Reflecting on this post as a 40 year Unitarian Universalist, I find participating in General Assembly and the direction that our denomination's national leadership it taking is to be extreme. From this vantage point, your premises appear to hold true. When I step back from the extreme, to a more pragmatic, local, less dogmatic left, the distinction between left and right becomes sharper.
Well spoken, David. The real danger comes when an extreme faction, whether Left or Right or whatever, comes powerful enough to take over, especially as that faction attempts to normalize its extremism. If it has the guns, the result is either extreme repression, revolution, or an invasion - lots of brutality and bloodshed (think, the French and Russian revolutions, Hitler, Mao, etc.). Even in more benign cases, where a legal structure and basic norms are maintained, the result is long term decay and conflict.
The US has been suffering from the neo-liberal / neo-con takeover for some decades now, and the bill is finally coming due, setting the stage for some form of societal and civilizational collapse.
Reflecting on this post as a 40 year Unitarian Universalist, I find participating in General Assembly and the direction that our denomination's national leadership it taking is to be extreme. From this vantage point, your premises appear to hold true. When I step back from the extreme, to a more pragmatic, local, less dogmatic left, the distinction between left and right becomes sharper.
Well spoken, David. The real danger comes when an extreme faction, whether Left or Right or whatever, comes powerful enough to take over, especially as that faction attempts to normalize its extremism. If it has the guns, the result is either extreme repression, revolution, or an invasion - lots of brutality and bloodshed (think, the French and Russian revolutions, Hitler, Mao, etc.). Even in more benign cases, where a legal structure and basic norms are maintained, the result is long term decay and conflict.
The US has been suffering from the neo-liberal / neo-con takeover for some decades now, and the bill is finally coming due, setting the stage for some form of societal and civilizational collapse.