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It won't last forever, but it'll reset the clock for a while. Every empire will fall, every monument crumble, but the next one will last a while, and so on and so forth. Gibbon wrote a long book. If the reborn United States II lasts a hundred more years instead of twenty, is that such a bad thing to fight for because it falls after that? Impermanence is the simple fact of human events.
One of the things people miss in secular society about Gandhi and MLK for example, is their deep and sincere religiosity. They truly believed that non-violence was sacred, that it was more important than worldly success. When Gandhi told the Jews of Europe to offer themselves to the butcher's knives, he wasn't saying it would work he was saying it was required. That religious duty was more important than success. MLK believed earnestly that the ultimate reward of his efforts would be in heaven, not on earth. Process, not results. THere's no other way for humans to behave.
I'm starting to see more people push back to universal male suffrage. Which seems obvious: it's impossible to argue coherently that every man is more capable of voting than every woman. Gender is a bad Schelling point. The problem for much of the right is that any actually good Schelling Point is quite likely to doom the right wing electorally.
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