We're all a bit pissed - well maybe that's just me - but you have to see the flaw in that.

There are no moral absolutes. There never have been and never will be. Morality itself is a concept which changes and develops as those who think about it change and develop.

In Ancient Greece, the most celebrated expression of love was that between a mature man and an adolescent boy. Women were baby factories and little else. But today we'd see that as pederasty and misogyny.

In Biblical times, slavery - the ability to own another human being as property and dispose of that property as one saw fit (what today we might call rape, murder, paedophilia or other things) was so entrenched that in the Old and New Testaments it's taken as a fact of life. Yet today we see that as one of the most appalling concepts around: and the Church played a critical role in the abolition of slavery in this country and many others.

I could go on, about what we would today call sexism, homophobia and many other things.

But my point is, societies in different places have moved in the same direction, but at different speeds, on these questions.

We could, if you wanted, vilify everyone from the PRC. Yet they were ahead of us in giving prominent roles to women. We could vilify others from other places on other issues. But it probably wouldn't get anyone very far.

If we want - and I think we do - to promulgate modern Western values: on gender, race, sexuality, religion and so on; then we have to think about what is most likely to succeed in bringing others with us.

The awful thing about Trump is not his actual beliefs, though they are pretty f**king awful. It's the retrograde nature of them compared with the rest of America. He wants to drag America back to a time when brown people were not as good as white people, women were not as good as men, people who aren't straight are somehow lesser than people who are.

It's that retrograde motion - the taking back of rights won at no small cost - that's the real issue.

Dealing with China, Russia, or other places, is different. Those rights are yet to be fully won in those places (though in some areas they are well ahead of us) but the direction of travel is "our" direction of travel.

It's tempting but wrong to deal with morality in absolute terms. There simply are no moral absolutes, as the most cursory glance at history will tell you.

I'm not a massive Bercow fan but I do think he's made the right stand on the right issues in this instance.

Criticism and ostracism isn't the answer to that. Where there are cultures deeply

Posted By: Old Man on February 6th 2017 at 23:50:32

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