Novac08

I’m happy we agree that conserving identity isn’t the same as asserting raw dominance. I also don’t think any living culture can stay wholly ‘apolitical’; it coasts for a bit, like a car rolling after the gas is cut, but eventually it needs public choices to stay alive. Thanks for the exchange—gave me plenty to chew on.

@Leo Gura I keep circling back to the same snag: if every time a leader grabs all the levers we call it “conservative,” the word ends up meaning nothing but “authoritarian.” Lenin blows up monasteries, Mao melts temple bells, Pol Pot bans the calendar—none of that is conserving an old order; it’s bulldozing it to build a brand-new hierarchy. What drops out of view is the everyday motive to keep fragile inheritances alive. Spend an afternoon in parts of Andalusia, a Mexican pueblo mágico, Kyoto’s old streets, or Istanbul’s historic quarters and you can feel the beauty and wisdom of tradition: not just the buildings, but the recipes, dances, dialects, poems, music, church liturgies—even the traditional understandings of family and gender that knit a place together. When those start disappearing, many people defend them not because they crave domination but because life without them feels thin. You collect old African masks. Even if you can’t trace each one to its exact workshop, you sense they carry something old andmeaningful. If a government plan bulldozed every mask-maker’s stall for a generic food court, I doubt you’d shrug. Maybe that reflex is “conservative,” but it isn’t the same as seizing the radio tower and jailing the opposition. Out of curiosity, can you point to a movement that stayed egalitarian, liberal, and genuinely self-sacrificing all the way through? Scandinavia comes closest to me—yet even there the model rests on deep Lutheran ethics and a tight-knit national story. Now that large-scale immigration is testing those shared habits, the region is wrestling with illiberal currents of its own. That seems to confirm the point: the liberal framework worked while it was anchored in a culture someone first had to conserve. I’m still not convinced that power consolidation automatically equals “conservative,” but I’m open to the example that will change my mind.

@Leo Gura— I like the way you track who’s grabbing for power and why, but when the Nazis get dropped straight into the “conservative” bucket, a lot of texture disappears. They torched Marxist, liberal, and Jewish works—yet Stalin’s censors destroyed “deviationist” Marxists and liberal socialists, and Mao’s Red Guards ripped up “bourgeois” books. Silencing rival ideas isn’t a left-or-right signal; it’s an authoritarian reflex. Hitler didn’t merely polish up the Kaiser’s old order; he blew it up. State-directed industry, mass propaganda, youth re-education, a messianic foreign policy, even animal-rights laws—bits of tradition as costume over a radical, utopian project. Many old-guard conservatives supported him, only to be sidelined or shot once he had power. If Nazis file under “conservative,” where do we shelve the Committee of Public Safety, the Khmer Rouge, or Mao’s China? They weren’t conserving anything, but they were every bit as illiberal. A single liberal-conservative rail can’t carry that load; you need a second axis—authoritarian vs. liberal—to see why Nazi and Stalinist regimes land in the same quadrant despite opposite economic rhetoric. That extra axis also explains the unease some on the right feel about Trump. Think Ross-Douthat–style religious conservatives who warn that allying with him is “Saruman cutting a deal with Sauron,” or Wall-Street donors who worry strong-man politics will trash stable institutions they depend on. They see a Pyrrhic victory: defeating their rivals while adopting tactics that corrode the norms they meant to preserve. So if far-left excesses are illiberal yet not conservative, what do we call them? And if they need a second axis, maybe the Nazi example does too. Curious where you land on this.

That makes sense, which is why you don't see these countries bringing dictatorships back into power. There's order in a police state, but most people aren't willing to take a pay cut, which is why communist and fascist systems are often imposed rather than voted in. It’s not like you see East Germans clamouring to rebuild the wall 😅

Yes, but they’ve voted in the AFD instead of the far left.

@Husseinisdoingfine It's interesting—you do hear this opinion in Argentina and Uruguay as well. It's not a popular or politically correct perspective, but you do hear people on the right say that the streets were clean and safe under fascism, with no graffiti, etc. I've never been to Chile, but I hear Pinochet still has significant support, likely due to his economic reforms that stabilized the country despite his regime's brutal human rights abuses, which makes it telling that he was apprehended outside of Chile.

I'm sorry to say this, as I admire Europe, but I believe Europe is at greater risk of facing significant challenges than the US. An aging workforce, precarious energy security, a lack of military preparedness to safeguard energy supplies, and rising welfare costs will all act as headwinds, keeping Europe behind the U.S. for many years to come. Additionally, there is increasing pressure against one potential solution to some of these issues: immigration. The rise of anti-immigrant parties in Europe suggests that governments are likley to move further away from this option. Even the ECB recently published a report highlighting how European productivity is falling behind the U.S., largely due to slower adoption of digital technologies and a stagnant industrial structure. Europe's lag in the tech sector, in particular, has widened the productivity gap over the years, with the U.S. far outpacing Europe in innovation and economic growth. None of Europe’s problems have easy fixes. For example, building up a military would require taking resources away from healthcare. The US, on the other hand, has significant problems but no energy/food/defense vulnerabilities, and its issues are ones that can be dealt with over time. Finally, while Marxism can be useful for analyzing systemic contradictions (which is why it’s so popular in academia), if you think Varoufakis is going to get us out of this, I’m afraid the likelier scenario is that you’ll need to relearn some hard lessons from the 20th century about what happens when a genuine left takes power. For many Latin Americans in the US, those lessons have left scars that will stay with them for life. Here's the ECB report:https://commission.europa.eu/topics/strengthening-european-competitiveness/eu-competitiveness-looking-ahead_en

After communist revolutions, the genuine believers are often the first to go, as their ideals clash with the new leadership's need for control. (See Stalin's purges, Castro's sidelining of Che, and the Cultural Revolution)

@Leo Gura I'm really looking forward to your video on communism, probably because I still feel unresolved about this topic. For much of my youth, I believed the left's failure to succeed globally was due to imperialism and conservatism, both internally and externally. That belief began to unravel when I participated in Los Angeles County essentially lighting a billion dollars on fire in an attempt to address homelessness. Everyone involved was on the left, and the dysfunction I saw shattered my perspective. The inefficiency was staggering—there was a basic inability to do math, endless paperwork, selfishness, and so many other issues. I felt naive thinking it was simply a matter of resources—because when the resources came, the problem only worsened. Skid Row looks worse than a war-zone refugee camp, and it’s painful to see how an entire industry has formed around servicing and perpetuating extreme poverty with government money. My father was from Argentina, and I used to sympathize with the common Latin American view that the region’s problems were primarily caused by the U.S. Without dismissing that entirely, I now think that in most cases, the issues are self-inflicted—nowhere more clearly than in Cuba and Venezuela. I also find myself sympathizing with the doctrine of containment. These ideas are powerful, and there’s something intuitive about the appeal of fairness and equality that communism speaks to. But ultimately, it's a wrong turn—and the world would be a much worse place if communism had been allowed to spread unchecked.

@Leo Gura It makes sense when you put it that way, and I can understand your perspective better now. That said, I take issue with the idea that this is irrelevant or a whataboutism. Like you, I live in the southwest USA. I worked in a government agency that began every committee meeting with an acknowledgement of stolen land. I even managed a team with a native colleague who openly viewed us as invaders. These experiences often left me wondering if the truly ethical response would be to find a way to return to Europe, despite my family having been in the Americas for 3+ generations. So, for me, these questions don’t feel irrelevant—they speak to broader moral dilemmas that I continue to wrestle with. As for Israel/Palestine, it has always struck me as a deeply entrenched conflict between two groups unwilling to accept each other's presence. It feels distant and complex, much like other regions of high conflict, such as parts of Africa. However, I do understand your point about U.S. involvement with Israel and Iran, and I agree that the U.S. should not support this kind of brutality or be dragged into WW3.

@Leo Gura I genuinely find @Gennadiy1981's point to be quite thought-provoking. Why focus so heavily on Israel when you reside on land that was also taken from its original inhabitants? What's stopping you from returning your land to the indigenous people who still want it and from whom it was stolen not too long ago? I'm asking this not to provoke, but to understand why there's such a focus on something largely beyond your control while a similar issue closer to home seems to be avoided.

@Bobby_2021 Reading your posts brings back some nostalgia for the certainty I felt in my twenties, when I moved to Venezuela hoping to witness a new way of organizing society. I don’t think China has escaped the inequality and exploitation you describe in the US. One striking part of China is precisely the disparity between the development and wealth in Shanghai versus other regions. The example you gave about Amazon workers and pee bottles would feel familiar to Chinese factory workers. And if China were to return to Maoist ideals, it might start resembling North Korea or Cuba. The demographic weaknesses that you attribute to South Korea are also present in China. I think Leo is right—you’re not in a reflective phase when it comes to your politics. Right now, you're a soldier for your cause, and it’s not a soldier’s role to question or reflect. This stage is particularly appealing to young people and those with youthful minds, and there’s nothing wrong with that, but it does make this forum feel like an awkward fit. The US isn’t purely free-market capitalism. I spent a decade working in government homeless services programs, and in that time, you learn a lot about why government can’t always solve certain problems. What I wish for you is to go and experience communism, hopefully in some capacity that you will be able to get out. I think that is one of the most telling and terrifying parts of Communist societies - the fact that the unconverted are not able to leave. These are one-way walls. I've spoken to a few people who have lived in Cuba for a bit, and realized that it is rife with corruption, hypocrisy, mediocrity, and that most of the problems are self-inflicted. Ultimately, with time you may become open to seeing the complexities and contradictions in all systems—as Leo points out. It’s through real-life experience, not ideology, that we gain a deeper understanding of what truly works for people and what doesn’t.

@gambler you’re getting pretty close to modeling the behavior that he’s describing

@Bobby_2021 That's a beautiful song

@Leo Gura So Stalin was a centrist? Or a conservative, but not as conservative as Hitler? Ultimately, historical figures like Stalin and Mao challenge simple categorizations, as do many others. De Gaulle was a staunch nationalist and defender of French traditions, but also implemented significant social and economic reforms. Perón blended populist redistribution with authoritarian nationalism. Atatürk was a secularizing modernizer, but also a nation-building conservative. Even Gandhi, often associated with progressive causes like nonviolence and anti-colonialism, held many deeply traditional and conservative views, especially regarding social and religious matters. Their political thought and actions combine elements of radicalism and conservatism, leftism and rightism, in complex and sometimes paradoxical ways. These examples underscore the limitations of trying to fit complex political figures and movements into neat, binary categories.