KnighT
7mo ago
The Palestinians could also refrain from indiscriminate bombardment of civilian population centers. Or the gangrape.
Israel doesn't need to build settlements to put a stop to this.
The fact that the Palestinians don't do worse is reflective of their incapacity to do so, not a lack of desire for the same, or else they wouldn't be cheering at the sight of a hot blonde Israeli woman dead with blood and shit on her genitals.
This and the rest of your arguments are all correct, but they don't refute my point. Israel has been and is continuing to provoke the Palestinians, and they do not need to do that.
Israel can do all of those wonderful without encroaching on Palestinian territory, tearing down their homes to make space for Israeli settlers. You are presenting a false dichotomy in which Israel must relentlessly expand into the West Bank, or give up its modernity and first-world characteristics.
I admire Israel for its development, and the contributions of its people to science and human knowledge. I want Israel to survive and thrive, and so I support their efforts to defend themselves. But I need not give them a blank check to do whatever they like. Israel does not need to build settlements in the West Bank to keep their country safe - just the opposite; these settlements create enmity among the Palestinians, and prevent reconciliation.
We must make a distinction between how a nation fights a war, and why they are fighting in the first place. I don't endorse the Palestinians' conduct in war. They inflict barbaric torture on civilians and capture soldiers. The Israelis do not. Yet we cannot conclude from these facts alone that Israel is in the right. When we zoom out and look at the broader picture, it is the Israeli side that has, in the last few decades, committed more infringements, and Palestine is justified in resisting.
KnighT
7mo ago
A statement like:
the kind of mindset that European and Anglosphere countries absolutely must emulate in the years to come
has the effect of riling people up, and not being specific about why this mindset is necessary allows the speaker to evade questions he does not wish to answer. That does not fit the ethos of this forum. We are not called TheBailey.
I've always appreciated your posts, even though I don't share your motivations, because I like clear thinking and rational debate. I don't object to anyone advancing provocative claims, as long as they give others a fair opportunity to rebut. Your statement was provocative, but it was too vague for someone to argue against.
KnighT
7mo ago
Polling of Americans at the time revealed that a large majority wanted the Japanese population totally exterminated.
This is blatantly wrong. The actual figure is 13%. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3023943.
My initial comment did not describe my full thoughts correctly. Yes, you are absolutely correct - racialism was historically a significant part of America's worldview, and it was accepted by the great majority of the public. My argument is that racialism existed in tension with egalitarianism/universalism, but egalitarianism was bound to prevail because it was in more in line with our nation's optimistic mindset. For example, regarding the Negro Question:
Public opinion (in the North) in the early 1800s: blacks and whites can not coexist as equal citizens; slavery is distasteful but not out of the ordinary.
in the mid 1800s: people still believe that equality is not possible, but slavery is now seen as unethical rather than natural, and it should be contained.
mid 1800s to 1930s: a shift from opposition to any kind of equality, to support for legal, but not social equality (i.e. fair trials in courtrooms, but no integration of schools).
1940s to 1960s: a shift towards supporting legal and social equality.
So yes, racialism has been accepted by the public for much of America's history. But a clear trajectory can be seen, in which racialism recedes and society becomes more egalitarian.
A similar tension existed for immigration, and feminism, and more recently, LGBT acceptance. Yet in all of these cases, the racialists/the right lost, despite many of their arguments being factually correct, and obviously true, because the idealistic side of the American character won out.
It was top-down and very coercive efforts by the federal and state governments which forced America to racially integrate.
True, but that does not disprove my point. Both elite opinion and public opinion have shifted leftwards over time; the elites have been a decade or three ahead of the public in this regard, and have used force to expedite liberalization. For both elites and the public, the cause of the leftward shift has been the same: the idealistic, optimistic mindset of the American people.
I think the explanation is much simpler: the utopian end point of racism registers as evil against mainstream Western morality, while the utopian end point of Marxism registers as good.
This is a wonderfully pithy explanation. And what you say applies not just to contemporary Western morality, but to American morality from its founding. America was always a forward-looking country - a new society, a better society, a society that smiled on all men in their individual pursuits of happiness. Racialists always sought to portray their policies as being consistent with this goal - slaveowners, for example, argued that slavery was not a barbaric form of mistreatement, but a necessary process of education for the African race, and and nativists argued that immigrants were genetically incapable of learning self-government. But racialists ultimately lost, because they could not convince society that these arguments were factually correct. Not many believed that being a slave was the best way to learn. And genetic ability was (and still is) impossible to measure.
Racialists also sought argued for slavery on the grounds of material interest, and immigration restriction on simple mistrust of the other. Unlike the arguments mentioned above, these arguments have the advantage of being factually true. But ultimately they failed as well, because they were too pessimistic. Americans wanted to believe that all men could achieve prosperity, that there was no need for some men to subjugate others, and that men from all parts of the world could be assimilated and taught the American way of life.
So on one hand, Marxism is totally incompatible with the American way of life, in that it is collectivist and statist, which is why the majority has rejected it. But there has been a sizable minority, overrepresented in positions of power, who are sympathetic to Marxism because it is consistent with American optimism - the belief that we really can build a better society in which the ever-present defects of human societies can be eliminated.
KnighT
8mo ago
Ramaswamy proposes sharing nuclear submarine technology with India, with the expectation that India will help block Chinese shipping in the event of a US-China war. I don't believe India will ever do this. It has a vast population with very little disposable income. Although its GDP of 10 trillion dollars (PPP) is sizable, most of it is needed for sustenance. There is little left over for war. Thus, if India did get involved in a US-China war, it would probably not make a huge impact. India would risk antagonizing China further without substantially increasing the probability of a Chinese defeat. It would be better for India to hope that China loses without joining the conflict herself.
Besides, Taiwan falling isn't nearly as big of a deal to India as it is to Japan/US. India's conflict with China is at their land border in the Himalayas. Taiwan is in a totally different direction.
Ramaswamy's policy on Ukraine is to essentially freeze the conflict. Russia would keep whatever territory it has occupied. Ukraine will not be part of NATO, but presumably it would continue to receive arms and economic aid from the West. And though Ramasamy does not mention it, presumably the sanctions against Russia would have to be dropped as well.
I don't think the Russians will take this deal. Because the war is on Ukraine's soil, and because Ukraine has a smaller economy, they are being attrited faster. Pausing hostilities thus benefits Ukraine more than Russia. And while Ramaswamy proposes keeping Ukraine out of NATO, it is inevitable that Ukraine will drift closer to the West. There is too much hatred towards the Russians for reconciliation.
Even dropping the sanctions isn't all that enticing. Trade relations that have been halted by the sanctions won't be restored overnight because of the fear that the war will resume. It would take decades.
Thus, for the conflict to be frozen, Ukraine will have to make greater concessions, which they are not willing to make. The only way for the United States to get the Ukrainians to make such concessions would be to threaten to abandon them. This is not only dishonorable, it would erase America's reputation for reliability and hamper its ability to form alliances for decades to come. (This would not be the case had the United States not intervened on Ukraine's behalf in the first place. But given that we offered them NATO admission 15 years ago, and that we have been giving them military aid since 2014, there is an expectation that we should continue to support them for longer.)
To cheat is to gain an advantage over others by violating the rules. If most of your classmates were "cheating", it is no longer "cheating", because there is no advantage being gained. You should have done it too, without feeling that you were compromising your integrity.
It is the responsibility of the rule-setters to enforce the rules. If they do not, to the extent that many people are violating the rules, then there emerges a de facto ruleset which differs from the nominal rules. In this ruleset, the violations are permitted.
As I think more about this, I may be changing my mind.
Earlier this morning, I would have answered your question this way: "I don't know, but building settlements certainly doesn't help, and so Israel can't say they are acting entirely in self-defense."
But I just remembered that Arabs have much higher birth rates than Jews, so if Israel stops all interference in Palestine, the balance of power may shift decisively in the latter's favor. Palestine today is not capable of inflicting catastrophic damage on Israel, but that could change if the difference in birth rates is sustained. So there may be an argument here that Israel has no choice but to do what it is doing today - to wholly conquer and subjugate the Palestinians...
My apologies for being indecisive! This is my first time writing about this issue, and I am realizing that there are gaps in my thinking.
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