[Note to other readers: Yeah, this doesn't have anything to do with Mamdani or mayors,
In the overall scheme of power vacumes its human nature to fill that void with some sort of philosophy in how we should order society and the world.
It has everything to do with this whether its mainstream Socialism, Progressivism, Liberalism, Communism, Conservatism, Christian Nationalism or Fascism. It use to be Christian and biblical norms now its a different set or basis.
but it is absolutely about the moral panic centered in the OP.
Why is it moral panic. Is it not unusual that a socialist type leader is elected in modern times. Especially in one of the most capitalist cities in the world. People are merely reacting to Mamdanis own words that framed this as some sort of moral situation in stopping the bad guys.
I'm going to break my response to this extensive list of errors into one on culture and one on politics. Scroll past if you're looking for socialist mayor content. Cheers.]
Influence and control are different things, Steve. You wanted to know who "controls" society. I gave the only answer that makes sense: No one. This is because no one person or group "controls" society, certainly not the government. Societies evolve under a wide variety of influences. When authoritarians *try* to control societies, their efforts break eventually. Now lets look at some other ways you were wrong about this:
I am still disagreeing with this premise that no one controls society. Sometimes an individual can have control over how something is ordered ie money. Money buys power.
But also groups have power over the government. Then you have all the academic idologues who managed to take advantage by being in positions of power. Head of Universities pushing an agenda and ideology that it influences policies and laws. Then theres lawfare.
So within this dynamic there are forces that continually jossel and have their 15 minutes of power control. But also individuals and groups that are controlling the outcomes over time. Even with the control of information through legacy media.
There are popular movements, fads, celebrities, influencers (old style and new), propagandists, advertisers, etc. They all "influence" society, but they do not "control" it.
How do you know. If these forces band together than they are a strong force controlling society. Often it is the groups like say BLM who wield power along with those influenced by this ie celebs and activists groups echoing the same ideology that then influences policies and laws.
But also social norms to the point where people are ostrised and suffer real consequences. So there are situations where all these forces can work together to actually change or socially engineer society in a certain direction.
What are you talking about?!?
On to social norms...
You don't know the history of the 'Long March through the Insitutions'. It actually relates to the OP and socialism and such ideas permeating today where a lot of young people have been brain washed under Cultural Marxism being pushed in the Insitutions like Universities.
The children of the Revolutionaries such as the Feminist and Civil Rights movements became the academic ideologues that were in positions of power and influence that engineered the institutions through the Critical theories.
That then became the basis for the institions and agencies that brought all the Woke, PC and Cancel and Deplatforming culture of certain beliefs and opinions. A form of brainwashing and propaganda.
A SILENT REVOLUTION The intellectual origins of cancel culture
The Genesis of Critical Theory and Cancel Culture
They kind of change a lot, and not just the parts that are freaking you out in the last half of the century, so the only short answer I can give is: various things that changed.
What does that mean. I think if we look at the 20th century we can see a major cultural shift in terms of say religious, traditionalist and conservatism. To more liberal and progressive social norms.
Maybe some of that is natural in the sense of modernisation. But as the norms are so different and in a short time this shows they were engineered to do exactly what they achieved. Which was a counter culture.
Assumptions that abortions were mostly had by sexually promiscuous unmarried young women.
But this was a well founded assumption by the fact that abortions increased with the breakdown of the insitution of marriage. You do realise that for the church and Christian ethics that any sex outside marriage is a sin, is being promiscuous. That is the extent of how these two positions are conflicting.
(That and "baby killing" were the two things they tried to sell us on in church in the 80s.)
Why is saying abortion is baby killing as being wrong. Its the exact truth of what abortion represents to biblical Christians. Now some churches may have used the wrong language and politicised this truth. But its a biblical truth that abortion is murder.
[First "long march", now "cultural revolution", do you live to close to China down under where you see all "bad thing" as some how "Maoist"? Weird.] I don't know why you keep labeling women's liberation as "revolutions", 'tis very odd.
I think this is conflating all 'Revolutions' as Chinas communist revolution. Giving new meaning or rather your meaning to the word 'Revolution'.
That liberation is from bad husbands and the "tut tut" clucking of the town scolds. It is critical that the earlier decision on access to birth control products is based on a right to privacy in ones life.'
This all sounds like the very complaints the ideologues of the social revolutions are complaining about.
As for what was "held by society for generations" I would suggest reading a history on the topic (birth control/abortion) than just assumming that "society" was universally condemnatory until some magic "revolution" came.
It doesn't matter.. We were Christian nations and not Muslims or pagans ect. The bible was part of our fabric so we knew the bibles position on abortion and when we did toy with laws they were never pro abortion. Even social norms were anti abortion as it was hidden and tabood. The same with sex outside marriage and homosexuality.
The changes in the 20th century and especially the later part and into the 21st are profoundly different and this is conflicting with those long held norms. The fact we have all these culture wars over this and the same biblical/Christian norms are being used in defense against the progressive norms is evidence for this.
Social norms and laws are very much not the same thing.
Once again an extreme claim that requires strong evidence for which you have not shown. The fact that the political has become the personal means that the policies and laws are very much intertwined with social norms.
So many possible things to respond here. Can't make up my mind...
There is "Christianity is just a variant of the non-Western religion of Judaism ."
Man you sure make some far out claims without any reasoning or support. Even the claim "Christianity is just" seems dismissive.
Christianity is so much more than just a variant of Judaism.
or "When the Christians got control of Rome it fell", but I think I'll go with:
Much of the best stuff "the West" has came from pre-Christian Rome and Greece or was revived from pre-Christian Rome and Greece during the Renaissance and Enlightenment.
Are you kidding lol. Surely this is the view of someone who is not a Christian lol.
If Christianity came from say Roman philosophy and belief then why did the Romans persecute the Christians and want them to bow to their pagan gods. Why did their norms of sex outside marriage and for men to take lovers and prostitution ect conflict with Christian beliefs.
You can find the same moralizing about sex and family from various non-Christian Classical writers and philosophies. Even the stuff you want to focus on has non-Christian antecedents. The rest is just which god you worship, and I don't care.
This is a bias view and one that wants to deny the massive influence God, Christ and the bible has had on humankind. Deminishing it to the same or even less than other beliefs and morals.
Christian ethics revolutionised Roman philophy at the time with social norms like all are equal slave and free, man and women and marriage and sex within marriage.
I'm not concerned about "the west" (unless you're talking hemispheres, then, like Jim Morrison wrote "the west is the best, baby".) only about discussing the US. I don't need to waste my time building meta-narratives that span so many different societies. You realize there are more actual atheists in the US than Muslims and Hindus combined, right, right?
But why was the west the best baby. Unlike Muslim or communist nations. Why was the west the best.
In what way do you know "behavioral sciences"? I've never seen evidence of this and behavioral science isn't relevant to our topic as we are discussing history and political science which don't fall in that grouping.
Political science is related to political philosophy and ideology. These are beliefs which influence behaviour. Primarily behavioural science is mind and psychology. Sociology is the bigger picture of the philosophies and ideologies and sociology of the society.
Especially in that the very ideologies who are now pushing the culture wars are the ones who made the poilitical the personal. Thus bringing in ideological beliefs and morals as the central justification.
I don't how you can say I don't understand when you are clearly wrong. Unlike you, I live in the land regulated by the US government, and I can say unequivocally that the US government does not regulate my beliefs. I get to decide those for myself.
Surely this is subjective and depends on what beliefs and situation. If your beliefs align with the State then you will not experience any conflict. But then tell that to say Christians who may want to implement their beliefs in public and are told they cannot.
So are abortion or marriage laws underpinned by any ethics. Surely it depends on whether the policy or law has some ethical connection. Its not like we are merely dealing with particals or rocks.
Morality is subjective, but the government is not in control of it or controlled by it.
If they decide that abortion is legal they just gave the OK for abortion. They cannot detach themselves from their moral obligation and responsibility.
But they don't. The State is not an entities with moral opinions because it is not alive. It's just a big bag of laws, people trying to enforce the laws, and other people making the laws.
Ok so it is those who represent the State and fill that void with their political ideologythat brings the morals in. It is the system that allows people to lobby politicians in positions of power that can implement ideological agendas.
This is falsified by the two principle abortion decisions in the US Supreme Court in 1973 and 2023. The 1973 decision put the right of decision on the pregnant woman based on her personal privacy during the period when the fetus was not viable to live outside the uterus -- overriding the power of the individual states to have restrictions beyond those.
How is this not a moral position. The State is more or less making a moral determination that abortion is ok before the cut off time. Thats a moral determination. In fact the very point that there is a cut off time shows we are talking about a moral determination.
The 2023 decision was that the states had the power to regulate abortion since women were free to exercise their privacy rights to abortion by going to other states. This is a legal decision based on personal rights versus devolution of powers to states (federalism) and as it has in both eras flipped from and then back to "states rights" in a manner roughly consistent with other rulings of the period.
Its still a moral determination one way or the other. Even the idea of allowing the freedom of individuals to make their own decisions is a moral issue as to whether the State can over rule people or not.
I believe you are alluding to the clinic protection law. The right to protest abortion clinics is not taken away, but the protestors are prohibited from interfering with the rights of the patients to enter. Are you not aware of the "flying fist" analogy for the competition of individual rights. The short version goes like this: "my right to thrust my fist ends at your face".
But there are no fists involved. Its a case on one right and moral determination over riding another. The State chose to side with allowing abortions and thus the need for abortion clinics.
The right to practice a belief and to protest is also a right. Why is it the right for one and not the other. Because ultimately when you have a society that tries to be all things to all people and allow conflicting beliefs someone is going to be denied when the beliefs conflict.
Two? We've got more than two and all have the same legal status.
I said "two or more" please read my words. But evenso that makes it even more complicated and will eventually either cause conflicts or make some bow down to something they disagree with in certain situations.
I don't think you appreciate how diverse in morality, belief, religion, lifestyle, etc., the US has always been. We had radical abolitionists and slavedrivers;
Abolitionists was a movement coming from Christian ethics that all were equal in Christ. Wilberforce was a great Christian abolitionist.
free-love communes and local theocracies; isolated communities with their own language and neighborhoon "melting pots" and so many more and I'm only talking about the 1840s and 50s.
I think primarily western nations were more united and had a stronger identity about who they were and what they stood for. Though we had generous immigration programs people primarily integrated into the western life.
I don't think its any coincident that the more we have allowed unbridled immigration of ideas and beliefs that are different the more we have destablised society.
It sure can. (I assume you meant "without".)
Yes as argued above the State cannot divorce itself from the moral responsibility of its social policies.
This is the problem with your binary thinking. You speak as if there only two sides when there are many just as there are many gods worshiped by the people. This is why the best policy is religious neutrality in government. We try to keep it that way, though there are some...
You are creating a strawman. I did not say there were just two. I specified there were "two or more". But primarily there is for the sake of the core issues only two positions. Either abortion is ok or not and either marriage is biblical or not and the same for most social issues.
It does not matter if pro abortion is because of a number of reasons and moral positions. Its still a binary choice of it being allowed or not. Or is a biblical marriage or not.
The insistence on their being more than 2 positions on belief and morals actually makes it worse. Now society has to accommodate many possible conflicting positions. What people forget is part of belief and morals are for people to actually live out and live under their beliefs. Otherwise they being denied that belief.
