how should US respond to anti LBGT laws enacted in Russia

"Right. Putin's oligarchy won't give Russia leadership. So we have to do it for them."

Good lord. Pardon me, but what a load of crap, with all due respect. Speaking out in support of human rights, and against the policies of Mr. Putin, is hardly "giving Russia leadership." It is supporting our own ideals and values, and speaking out against discrimination, wherever we find it, both within and without the United States. In this instance, the Russia that exists under the oligarchic regime of Vladimir Putin. I strongly support the right of the LBGT community to be treated the same way our so-called "straight" members of society are, again, both within the United States, and outside our own country. How that becomes your paranoid view of The West is something I find a bit bizarre.

"Like I said, Westerner liberals have a huge proselytizing tendency, complete with arrogance that their ideals, their human rights, are absolutely correct, in all times, all cultures, and all places. We've seen this over and over again ever since the fall of the Berlin Wall. From Western observers arrogantly giving Kosovo a constitution after a bunch of people who weren't from the country to Iraq to the current mess, when we refuse to admit that maybe Russia may want to rebuild a national legacy after the materialist attack that Communism inflicted upon it for 70 years."

Is that how "we" feel? I had no idea. Thank you so much for explaining to me, and everyone else in this country, why we think the way we do. How we managed all these years without your insight is a mystery.

"Western liberalism combines the universal missionary sentiment of Christianity with a claim to represent the will of the people, so it's naturally uncomfortable admitting that different values may be authentic expressions of the will of the majority. Deep down, everybody must want the materialist salvation that its social vision offers. To suggest otherwise is to undermine one of its pillars; if salvation isn't for everybody that undermines the universalism that underpins its missionary drive, if salvation is something that must be rammed through against the wishes of most people that undermines its claim to populism (and bitter historical experience has made us rightly suspicious of the idea that we must force our own values on unwilling foreigners)."

So when a powerful man fixes his country's elections, arrests and imprisons his opponents, and supports discrimination against entire groups of people, that represents "the will of the people?" Why we haven't learned to accept those kinds of governments without questioning them has to be The Mystery of the Age. Thank you so much for making such a complicated issue crystal clear.


For someone who seems to love applying the word "arrogance" and "arrogant" to enormous groups of people, as in "Western liberals," you certainly exhibit your own brand of arrogance in large quantities. Exaggerate much?

 

I'm srs.







































:grin:

 

How about a petition. That always works.

 

Not a single thing.