I’m answering the question from the perspective of someone that doesn’t think humans are special. That was what you asked. That’s why it was a response to your question of @cyclonengineer.
Oh, Ok, you denied it earlier too when I sniffed out the same attitude.
It wasn’t a rationally consistent answer… but it wasn’t yours… 
When?
Here’s the text of the agreement I’m supposed to be frothing at the mouth at the chance to go to war over.
See: 6.
As someone who was previously enlisted, I feel a perspective for this conversation might be needed.
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If you want the US to be involved in this conflict, would YOU yourself be willing to enlist to help Ukraine?
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Or if you are over 32 (oldest age to enlist by), would you be willing to send your son(s) to war over this?
I’m a bit of a fence sitter currently so consider me impartial. I just think this perspective is necessary to consider if one believes we ought to fight this fight. It’s FAR easier for someone else to go to war for your ideologies.
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This is the question. I’m going to guess an honest answer is usually “no(edit: at least, not in practice).”
Not gunna lie. This kinda hurts.
FTR My son is 3 and no, he can’t go to war. If he were of age, then it’d be up to him and I’d have no right. In general terms of going to fight for things in the military, this fight would be one of the more justified ones in recent memory. I’m not sold on it being smart though.
It shouldn’t. I honestly couldn’t imagine going back to enlist now - it was far easier when I was young and dumb with nowhere to go/nothing to do.
If your son were of age; would you still be advocating for the US to go to war? (apologies if I’m misrepresenting your opinions, it’s quite hard to keep up with all the comments on this thread)
Yeah, but I didn’t know the army wouldn’t take me now. I’ll take my bad back and knee elsewhere where I’m wanted lol.
I haven’t advocated going to war. And I don’t claim to know what the best course of action is other than cheering for the Ukrainians. It’s also hard to imagine my boy as an adult, but I don’t know that I can see myself ever actively advocating him going to war. So, not at this point in the conflict, no. I’ll give some money for Russian sanctions, or for providing arms to the Ukrainians though.
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BTW, this is an excellent thread from a Russian activist about treatment of other religions, non-Russians and assorted minorities in Putin’s Russia. This isn’t the modern-day woke suffering olympics with wrong pronouns and “silence is violence”, this is a man getting beaten to death in the street by neo-nazis for wearing a “gay hat” for example.
Every time in history where one group of people thinks they are more special than someone else many people and or cultures die
Examples
- Greeks try to create a huge empire and convert everyone to their way of government. Their own civilization eventually collapsed after destroying many others.
- Same thing happened to the Romans
- Conquistadors go to “New World” and basically take out whole groups of people
- European settlers of the US think they are better than the indigenous peoples and basically wipe out their populations
- Nazis claim they are special and exterminate 6 million Jews.
I could go on but you get the idea.
I have two boys who are in their early 20s. One is in ROTC and will be graduating college in a year. He’s in Morroco currently working on his Arabic. My other son may be going into the Army reserves in the fall. I would rather them fight in Ukraine for a clear purpose than an open-ended fight in the Middle East.
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My hat goes off to you raising two great young men. I understand the disinterest in conflict in the middle east, but the risk of death/injury is far lower in the middle east than vs Russia. A more noble cause for sure, but far more risk involved in this type of warfare.
It’s not fighting against mid-1800’s battle tactics this go round.
None of those advanced civilization and made things generally better? Except maybe the Nazis, who I can’t really think of ways they advanced anything (though they were defeated by American exceptionalism, UK steadfastness, and even Russian might), the others advanced standards of living the world over in the end. There is at least something of a tradeoff between bad and good.
Funny. But you did not think about the implications of what I was saying or you are so shortsighted that you really don’t think they exist.
Taiwan is the number one producer of computer chips worldwide and not only number one, they produce nearly all of them. They are one of the few states with the resources. Chips = technology. If China takes Taiwan, Russia and China do a nice collab and they run away with technology, then I would not think for one second that America is safe. There will be sanctions on you. Then there will be Invasion or just pure destruction.
Yes America is safe for now, but with the attitude of “what do I care?”, it won’t be for long. I’m living in Germany and we Europeans are further along with the progressive materialistic mindest than you guys are. I can tell you that we would not stand a chance against a Russian invasion. Even though we have more people, more money, more weapons and better weapons. We couldn’t fight. We are morally crippled. Your mindest morally cripples America and if you don’t stand for something, you will fall.
I understand @BrickHead s mindset. I wouldn’t want to export our materialistic values into other countries either. Our progressive turning children into trannies and always buying just to have mindset, our false gods, I can understand all of that. But here, we are not talking about invading another country, we are not talking about civilizing a third world state. We are talking about defending the freedom of a sovereign country and ally of ours. The Ukrainians are our friends.
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I’m a history nerd, so I have to nitpick. Greeks didn’t try to create a huge empire, they created quarrelling city-states across the Mediterranean and were plagued by incessant infighting which caused their downfall when faced with an actual autocrat Philip II of Macedon, Alexander the Great’s father.
Alexander the Great’s successors created Empires that lasted around 300 years and Romans 1000+ because they were extremely inclusive - xenophobia was exclusively cultural and if you were willing to pay taxes and obey Roman cultural ways (but not religions, you were free to bring your gods into the pantheon to be worshipped by others) you’d be accepted readily.
By disease mostly, in both Americas. In addition, there’s a huge difference between North and South America in terms of native population survivability. The Spaniards unlike the Brits didn’t have excess population to settle the new lands so they couldn’t afford to kill off the natives by disease or the sword.
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The examples are not consistent and historically illiterate.
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Kadyrov’s jihadists - but with music - parade before going to Ukraine.
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Relevant to the thread:
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