Subject:
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Re: Cheap American shot (Was: NEW Mindstorms set shown (with picture!))
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Sun, 30 Jan 2000 21:05:17 GMT
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Reply-To:
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LPIENIAZEK@NOVERAnomorespam.COM
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Viewed:
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187 times
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I agree with most of what Kyle said in this calm, well written post as
well as the other one he posted in response to Clint.
However, there are two fundamental points I do wish to take issue with
and they are as follows:
- Cultural relativism is not legitimate(1). Some societies and some
systems of government are in fact better than others. Now, which are
which would be a bone of contention, but I allege that the US is better
by a number of metrics than most other countries, although not better
than every country in every metric one could pose. Taken as a whole, I
think the conclusion is obvious, the US is in fact one of the best
places to live if you like freedom or capitalism. It could be a lot
better but there are places that are a lot worse. Some of that may well
be luck (geographical, historical, etc.) but a lot of it is due to some
very astute choices made by the founding fathers.
- Without slighting the contributions of anyone to the war effort, it
would be pure fantasy not to acknowledge that it was the US that won the
war in Europe and in the Pacific. To lose even one person is a tragedy,
as we say, War is Murder, but this was a pretty clear cut case of Good
vs. Evil. The huge number of russians who died is probably the second
most tragic part of the entire war (after Hitler's genocide) and the
fact that they had to die seems directly attributable to Stalin changing
sides in the middle. If he wasn't an evil person to start with he would
not have been a brutal dictator, but one certainly can fault his
decision to side WITH Hitler until he was double crossed as having made
the war in Europe an order of magnitude worse... that pact dividing
Poland adn the rest of eastern europe enabled Hitler to overrun the
continent.
Now, technically, I have "lost" this argument because I mentioned
Hitler. That's OK by me.
1 - Kyle did not say he is in favor of cultural relativism per se, but
one could read his words as supporting it. I don't. At least not
exactly.
--
Larry Pieniazek - larryp@novera.com - http://my.voyager.net/lar
http://www.mercator.com. Mercator, the e-business transformation company
fund Lugnet(tm): http://www.ebates.com/ ref: lar, 1/2 $$ to lugnet.
Note: this is a family forum!
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