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Culture War blog
Seven Things People Say About Conservatives That Do Not Survive ScrutinySeven common claims about conservatives, from hating government to caring only about money, checked against the record, with fair verdicts.'You can't legislate morality' is wrong on its face, and here is whyEvery law enforces a moral judgment. The real questions are what reasons support it, what rights limit it and who answers for it. Here is the case.What Tocqueville saw in American clubs and why conservatives still quote himA young Frenchman toured America in 1831 and found a nation that solves problems by joining things. Here is what he saw and why conservatives still cite it.How the 1986 Firearm Owners Protection Act passed with a machine gun banThe biggest gun-rights law of the twentieth century carried a rider its backers never wanted, and the dated record shows how that happened.The Culture War as Five Big Arguments, With Each Side at Its BestFive culture-war disputes boiled down to who decides, each side's strongest point and a conservative rebuttal, after a look at where the phrase came from.How to Argue Politics at the Holiday Table and Still Be Invited BackA seven-step plan for holiday arguments: choose topics, ask first, restate their view, split fact from value, give one example, and exit well.Seven Free Speech Myths, From Hate Speech to Shouting Fire in a TheaterHalf the arguments about free speech start from a rule that does not exist. Seven popular claims, tested against the cases, with a verdict on each.The Affirmative Action Ruling Explained, From Bakke to the Harvard CaseHow a 45-year line of cases from Bakke to Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard ended race-conscious admissions, what the Court held, and what it left alone.Do churches pay taxes? Eleven questions about churches and the tax manStraight answers on church property and income tax, the Johnson Amendment, the parsonage allowance, Form 990, IRS audits and the best case against exemption.How Evangelical Voters Became Republican Voters Between 1976 and 1984Evangelicals split their votes in 1976 and voted Republican by 1984; here is the history of schools, Roe, the Moral Majority and Reagan that explains the shift.From Charitable Choice to the faith-based office, when churches got a seatHow a 1996 provision and a 2001 executive order told Washington it could not turn away a soup kitchen for having a steeple, and what critics on both sides say.School Prayer, Bibles and the Ten Commandments, Eleven Questions AnsweredGod was never banned from school. Eleven questions on prayer, Bibles, clubs and the Ten Commandments, answered with the cases and what students may do.The College That Turned Down Washington's Money and What It Teaches UsHillsdale College refused to sign a federal form in the 1970s, then refused the money. What Grove City v. Bell and South Dakota v. Dole say about the strings.The Blaine Amendments and the Century-Old Fight Over Religious SchoolsHow an 1875 attack on Catholic schools became a clause in state constitutions, and how three Supreme Court cases finally pushed it back.West Virginia v. Barnette and the Flag Case That Protects Every ParentHow the Supreme Court reversed itself in three years and ruled that no school can force a child to salute, and why that protects conservative families too.How to ask for your Sabbath at work and what Groff v. DeJoy changedA step-by-step playbook for asking an employer for a religious accommodation, and what the Supreme Court's unanimous 2023 ruling in Groff v. DeJoy changed.Seven claims about God and the founding, tested against the recordBoth the secular left and the religious right overstate the founders' faith, so here are seven popular claims tested against the documents, with a verdict.Article VI, the atheist notary and the clause every believer should defendThe ban on religious tests for office took shape in 1787 and reached the states in Torcaso v. Watkins, and believers have the most to lose if it fails.What the 9-0 Fulton decision means for foster care and faith agenciesFulton v. City of Philadelphia was a unanimous win for a Catholic foster agency, and the narrow reasoning behind it matters as much as the result.Where Rights Come From, and Why the Declaration Says So FirstThe Declaration treats rights as older than government, and that is the practical difference between a right and a permission slip.Five cases that ended America's religious penalty in school aidFive Supreme Court rulings from 2002 to 2022 took apart the rule that a family loses public school aid the moment a religious school is in the picture.A baker, a web designer and the line between customers and messagesA business open to the public must serve everyone, say critics. The answer turns on whether the law compels a person's service or a person's message.Why the government cannot tell a church who its ministers areThe ministerial exception comes from both religion clauses. Two unanimous-to-lopsided rulings, 2012 and 2020, explain who counts and why the rule has limits.From Hobby Lobby to the Little Sisters, the long fight over one mandateOne federal rule sent religious employers to the Supreme Court three times because each fix still left them feeling complicit. A dated timeline, 2010 to 2020.How 97 senators and a voice vote undid a Supreme Court decisionAfter Employment Division v. Smith, an odd coalition asked Congress to restore the old religious-freedom test, and the 1993 RFRA passed 97-3 and by voice vote.The Blaine Amendments and the Old Bigotry Still Sitting in State ConstitutionsThe 1875 federal amendment that failed, the state clauses it inspired, the anti-Catholic politics behind them, and how the Supreme Court has narrowed them.Two Ten Commandments cases on one day, opposite results, and the reasonOn June 27, 2005 the Court struck one Decalogue display and upheld another, both 5-4. The table shows what a county or school board can lawfully do.The three-part test that haunted churches for fifty years is finally goneThe Lemon test gave courts three prongs and decades of contradictory results. Here is how it died, what replaced it, and the best objection to the replacement.Five school-day situations and what the prayer rulings really decideThe 1962 and 1963 prayer rulings barred school-sponsored devotion, not a child's prayer. Five labelled hypotheticals show where the line actually runs.Where 'a wall of separation' really comes from and what it was built forThe phrase comes from a short 1802 letter to a Baptist minority, and it never meant scrubbing faith out of public life. Here is the paper trail.Baptists, Madison and the Virginia fight that put religious liberty firstReligious liberty was won by dissenting believers and Enlightenment statesmen who agreed that forced worship makes neither true faith nor good government.Before you drive across state lines with a gun, run this checklistFederal safe passage protects a lawful gun owner only if every condition in 18 U.S.C. 926A is met, and this checklist walks through each one.The new gun owner's questions answered, from training to travel to willsEleven practical questions a first-year gun owner actually asks, answered with the federal rules and a pointer to where your state's rules differ.How to buy your first firearm lawfully from the counter to the carBuying a gun lawfully is a fixed sequence of steps, and knowing each one is the best protection against a federal felony by accident.Four self-defense scenarios and where the law draws the line on eachFour labelled hypotheticals show how imminence, reasonableness, proportionality and retreat decide real cases, and what to do in the minutes afterward.Castle doctrine, duty to retreat and stand your ground in plain EnglishSelf-defense law asks four questions in every state, and the three famous labels only change how the last one is answered.What the 1994 assault weapons ban said and why it was allowed to expireThe 1994 ban regulated guns by their cosmetic features instead of how they work, which made it hard to defend, easy to evade, and easy to let lapse.Heller, McDonald and Bruen Explain How Judges Now Read the Second AmendmentThis is about method, not gun policy: how courts moved from militia-only readings to an individual right and then to a text, history and tradition test.Inside the Gun Control Act of 1968 and the rules you still follow todayMost of what happens at a gun counter was written in 1968, after three assassinations. What the Act did, what it replaced, and what Congress refused to pass.Why the National Firearms Act of 1934 taxed guns instead of banning themCongress wanted to curb machine guns but doubted it could ban them, so it reached for the taxing power. Gangland, a $200 stamp, Sonzinsky, Miller and Heller.The registry question hiding inside every universal background check billGun owners fear the paper trail, not the check. Can a check on private sales be enforced without recording who owns what? History, steelman, narrower path.What a federal background check covers, and what it never didHow the Brady Act and NICS work, who is barred from buying a gun, and the gaps the debate is really about: private sales, missing records, the three-day rule.What the ATF is, what it can do and why gun owners distrust itWhat the ATF is, what it can do, the limits Congress set in 1986, the record behind gun owners' suspicion, and the case for and against folding it away.Garland v. Cargill and why an agency cannot rewrite a law by redefining a wordThe ATF reversed itself on bump stocks and changed what the law meant without a vote. The Supreme Court said no, and every administration should listen.Red-flag laws are only as good as their due process protectionsThe case for extreme risk protection orders at full strength, then the due process questions every statute has to answer before conservatives should support it.A home storage plan that keeps kids out and keeps you readyA step-by-step plan for storing firearms at home so children cannot get to them and you can still reach one fast, without waiting on a government mandate.The four rules of gun safety and the reason behind each oneFour habits that work together so one mistake never becomes a tragedy, with the reason behind each, the usual ways people break them, and range manners.Seven myths about hunters, guns and the wildlife they pay to protectSeven common claims about hunters and wildlife, from who wiped out the game to who owns the deer, tested against the historical and legal record.The 1937 tax that gun owners backed and that rebuilt America's wildlifeThe Pittman-Robertson Act of 1937 is a user-pays success: an excise tax on guns and ammunition that sportsmen asked for and that funds state wildlife agencies.Four ways a state can regulate carrying a gun, side by sideNo-issue, may-issue, shall-issue and permitless carry compared in one table: who decides, what standard applies, and what the citizen must do.Why your carry permit works in some states and fails in othersA carry permit is a state document, and no federal rule makes another state honor it. How reciprocity works and the arguments for and against a national rule.Bruen and Rahimi explained, the history test every gun law now facesSince Bruen, courts ask whether a gun law fits the nation's tradition of firearm regulation, and Rahimi showed what that test does and does not demand.How McDonald v. Chicago carried the Second Amendment to every stateHeller covered only Washington, D.C. The real fight was whether the Bill of Rights binds states and cities, and the answer starts after the Civil War.Why Heller got it right and the 'militia only' reading falls apartThe Stevens dissent in Heller at full strength, answered point by point: why the individual-right reading is the right one.Why the Founders wrote the Second Amendment after Lexington and ConcordThe amendment grew from lived experience: a Crown that went after colonists' powder and arms, and a generation raised to distrust standing armies.What the Second Amendment says, read one clause at a timeTwenty-seven words, read the way a lawyer reads them: prefatory clause, operative clause, and what the key phrases meant in 1791.How to check any claim about a president in under an hourA seven-step method with free primary sources lets any reader test a claim about a president. A worked example tests a famous claim about Lincoln.Your questions about Republican presidents answered from the recordWho was first, who died in office, who resigned, who won 49 states and what the 22nd Amendment did: fourteen questions answered from verifiable facts.Six Myths About the Founders and the Constitution You Can Correct TodaySix popular claims about the Founders and the Constitution, from pure democracy to the phrase separation of church and state, checked against the documents.Frederick Douglass stayed a Republican all his life and told people whyDouglass judged parties by what they did for freed people and found the Republicans were the only national vehicle for it.Douglass Called the Constitution a Glorious Liberty Document and Meant ItThe Founders owned slaves, so their ideals are worthless, the charge goes. Frederick Douglass, who knew slavery firsthand, said otherwise. Here is his case.A Conservative Can Love His Country Without Worshiping the GovernmentPatriotism is loyalty to a people, a place and an inheritance, not to whoever holds office. Washington, Lincoln and the Pledge's history show the difference.Becoming an American Citizen Step by Step, From Green Card to OathNaturalization takes years of residence, a test of English and civics, a character check and a public oath. Here are the steps in order, with what to expect.The Founders' Partisan Press Was Far Nastier Than Anything on Your FeedThe first generation of Americans ran openly partisan papers and thought that was healthy. Their story is a cure for nostalgia about a neutral press.From the Emancipation Proclamation to the 13th Amendment in Dated StepsA dated timeline of how Republicans turned a wartime proclamation into a constitutional amendment, who fought it at each step, and why each date mattered.Abraham Lincoln ran a party of free soil, free labor and free menLincoln's Republicans were an opportunity party as much as an antislavery one, and the laws of 1862 show the agenda that still shapes the American dream.