[Revolutionist]

Originally Posted by houkoholic

You just have too narrow of a definition of superiority then - superiority is simply "better than". There's nothing wrong with being morally superior as there are many case where such positions can be rightfully justified (for example most rational people would consider themselves morally superior to others who discriminate via sex or race, which today would be a perfectly justifiable morally superior stance to take). In history a lot of people have wage wars (and some case led to horrible horrible ethnic cleaning) on what they perceive as "savages" with this exact reason (such as during the colonial times). Rightfully or wrongly, the Vagan is using a superiority argument to do just that as you yourself have pointed out - they look at the Earthnoids as a sort of "savages" while they, the Vagans, are the enlighten (thus morally superior) ones.

Also the Vagan military consider themselves to be more physically powerful as ReddyRedWolf pointed out, and again invaders don't usually invade when they think of themselves as physically weaker than those they are attacking.



What straw man? Do you even know what straw man means, Revolutionist? The argument here is that the Vagans did view themselves as a superior race thus wage war. Is morally superior not a form of superiority? Them viewing the Earthnoid as cruel/ignorant is prove that they are using their moral superiority as a different race to Earthnoids to justification their cause to wage war against them.

If anything you should be directing your argument towards Denger, as he's the one that is thinking that moral superiority doesn't constitute as a form of "superiority". Denger pointed out that the Vagans look at Earthnoids as being cruel/ignorant, the quote by me you high lighted was my rhetorical question to how that is not a form of one considering themselves as superior.

you distorted his argument, and then "refuted" your version, not his and not very well either I might add...
yup, sounds like a straw man to me.