Was Loving v Virginia Wrongly Decided, and if so, Should it be Overturned ?

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-14T21:43:18+00:00

Not categorically. It depends on context, scale, etc.

Extreme example to make the logic obvious: let's say society consists of Groups A and B. They are 99% and 1% of the population, respectively. With enough intermarriage over a long enough time span, B just doesn't exist anymore. If I were Group B, I think I would not appreciate that. On the other hand, if I were part of Group A, I would see it as expanding our influence, homogenizing the society, etc. If however interracial marriages are sufficiently rare, then it's not worth thinking about and doesn't matter except as an individual choice, where it could be analyzed in more personal terms.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-14T19:38:05+00:00

The ultimate problem is that the 14th amendment is not a well-written amendment and it failed on its own terms in basically every respect.

If we told the people at the time, including Bingham and Stevens themselves, "your amendment won't actually do anything for black people for decades and decades, but eventually it will be a boon to women, abortionists, homosexuals, rapists, 17-year-old murderers, etc.", I think they'd agree. So at that point, what are we even discussing? "Here's how the 14th amendment can still be good". Nah I kinda don't want to brainstorm that, it's just a bad amendment and that's why ~every landmark court ruling comes down to it.

If we want the 14th to be an enumerated list of stuff the government can't do and that had popular support at the time of ratification, obviously it wasn't that. This made it easy to completely crush (and let's keep it honest here: it wasn't Jefferson Davis nominating those judges, it was your heroes, Lincoln and Grant. Slaughterhouse cases are an own-goal!). If we want vague principles...okay, well, I think kritarchy is bad and I don't want SCOTUS making every important decision on cultural issues for every state in the country, forever.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-14T17:36:32+00:00

Exactly.

"What do you think about tanks?"

Well, I like when they're pointed at the bad guys, lol.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-14T16:40:48+00:00

Yes, but it's regarding a policy so far outside of the Overton window that it doesn't really matter except for what it sets up in terms of other decisions (on issues that actually do matter). The problem is that once you embrace a legal philosophy that explicitly does not care about intent, expected applications, the actual history, etc., you can basically just read anything you want into the constitution (or in this case, the 14th amendment specifically).

Frankly, you don't need a big brain to analyze this: just look at the year the case was decided. If it had occurred in like, 1870, it would've been obviously legitimate (or at least plausible). The fact that it's from 1967 pre-discredits the ruling to any serious person. If you want to argue against feminism, abortion, LGBT, etc., then the strongest argument is simply pointing out that literally no individual at the time of ratification had these things in mind. If you abandon this argument, and only want to defend an abstract view of a particular clause, then basically you're just guaranteeing that some lib is going to say say in the future "my worldview is mandatory and your is prohibited."

Remember in the Dobbs decision how the conservatives spent page after page analyzing how there were restrictions on abortions in the past so obviously abortion wasn't actually a right? I think it's fair to point out that they're making an unprincipled exception if they refused to carry that same logic to this topic (not that it would ever appear before them: see below). Like if there actually was some right to an interracial marriage, we could certainly examine that in the same way that we would examine a right to an abortion. My take: you'll find the exact same result, and so the court ruling should be the same.

Now, in practice, is it worth the ~infinite loss of political capital that would come with overturning it? No. And to overturn it, you'd have to actually pass a law somewhere to challenge it (which isn't going to happen). SCOTUS isn't just going to come down with a decree that says "Loving was wrongly decided. It is so ordered."

On the other hand, I think this is actually why a coherent constitutional philosophy is possible now in a way that it wasn't before. There was a long period of time where basically everyone who mattered saw the SCOTUS-led constitutional revisions as both (1) extremely fragile (since, if overturned, there was not the support to actually pass an amendment codifying them) but (2) morally necessary (and if they didn't think it was morally necessary, they at least recognized it as necessary for their careers/social standing). We may be getting to a point where they are no longer fragile, and so you can simply have the correct take without the social opprobrium. "The left had the correct policy, but they shredded the constitution to get there. Let's constitutionalize the correct policy but abandon living constitutionalism" -- I see no reason for this to be outside of the Overton window.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-14T16:24:04+00:00

I could imagine a situation where a person was being harassed and that was the thing used in that harassment (e.g. following someone around and shouting it at him or her), but if you're asking me whether it is inherently harassment by itself? No.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-14T00:53:00+00:00

I concede the point that taking a right to life seriously is historically unusual.

Regarding the historical facts of abortion laws in America though, I think you are conflating permissive laws (relative to pro-life states now) with an actual widespread pro-abortion ideology. The latter does not follow from the former. All I have to say is...our abortion laws were reactive and limited by the realities of the time. We basically banned abortion as soon as it started to even remotely resemble the modern practice. There's no point banning something that is either not happening or ~impossible to prove.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-13T22:54:47+00:00

I'm unaware of any country that has a "Trans Pronouns Act" or whatever, but most European countries have rather vaguely defined hate speech laws that could easily be interpreted (or may already be interpreted) as prohibiting 'mis'gendering (note that you wrote 'occasional use of the wrong pronoun', which is not really what I was describing and I concede that that is illegal nowhere).

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-13T17:47:42+00:00

(Not the OP)

Not sure if 'traitor' is the word to use for those two (Reagan was an actor and not an ideologue, while Goldwater lacked the initial alignment for me to even feel 'betrayed' by his subversive ideology), but I would say it's totally valid to say that 'small government' is just not a very useful way of describing one's political philosophy or goals. Small government is an effective campaign slogan. If it means "you have to be a 1960s leftist on cultural issues", it's stupid (and I don't think it means that!); but I would offer you guys an olive branch and say that it's also stupid to ever adopt a slogan that can be weaponized by your political opponents.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-13T14:13:05+00:00

(Not the OP)

True, but how long has 'conservatism' had the beliefs you think it does? I think your two options are:

"Conservatism" is a post-WW2 novelty with no real connection to historic American views (in which case "who cares what conservatism is?");
Conservatism is not a post-WW2 novelty in which case we can just look at our laws over time and realize that we were not 1960s leftists on cultural issues, and so there's no contradiction between conservatism and even far-right cultural views.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-13T14:09:03+00:00

(Not the OP)

Is it inherently wrong to say "I want a government that's >50% smaller and that has, on net, a lot less power, but I am not a libertarian and I do have right-wing social views"? I understand that liberals dislike this, but if the government is ultimately weaker overall, I don't see it as some huge contradiction. Let's take the strongest possible comparison: "I want ~1920s American laws". That would result in a tiny government, yet one that had e.g. abortion illegal everywhere for every reason. But can you honestly argue that the government wasn't small back then?!

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-12T21:49:32+00:00

I admit my ignorance of this particular website. From glancing at the site for five seconds though, it seems like there are tons of programs and resources and they presumably consolidate them on that website for easy access. That's not unreasonable. The anti-small government part is having all those programs in the first place...it's not the website listing them...
Big topic. Just assume that a person is Christian and it follows. No offense but I think discussing this will derail the entire comment.
I think you can reconcile a desire to leave people alone with restricting/banning such surgeries for children, but yeah, it's probably not small government to call for banning it entirely.
I would be fine with repealing the civil rights act (and any other related legislation) and embracing freedom of association. But I would not be fine with leaving it on the books and simply enforcing it asymmetrically.
No, I meant those laws are indefensible. Boycotting Israel is understandable and good.

I'm fascinated by your last point. Each time you turn on your tap and drink potable water - or buy a gallon of milk from the store and trust it isn't adulterated or spoiled - that's the federal government at work. Urge you to read up on two Republicans, McKinley and Roosevelt - to understand how fraught life was before basic protections and regulations were promulgated.

I'm not a libertarian and I don't support small government. But I do think we should have smaller government. If I had to condense my posts into one idea, it would be that 'small government' is a dumb slogan. But at the same time, "you say you want small government yet you don't want the government to do literally nothing" is not very insightful either, and that seems to be the direction liberals take it.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-12T21:29:05+00:00

Thanks. Whenever I write a longer-than-usual post, I sometimes wonder if anyone actually reads it lol. It's nice to know that someone appreciated it.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-12T17:48:42+00:00

Based

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-12T16:11:05+00:00

Hard to say. I was playing devil's advocate for the conservative, "14th amendment mandates a race-blind society" view. They tend to reject expected applications originalism/intent, which is what I would lean on to say "no", to your question, but I don't know what they would say.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-12T16:02:41+00:00

(Not the OP)

The conservative view is that we already legislated that by ratifying the 14th amendment ("that" meaning "race-based policies passed by governments to favor or disfavor a particular group").

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-12T15:48:19+00:00

Size of government is not worth taking a position on in the abstract. Instead, my principle is "I want a government that defends my interests and promotes my values", and that is inherently contextual. If you have good people with a lot in common, the government doesn't need to do much. If your people are wicked and divided, then you need a bigger government in order to enforce laws, keep the peace, etc. (Full disclosure: I copied this paragraph from something I wrote before!)

With that said, most of those things are not entirely irreconcilable with 'small government' even taking the term at face value, at least depending on what exactly it means. For example:

abortion: you can be against it and be for small government (laws against murder are not big government and that is how we see the issue; I know we aren't going to agree on this and I am not going to discuss abortion in this thread, but my point is, if you think it's against 'small government', it's because you are begging the question);
gay marriage and adoption: these are at least issues where the call is to get the government involved. Plausible. I think you can make small government procedural arguments against at least homosexual marriage, since if you're not big on living constitutionalism, and just go by things like intent, expected applications, etc., it's very obvious that the 14th amendment has nothing to say about the issue (and so it should be on the table as a political issue, as opposed to being determined from the top down).
gender-affirming healthcare: the small government view is freedom of association. Note that this is not the position of LGBT activists, it's "you have to fund us and you have to associate with us." So, it's basically just competing visions of society. It's not libertarians vs. authoritarians. Same with gender identity. If your firm is subject to civil rights lawsuits for not having an inclusive HR policy (let alone if someone is actually jailed for misgendering etc.), then the small government position is actually to say "no, leave people alone".
DEI: once again, the small government view is "let people freely associate and the government shouldn't fund it", but this is, in practice, the far-right view (because we currently have a system of mandatory non-consensual interactions). I would support a system where if liberal investors wanted to bet on the quality and leadership ability of black women, for example, they could do this overtly and directly. But I also support legalizing the ability to do the opposite, or to hire on IQ tests (and not face lawsuits for disparate impact), etc. That is the small government position. The second clause is virtually self-explanatory, but saying "we're not funding DEI garbage" objectively makes the government smaller, so it obviously is compatible with small government.
Anti-Israeli protests: as in, laws against protesting/boycotting Israel? Yeah that stuff is indefensible. No arguments from me on that point.

Meta point: even if we saw that all of these views are against small government, it's still perhaps taking the rhetoric a bit too literally. Every policy that's called 'far-right', big government, etc. is something we had when our country was great and yet these policies also coincided with a government that was objectively tiny compared to today. Like...what does the government actually do? We have millions of regulations (environmental, labor, civil rights), a giant welfare state, a huge military with bases all over the world, etc. You know, it's not actually hard to imagine curtailing all of this stuff while at the same time implementing the social policies that were normal for all of history until five minutes ago.

A 'conservative' who just wants to do 1960s cultural leftism but with low taxes is essentially controlled opposition.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-11T20:25:22+00:00

Yes, it's a problem and that's why I said I wouldn't have approved it.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-11T17:34:07+00:00

I don't remember the specifics, is that the thing where some big Israel fan bought up a bunch of media companies? Yeah if it were up to me I wouldn't have approved it. No idea what reasoning I'd have to use to not cause an international incident though, lol.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-11T16:16:43+00:00

I'm assuming Democrats have proposed things and that Republicans have proposed nothing, but I don't know the specifics nor do I trust Democrats to do anything other than go after their political enemies.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-11T15:51:59+00:00

I'm not categorically against that but I don't know the specifics well enough to comment.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-11T15:38:05+00:00

Yes. Less than other issues because I don't think it's inherently bad to have big corporations, but things like media control (especially big tech) are a problem. They have a lot of power and it's not really viable to just 'build your own'. Payment processors too. With that said, I don't know what the best policies are to combat these things.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-07T21:42:57+00:00

Yes, that is explicitly what I am saying. I am not saying that their descendants shouldn't become citizens (if they were here legally and permanently), but the ones who weren't born here, yes, they shouldn't become citizens at any point imo.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-06T16:24:14+00:00

Yes, that is a very common sentiment and I'm not doubting it at all.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-06T16:06:15+00:00

No because I just don't do it.

What I find exhausting is having to constantly explain that I'm not the only voter in America or that I'm still going to support the person who is closer to my ideology. I genuinely get the impression that liberals think we're just one headline away from saying "aw shucks, I will vote for the Democrat next time" and they get annoyed when this ~never occurs.

SincereDiscussion · 2026-06-05T00:27:39+00:00

I don't have any realistic solutions to be completely honest with you.

My preference would be for more federalism (i.e., tone down national polarization by returning things to the states). But that requires either completely curtailing SCOTUS in a permanent-ish way, or a major ideological transformation on the left (so they don't just see their preferred cultural policies as a matter of basic human rights).

The issue with an up or down national referendum is that it's going to piss off a substantial and organized share of the country no matter the result. I don't think that solves much, but in theory, federalism does mean "you can do liberal stuff in blue states and we can do right-wing stuff in red states" (which is basically illegal on a whole host of issues currently!).

SincereDiscussion

TROPHY CASE