Your examples describe a government which acts in its own interests (rather than by moral ideals )
That's one way to look at it, but this is more about the actual responses of progressives themselves and I tried to phrase it that way (I.E. "What do we expect the modern sensible progressive to feel?").
What do you think about the Viet Minh's genocide against the Hoa? What do you even know about them? Is it anything at all like what you feel about the Holocaust?
What do you feel when you think about John Brown? Do you think about him? Is it at all like your mental image of Timmy McVeigh?
What's your response to the Liverpool Care Pathway? Is that even on your radar? How about the Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment, I'm sure you've got a strong feeling about that one?
There is a pattern here; supposed moral concerns do not accurately predict how progressives, ordinary progressives not politicians remember, react to most issues. There are patterns of thought and behavior here and elsewhere which simply do not make sense except in the context of systematically eliminating non-aligned bases of power and expanding aligned ones. This is the absolute essence of the issue.
Me, personally? My domain is biology, and am aware that my political opinions on most issues aren't to be taken any more seriously than the average undergraduate's opinions. I suppose that makes me the "average progressive", so maybe that's a good thing:
Truthfully, none of those are on my radar, and I know nothing about the Holocaust beyond what I learned in school. As far as I'm concerned it's just one among many terrible genocides, and one that presently gets more attention than the others because it was committed against a group who currently...
People want to tell everything instead of telling the best 15 words. They want to learn everything instead of the best 15 words. In this thread, instead post the best 15-words from a book you've read recently (or anything else). It has to stand on its own. It's not a summary, the whole value needs to be contained in those words.
I'll start in the comments below.
(Voted by the Schelling study group as the best exercise of the meeting.)