@ImpossibleBob@PerBylund "their ideology depends upon that belief"
This helps explain the fierce emotion and cult-like behaviour. Notwithstanding the motte-and-bailey arguments they put forward, mostly they just want to print money and have something for nothing.
@CapelLofft Thank you for that. It's what I thought you meant.
I rather suspect that liberalism has pretty much won the argument. Even today's collectivists still seem enamoured of e.g., "human rights".
Perhaps the Church is one of the last outposts of an older tradition.
@CapelLofft Liberalism as a term has been so abused lately that it's often hard to tell what is meant. Americans and online commenters seem to use it only to mean leftwing or woke.
@RnaudBertrand@DhrCZ "The West has literally no moral high ground, or lesson, to give..."
When I am critical, it is me, not "the West" speaking. You think in these grand abstractions.
And your dismissal of Germany tout court because "genocide" is mere sloganizing.
@RnaudBertrand@DhrCZ "moving toward true understanding"
Still, "true understanding" does not mean absence of criticism, or disagreement about fundamentals, or turning a blind eye to abuse and injustice.
I think you're setting up a bit of straw man here.
@SouthernM46171 "So when Bertrand says reality is finally profitable again"
Has he discovered a new commitment to truth-telling then, rather than mere propagandizing for the regime?
@RuneDenmark@MichaelAArouet@WRx450_21 "Vacant skyscrapers and ghost cities are not really a thing though."
The principle he's highlighting is a thing, though, irrespective of whether you can find an empty skyscraper or a ghost city.
Malinvestment consumes capital. It can't go on forever.
@whitevancisman@Louise_Rowntree@DavidGHFrost To be fair, some did suggest EFTA as an alternative to EU membership - like e.g., Norway, which is in the Single Market.
But it is basically rule-taking. And it would not be suited to an economy like the UK's.
@peterkyle You assume government can make wise investment choices. But government is full of people who can't even distinguish between investment and spending.
@DigitalVagrant@Artemisfornow "There’s only one real way out of this: strong end-to-end encryption."
Surely the whole point of device-level scanning is that it scans before the encryption happens.
@_HelenDale 2/2
One of the unpleasant ironies is that they are more likely to find fascist thinking more amenable than, say, the classical liberal tradition or the pre-Enlightenment thinkers.
@_HelenDale I suspect the problem is partly that people are increasingly taught to think in ideological terms. They find it hard to conceive of politics, or indeed of questions of truth and being, outside an ideological framework.
1/2