By the way I reject the characterisation of my view as that “the white race has somehow been more evil than others”. That’s a bit of an over-simplification: as you say, it would be downright silly.

Sure. But, being an avid reader of Svetlana Voreskova, I have come to realize what sorts of rational fallacies get her attention. At some point, this must have been heavily implied, either intentionally or unintentionally.

I’d be interested to see counter arguments to what I actually said, rather than to someone else’s interpretation?

I’d be inclined to simply state that all authoritarian systems of government, be they a traditional monarchy, theistic dictatorship, atheistic dictatorship, fascism, socialistic, communistic….whatever…..share certain characteristics, because ultimately, they rely on a certain level of coersion to curb the human creature’s libertarian and capitalistic instincts.

Everyone, at some point, after all, gets tired of being told what to do.

AND, since no government is 100% consistent in their governance philosophy 100% of the time….even more liberal democracies can share certain characteristics with authoritarian systems. For example, you can parse shades of grey all you like, but at the end of the day, what Hitler’s facisistic imprisonment of the Jews is no different than FDR’s facisistic imprisonment of the Japanese. Both men had what was, to them, a perfectly logical reason for violating the human rights of those racial groups.

(Please note that the analogy stops with “imprisonment” — Hitler continued the process into genocide, whilst FDR did not. Obviously. )

My $.02.