View on the recent Gaza/Israel stikes

[xoxoxoBruce]

If Israel should be condemned for oppressing the Palestinians by cutting them off from the world, what about their neighbor Egypt?

[sugarpop]

Originally Posted by xoxoxoBruce

If Israel should be condemned for oppressing the Palestinians by cutting them off from the world, what about their neighbor Egypt?

Why should we even be involved in the politics of nations halfway around the world? I understand we want to promote democracy and human decency and all that, but frankly, those countries have their own cultures, cultures that are very different from our own. Who are we to judge another culture? We cannot simply judge those cultures by our standards. It isn't right to do that. And how is our intention to "spread democracy" any different than Russia trying to "spread communism" during the cold war? We cannot just go around forcing our way of thinking and being on everyone else.

I personally believe in the whole Star Trek creed of not interfering in the development of other cultures, other than offering certain kinds of aid. We certainly shouldn't be fighting wars for people, giving them weapons or funding wars. Yes, we should work with groups like Amnesty International and the UN to fight genocide, and use NATO to help establish and keep peace in volatile regions, but more than things like that, I think we should mind our own business.

[Urbane Guerrilla]

Originally Posted by sugarpop

Why should we even be involved in the politics of nations halfway around the world? I understand we want to promote democracy and human decency and all that, but frankly, those countries have their own cultures, cultures that are very different from our own.

What we see with democracy (I speak in a loose sense) is that it's simply better than autocracy or oligarchy: democracies are slow to war and powerful to prosperity, both of which are very good things, acclaimed by anyone not a sociopath. A culture with an oppression enshrined within it is a culture that is sick, cancerous, bad -- and if its sickness is infectious, this is very bad.

Who are we to judge another culture? We cannot simply judge those cultures by our standards. It isn't right to do that.

Ah, yes: moral relativism. You've been persistently schooled in it, I see. Your education will no longer be impeded by your schooling, SP, when you abandon this philosophy -- for until you do, you will not be able to distinguish that which is good from that which is evil. That's whatcha call dumbth. Somebody wants you incapable of moral choices, and that incapability will screw your entire life up. Hey, when I was a college frosh, I had some of these ideas too. But I haven't been a college frosh these thirty years now; and there's been some growing up done. I gave up any trace of moral relativism when I noticed I couldn't distinguish good from evil by those means. I've never had cause to return, either.

So, in the end: Why do we make moral judgements? It's because we are moral beings, however imperfect, however perfectible. They of the leftward lean would like us not to be so, that they may the better perform the hemipygian deeds, adhere to the ill-thought philosophies, that their baser natures accustom them to. It ain't for me, Sugarpop. For me, it's been, Been there, did that maybe a little, and eww.

And how is our intention to "spread democracy" any different than Russia trying to "spread communism" during the cold war? We cannot just go around forcing our way of thinking and being on everyone else.

When democracy is spread abroad, prosperity follows, oppression recedes. Where was there prosperity in the Soviet bloc? Was there anyone not oppressed? Even the Party animals and the nomenklatura could end up shot or in the Gulag. (Holding unpopular opinions/being not politically correct in a nondemocracy is very bad for your health. Here in a democracy, it just gets you into internet flamefights.) There's your answer for how very different we are from those. You have not been taught our quiet nobility yet, SP, and you need it now.

As for "forcing:" we don't force, no matter what the anti-American Left will repetitively say. There are approximately eleven million people in the States right now who personify my argument. These are the illegal immigrants. They want to partake of our way of thinking and being so badly they break in to get it. Quite illegally. Think about that for a minute. They're here because they want what we do and how we do it more than anything else, including not getting arrested. Add to these eleven million the ones who ARE here legally, and you've got quite an example. Show me another nation with that kind of attractiveness. Again, how many nations are getting their doors kicked down and fences climbed over, to partake at literally any price? I can think of some other places that are really really nice; I've seen a few of 'em; but I can't think of one to compare with our City on the Hill for sheer mass of people trying to get in.

I think we should mind our own business.

I say all this is our business, and unless we turn into a hermit kingdom, it will remain our business. We are the most successful capitalist democracy ever seen, anywhere on the globe. We achieve that by our global reach, and we cannot do without it. Humanity will prosper all the better the more it imitates our best features. All of humanity's androgenic woes come from not practicing America's ways, but sticking with ancient despotisms and oligarchies. The wisdomless invertebrates who taught you do not comprehend this -- their bowing before ancient despotisms and oligarchies is not understandable, except in terms of closet fascism for the braver/more crazed ones and abject cowardice for all the rest.

The Left would very much like you not to understand any of this, Sugarpop, for once you do, you turn away from the Left as an aggravating aggregation of egregious dweebs -- a committee with three or more legs and no brain. The leftwards people do not value general prosperity, nor good conduct. They are the Left because they value only Power, with a capital P. They are the latterday Ebenezer Scrooges, monomaniacally fixated on but a single thing. Scrooge illustrates how it's the dose that makes the poison -- and hints that you'd have to be absurdly lucky to fully learn his lesson as late as he did.

Your life's education begins with an openminded reading of Russell Kirk -- though Robert A. Heinlein isn't bad this way either, only he wrote fiction and Kirk's an essayist.