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> If we want to change China in the long term, we should probably get our own houses in order so that we can actually occupy the moral high ground. Sweden, Germ

> If we want to change China in the long term, we should probably get our own houses in order so that we can actually occupy the moral high ground. Sweden, Germany, Italy, France Austria, the UK, all have either slid hard to the Right, Do i read you correctly that you believe it is impossible to be moral and at the same time hold conservative views?

GW150914 8y ago
Only if you read neo-fascism/far-right populism and conservative as the same things, in which case I’d say... yes. I’d point out that by no means did I attempt to conflate those things with conservatism though. I think being moral and believing in smaller governments, gradual change, and other conservative ideas can be consistent with morality. I think that xenophobia, bigotry and a return to the worst ideologies of Europe’s recent past is not. All in all, it might be helpful to quote me more fully, or not at all, since the fragment you chose is unhelpful taken out of context. I’d like to think that in context, what I meant was clear and hard to take in the sense you seem to want to frame it.
- thecopy 8y ago
  I did not mean to misrepresent your meaning. I think often a heated argumentation starts when people use the same words but have different interpretation of those words. For example, what "right" means. Here it seems you used "Right" to describe neo-fascism/far-right populism when at least me did not read it like that. I believe this is the root cause of a lot of flame wars on social media.
  - mercer 8y ago
    That's an excellent observation. I find myself conflating 'right' with all the bad things mentioned above, even though I find myself (surprisingly) sympathetic to various elements of this 'right' when I take the time to reflect. In fact, I've been trying to elaborate, then delete, then elaborate again, and ended up with this non-statement because I feel I can't really properly go into this without the end result causing problems with the 'left' that I mostly identify with. It's incredibly frustrating that even under a badly-managed pseudonym on some online 'forum' I feel inhibited to do so, but I do. I think it would be good to find better words for the various clusters that exist these days. They'll still be imperfect, but man do we gotta lose the one-dimensional left-right divide...

GW150914 8y ago

Only if you read neo-fascism/far-right populism and conservative as the same things, in which case I’d say... yes. I’d point out that by no means did I attempt to conflate those things with conservatism though. I think being moral and believing in smaller governments, gradual change, and other conservative ideas can be consistent with morality. I think that xenophobia, bigotry and a return to the worst ideologies of Europe’s recent past is not. All in all, it might be helpful to quote me more fully, or not at all, since the fragment you chose is unhelpful taken out of context. I’d like to think that in context, what I meant was clear and hard to take in the sense you seem to want to frame it.

thecopy 8y ago
I did not mean to misrepresent your meaning. I think often a heated argumentation starts when people use the same words but have different interpretation of those words. For example, what "right" means. Here it seems you used "Right" to describe neo-fascism/far-right populism when at least me did not read it like that. I believe this is the root cause of a lot of flame wars on social media.
- mercer 8y ago
  That's an excellent observation. I find myself conflating 'right' with all the bad things mentioned above, even though I find myself (surprisingly) sympathetic to various elements of this 'right' when I take the time to reflect. In fact, I've been trying to elaborate, then delete, then elaborate again, and ended up with this non-statement because I feel I can't really properly go into this without the end result causing problems with the 'left' that I mostly identify with. It's incredibly frustrating that even under a badly-managed pseudonym on some online 'forum' I feel inhibited to do so, but I do. I think it would be good to find better words for the various clusters that exist these days. They'll still be imperfect, but man do we gotta lose the one-dimensional left-right divide...