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B Knotts, you were very correct and thank you for reading the whole article. I did indeed suggest that Putin was Hitler in a sense, but I think you missed the larger point I was making, which is that it doesn’t matter.
Whether it’s Hitler, Gandhi, Putin or Mandela, really doesn’t matter to my analysis.
That is, it’s about the people under duress, the people being denied their group sense of self by an overweaning government. One of the reasons I decided to show up on this thread is that the sentiment I just expressed is quintessentially conservative.
OK...I think I follow you. And I agree that self-determination is a fundamental right, which is rather selectively recognized.
The trouble comes in when self-determination is to some degree inauthentic, and is used as a mere ruse by an outside aggressor. That is what I see happening here, as well as what happened in 1930s.
Shall therefore we cede the southwest to Mexico? I think there will always be a tension between self-determination and territorial integrity.
You'll have to explain that to a dumb ole boy from Bama someday.