User:Jaredscribe/Culture Wars

This survey of the American culture wars, from the mid-20th century on. For the spiritual and religious undercurrents, see User:Jaredscribe/Christian revivalism.

Free Speech
1st ammendment does not protect obscenity, fighting words, incitement to violence, libel, or slander.


 * Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957) *. Obscenity is defined as material that "to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest".
 * 1977 National Socialist Party of America v. Village of Skokie, high court defends free speech for Nazis, rules swastika, etc. is not incitement.
 * 1996 Communications Decency Act, immunity for hosts and ISPs section 230. "Indecency" provision struck down by high court in Reno v. ACLU
 * 1998 Child Online Protection Act, 2002 Children's Internet Protection Act
 * 2002 Ashcroft vs. ACLU, Ashcroft vs. Free Speech Coalition
 * 2021 NetChoice LLC v. Paxton re: Texas House Bill 20, and NetChoice LLC v. Moody re Florida S.B. 7072, leads to circuit split, pending supremes.

1964-65 Free Speech Movement starts at UC Berkeley.

Statues Will Fall
List of Confederate monuments; Removal of Confederate monuments and memorials

See also: Iconoclasm, Byzantine Iconoclasm

Sexuality and Gender
List of landmark court decisions in the United States

List of sex-related court cases in the United States

Defense of Marriage Act allows states to refuse to recognize same-sex marriages granted under the laws of other states. Acts provisions declared unconstitutional or rendered unenforceable by United States v. Windsor (2013) and Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), which means the law itself has been practically overturned.

Philosophers Kathleen Stock, Peter Boghossian.

Some lesbians say they are increasingly being pressured and coerced into accepting trans women as dating and sexual partners - and upon refusal, accused of transphobia, shunned and even threatened for speaking out. Several have spoken to the BBC, along with trans women who are concerned about the issue too.

(Mis)Education
Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

Stolen Concept

An Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology

Critical Race Theory

Don't Say Gay Florida House Bill

No Left Turn - Woke CRT Glossary

Life and Death
Euthanasia in Canada

Qualified Immunity of police from prosecution

pro-life plaintiff Sandra Cano (Mary Doe) misrepresented in Doe v. Bolton (1973) by lawyer Margie Pitts Hames

Dobbs v. Jackson Women%27s Health Organization (draft opinion)

For the first 185 years after the adoption of the Constitution, each State was permitted to address this issue (abortion) in accordance with the views of its citizens. Then, in 1973, this Court decided Roe v. Wade, 410 U. S. 113.

Roe was "not constitutional law" at all and gave almost no sense of an obligation to try to be."

30 States prohibited abortion at the time, and this decision effectively struck down the abortion laws of every single State. As Justice Byron White aptly put it in his dissent, the decision was an exercise in "raw judicial power".

Eventually, in Planned Parenthood of Southeastern Pa. v. Casey, 505 U. S. 833 (1992), the Court revisited Roe, but the members of the Court split three ways. Two Justices expressed no desire to change Roe in any way. Four others wanted to overrule the decision in its entirety. And the three remaining Justices, who jointly signed the controlling opinion, took a third position. Their opinion did not endorse Roe's reasoning, and it even hinted that one or more of its authors might have "reservations" about whether the Constitution protects a right to abortion. But the opinion concluded that stare decisis, which calls for prior decisions to be followed in most instances, required adherence to what it called Roe's "central holding"—that a State may not constitutionally protect fetal life before "viability"—even if that holding was wrong. Anything less, the opinion claimed, would undermine respect for this Court and the rule of law.

Racial Justice
More White Humility, less White Fragility

Intersectionality, Kimberle Crenshaw

Antiracism, How to Be an Antiracist, Ibram Kendi

Woke

Law and Anarchy
Anarchy, State, and Utopia, by Robert Nozick, advocating a Minarchist night-watchman state? Entitlement theory of distributive justice.

Mob "Justice" & Cancelation
Social norms are changing, often for the better, according to Anne Applebaum. But retribution for transgressions often lacks due process and leaves no room for forgiveness. Resulting in illiberal spaces with tight social conformity enforced through peer pressure.

Economic Justice
Michael Sandel, in his 2020 book The Tyranny of Merit. makes a case for overhauling western neo-liberalism. Elite institutions including the Ivy League and Wall Street have corrupted our virtue, according to Sandel, and our sense of who deserves power. Criticizes John Rawls' Theory of Justice, saying that taking the original position is impossible.

Daniel Markovits, The Meritocracy Trap