That would apply to any minority opinion as well, like supporting Palestine today, or being opposed to Japanese internment camps during world war 2 or opposing the Iraq war. Or being opposed to COVID vaccine mandates or school closures. People get cancelled for this stuff all the time, and being able to speak freely is critical to derailing social movements that go too far, which they always do. Anonymity is a double edged sword, where it holds people accountable for hate speech, but also provides security to express opinions that are contrary to prevailing narratives, things that desperately need to be said.

That depends if it’s your team or not, obviously

In the US when you kill random people it’s murder and when you take random people who aren’t breaking any laws and child them captive, then it’s kidnapping.

Too many people in the world crave an identity that is original enough to be interesting, but not so original that it can’t be quantified or defined by accepted or understood identity templates. They need to be able to put a name to their identity so they can talk about it.

Well you got my entire backstory created. I’d ask you to roll me for stats now, but I don’t think you are playing with a full set of dice.

I can’t believe you spent that much energy creating an identity for me in your head.

Jews are native to that area and it’s not a race thing. If we can’t agree on those two facts then we have no basis for discussion.

But is that any worse than defaulting to the side with less power? At the end of the day if you have to side with one or the other, whoever happens to have power at the time seems like pretty arbitrary criteria. If instead Israel were the lesser power being bullied by a powerful Palestine, would you side with Israel? How about if Nazi Germany were getting bullied by Western powers, would you side with them? It wouldn’t make sense because Nazis are very obviously the bad guys. Anyway it’s not just about power.

Mass shootings weren’t even defined before. We didn’t talk about them because they weren’t tracked. Even now the definition of mass shooting isn’t settled, with some definitions having about a dozen per year, and others having about 2 per day.

I guess maybe we are using the terms differently.

My whole point was that the cultural revolution was a disaster because of unchecked progressivism, and that more conservative voices could have averted the disaster. This was in response to an unhinged rant about conservatives being good for nothing and how they should be silenced. Not sure why I engaged in that insane premise to begin with, but anyway that’s how we got here.

So let me get this straight, communism failed in China because it was like Trump?

Ok you’ve got to be trolling me. Goodbye.

Mao may not have been progressive, I don’t need to argue that point. But he definitely tapped into a progressive spirit driven by progressive youths and the result was a tragedy.

Eradication of the “4 olds” was a deliberate effort by the communist party to destroy old culture, in order to replace it with something new. Since when do conservatives strive to destroy and overturn existing, established culture? That literally the opposite of conservative. Or is your argument that it isn’t necessarily conservatives, but it’s not progressives either?

There will always be conservatives since it’s a relative term. But I’m guessing that you are referring to the Republican party, of which roughly half of the country belongs to, comprising everything from moderates to extremists, just like the Democrat party has. How can you preach about subverting democracy in the same breath as advocating to silence half of the country? People who cannot coexist with different opinions or world views, who lack empathy and cannot understand nuance, cannot function and don’t belong in democracy. Why don’t you drop the mask and admit to being an extremist authoritarian? and in that case don’t even bother talking about democracy.

What part of the Chinese revolution do you feel was done right, what part of it makes you think it’s a good idea and that you want to try it in America?

Conservatism is resisting change, so the whole purpose of a conservative party is to resist progressive forces, provide resistance to the rapid and sometimes over reactive changes that can result from unchecked progressivism. A good example of where it went off the rails is the Chinese cultural revolution. Conservative voices were silenced, even killed by the thousands. Years of history and artifacts were destroyed along with the economy itself. There needs to be someone to speak up when things are going crazy, and a shift to the right can be a sign that things went too far.

Yes, it’s a way to move forward with incomplete knowledge, when you need to make assumptions regardless of which theory you go with. There will always be an asterisk by theories or decisions made with this method, because one of more of the assumptions themselves could later turn out to be incorrect, thereby invalidating your decision. Occams razor is very misunderstood and used or quoted incorrectly all the time.

I hate smoking stock photos. Clearly she has never smoked in her life.