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Culture War Roundup for the week of November 14, 2022

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I'm not conflating good and humanized here. Ancient civilizations both had deep and profound traditions, and also slaughtered hundreds of thousands of people for no conceivable progressive reason, for glory and conquest and just mere power.

Why must the reasons be "conceivably progressive"? Romans believed that their sociopolitical system was the best, and the more of the world it ruled the better everything would be. Progressive polities likewise believed that their sociopolitical system was the best, and the more of the world it ruled the better everything would be. Sure, the "everything" that "would be better" was based on different values, but why should we concede that International Socialism was a more worthy goal than "Rome Eternal"? The Romans appear to have been self-aware of the Pax Romana; I'm not aware of an equivalent Pax Sovieta or Pax Franca. The Enlightenment did not derive the blessings of peace and prosperity or The Good Life from first principles, and they manifestly sucked at actually securing them.

Post-WW2 society does seem to have less war than ancient societies (... althouhg that's a weak claim, "post ww2", ww2 was recent!) - which is perhaps related to 'the glory of conquest and war' being a value modern progressives despise, which was not true in the past.

What justifies this choice of dates? Progressivism's first real play was the French Revolution, which resulted in some of the largest wars the world had ever seen. Progressivism's next real play was the Russian Revolution, which was pure hell on earth and helped sow the seeds of WWII itself. Further plays resulted in multiple genocide-analogues post-WWII. The Soviets were no strangers to Glorious War and Conquest. Neither were the Chinese, or the Vietnamese, nor the Cambodians, nor Che and Castro, nor many others besides.

The first poem from your link:

Damn the ruins! Damn you!

Stop dwelling on the past again.

Damn you, stop all this talk – you

won’t ever get the sweet times back.

At al-Faruq we shielded our women,

trampled the locusts underfoot

when the armies collided.

“No retreat!” we swore.

“Our spears are from Rudaynah,

hard iron to make you whine

like dogs at the sight of vipers!”

You bolted, rumps in the air

like old camels sniffing a corpse.

Couldn’t you see-

our spears protect us?

You’re not going to drool

over our

soft-necked gazelles.

Still, Time

takes us all.

Death appeared.

I said to my men

“Whose up for a wager?

Who’ll face Death with me?

Turn your horses

the raiders are here.

Don’t let them win

the prize.” They met

warriors, not slaves

at al-Faruq.

We drive our horses

hard, their manes

matted like lice-ridden hair.

Come back for more

now that you know-

Time damns us all.

...To be clear, your argument is that such sentiments have no analog from, say, The Great Patriotic War? Such a claim seems entirely unsupportable, but perhaps you'd like examples?

We're talking past each other tbh, and it's probably my fault - I don't really know how this is a response to my point, or where exactly we disagree. I was arguing you seemed to be claiming progressivism was somehow more violent or brutal in a way 'untethered by tradition', and my response is just that 'both progressivism and traditional societies have been quite violent, and violence = bad seems somewhat progressive'. I'm not saying progressivism is better, or that WWII didn't involve patriotism. And I did note that the 'actually reduced war' claim was a weak one - the stronger claim is the progressive claims 'war is bad and there should be less of it', even if he follows through on it poorly, while many trad societies do not claim that, and indeed had violent wars. This isn't saying that progressives are better ... just that your argument has a bit of progressive in it.