The last place I expected to hear a defense of the "War of Southern Independence"...

[KabeRinnaul]

...was on a My Little Pony fanfiction site.

But apparently even here we have a few dyed-in-the-wool sons of the South, who are only too happy to explain about tyrannical government, Northern Aggression, the North being just as racist as the South, and how slavery really wasn't as big a deal as everyone makes it out to be.

[Gravekeeper]

...was on a My Little Pony fanfiction site.

But apparently even here we have a few dyed-in-the-wool sons of the South, who are only too happy to explain about tyrannical government, Northern Aggression, the North being just as racist as the South, and how slavery really wasn't as big a deal as everyone makes it out to be.

If you check the guys profile he actually has a Confederate pony story. It's 6601 words long. >.>

[KabeRinnaul]

If you check the guys profile he actually has a Confederate pony story. It's 6601 words long. >.>

I hadn't even looked at that, but in hindsight I'm not surprised.

In other news, I also wound up debating the merits of fascism today. Again with a brony. I don't even.

-: Have you ever wanted to actually kill another human being?
-: Or is it too edgy of a question right off the bat
Rinnaul: Kill? No. Break their face? Yes.
-: Why stop there? A job worth doing is a job worth doing right.
Rinnaul: Conscience, more or less. I stop at /wanting/ to hurt people because I'm aware of the consequences and that, in the end, it would resolve nothing. Death carries that much more of a moral and psychological burden.
-: I've always pondered this. Because, in a weird way, I have morals, I have a conscience, I have things that I consider clearly and undeniably wrong, but...I legitemately dont see whats so wrong with killing another person, espeically the right person. A lot of friends of mine don't really know how to discuss the subject beyond "Well...maybe you're just a half-sociopath...?", and I'd be interested to see the idea develop when reflected off of you for a change - if you'll excuse how heavy handed this topic is for a conversation even when we've barely gotten to know each other.
-: If you are even interested in such a thing, that is.
-: The only thing I know that really comes close to what I'm talking about is certain sects of Japanese Buddhism led by a guy named Issatsu tasho that basically says its perfectly okay and even desirable to kill a human if you have a good reason to.
-: Just so long as its not unprovoked
Rinnaul: Sure. In brief, my objections to it amount to what I said about capital punishment before. It's irreversible, and the greatest possible punishment. As such, it can only be morally and ethically undertaken with perfect knowledge of the situation and outcome, which is impossible. Even given perfect knowledge of the situation, rarely does death accomplish anything that imprisonment cannot.
-: Its irreversible, and its the greatest punishment.
-: Yes.
-: That's the point.
-: Thats the entire point
Rinnaul: Then its power relies entirely in the threat of its use. The act itself accomplishes nothing.
-: Yes it does.
-: How does it not?
-: Violence is the supreme authority from which all other authority is derived from
-: Violence is the most universal tool in solving virtually any sociological problem. It may not be the prettiest, but it is the most universal.
-: And, frankly, society itself is based upon violence
-: As it should be
-: Borders are guarded by soldiers who will inflict violence upon those who seek to violate said borders, police officers and national guard use violence to enforce laws upon those who do not willingly comply to said law, and violence is used to deter those sitting on the fence from thinking about doing anything
-: Violence is, un-arguably, the main pillar upon which all of society is built upon
-: Thus, its suppression is tantamount to societal decay
-: This is something that our forfathers had right, but modernism had to come in and say "NO, NO, ALL WRONG, WRONG WRONG"
-: Violence was embraced in almost every part of society, in almost every country in the world, up until the later parts of the industrial revolution.
-: From the stone age up until the soldification of the New World's power, the rules were simple as they were elegant:
-: "Cooperate, and we will cooperate. If you do not cooperate, you die." Tit for tat. Not the golden rule, but the lesser known but all too unappraised "brass rule"
-: And it worked, to a large degree. In other, more straightforward terms, what I'm talking about is simple. "You act civilized, and we treat you civilized. You act like a barbarian, and we treat you like barbarians. You act like a monster, and you will be burned like a monster."
-: In truth, this did not die off as late as I am making it appear.
-: Many countries still used this doctrine even into the modern era. Nazi Germany and the glorious Soviet Union, plus China in its later stages.
Rinnaul: Except all of those regimes were terrible, and the world as a whole was pretty terrible until modern times.
-: "Pretty terrible" according to decadent western first world post-enlightenment doctrine, yes.
-: Nazi Germany? Did pretty fucking great until leadership and Hitler's own strange racial theories started getting mixed into everything.
-: USSR? The pinnacle of what a strong, centralized, efficient government can do. They turned Russia from an agrarian serfdom-based feudal monarchy into the world's leading industrial producer and international superpower in less than 30 fucking years.
-: China under Communism? Their mistakes are more than forgivable considering that they took China out of two entire centuries of humiliation, circling international vultures, and internal instability, and made it a strong, prosperous country that is now the world's largest economy and soon to be leader in technological development.
-: All of these countries are reviled, hated, because we are taught to hate them by propoganda and our own self-confirmation. To look at them without bias, you would see them for what they really were - tough, brutal, yes, but incredibly competent and goal-driven, unfettered by the pettiness and frivolousness that our decadent democracies succumb to.
-: /end rant
-: But, this has devolved into politics now. This was intially about something else entirely.
-: Did I reveal too much of my powerlevel
Rinnaul: No, I'm just also making dinner. I think you're nigh-unspeakably wrong, but if I'm arguing politics I'd rather cite proper history in my arguments. Can't do both at once.
-: I can assure you, those who lived within the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany believed in just how righteous their cause was - just as much, and most likely even more fervently than you believe Democracy to be a righteous cause.
-: And, had the Axis won, our conceptions of them would be very, VERY different today.
Rinnaul: They had a habit of imprisoning or murdering anyone who contradicted them, so yes, we most likely would.
-: All is fair in mainting stability during times of war.
-: As for during times of peace, please don't tell me you subrscribe to the whole "Soviet Union killed 60 GORILLION OF ITS OWN PEOPLE IN THE GREAT PURGE" propoganda.
-: Deaths in gulags maxed out at 1.5 million, and then almost all of those deaths occured during the second world war.

(a bit missing here)

-: Going back to the very thoroughly derailed starting point
-: Have you honestly not met a single person whose life you wanted to take? Not even one?
Rinnaul: No, I don't believe I have. Not even the man who sexually abused me as a child. Even if I had, the essence of humanity is our ability to hold ourselves to a higher standard. We are human because we are able to choose to not harm.
-: Vengeance is a healthy and natural instinct whose suppression is the result only of christian and/or secularized christian values. One of my main mans Nietzsche talked a lot about this.
-: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transvaluation_of_values
-: Though I certainly don't agree with Nietzsche on many things as a result of him being a die-hard individualist in many areas, this I certainly agree with.
Rinnaul: Christianity is not the only philosophy that promotes peace, mercy, and forgiveness. Even if it were, speaking as an atheist, they are some of its greatest virtues.
-: And it is very arguable that you only hold such values as a result of having been born, raised, and existed all of your life in a society very deeply rooted in Christian morality.
-: There's a reason the Asians are an unforgiving lot, to their own benefit. They never had to deal with Christianity nor Buddhism to a large degree.
-: And those that did merely reappropriated it to their own national creeds - Hence why Japan managed to take Buddhism and instill it with so much warrior-code that Zen buddhism actually permits killing people as morally justifiable
-: I respect the Asians, really I do. They're a strong, proud people.
Rinnaul: I find it a rational conclusion. Causing harm does not undo harm done to me. Vengeance isn't neccessary to cope.
-: Its not about "undoing" the harm. Vengeance is the natural inspiration to remove a threat when it is presented. That's all it is, one of the simplest concepts in dealing with other people "Is it a threat? Yes? Destroy it."
-: "Is it a threat? No? Maybe we can cooperate"
Rinnaul: There are responses to potential threats that don't involve destroying said threats.
-: Of which death is the most universal, most permanent, and most efficient.
-: There's a reason the death penalty was used in /every culture in human history/ for thousands of years.

(another chunk is cut here, but in it I linked a video of the final speech from "The Great Dictator" and said it pretty much summarized my ideals: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dX25PDBb708 )

-: So your response is...an America comedian paid by the US to do a satire mockumentary of the enemy they were fighting in the war?

And then he went on a rant about how it's all stupid platitudes with no meaning, progress has no inherent value, Rousseau and Marx were idiots, and Chaplin was Marxist.

[s_stabeler]

it's worth realizing that the MLP fandom has changed somewhat since the earlier days, when the show was relatively new- and Bronies tended to be significantly more tolerant than other people. Now that MLP has become rather more popular, there's the usual level of assholes who identify themselves as Bronies, but either haven't watched the show, or rather missed the point the show was trying to make.