and call for prayer, but turn to every other pointless massacre that they wish to curse and call for suffering.

Thanks; will fix.