In all the discussions about whether "alt-right" should be tolerated, I tripped over the curiosity rock about what causes people to form or change political beliefs, what constitutes extremism, whether or not people come to realize they hold an extreme position, and how we can restore balance.

I got caught having a bad knee-jerk reaction here, and while I don't think my conclusion was wrong, it's taking a bit of work to unpack all of the knowledge, experience, and ideological biases that underlie it.

So, Tilders, was there a formative moment in your life (or close family/friend's experience) that set you on a course to uphold and defend a particular ideology, or did your position evolve over time?
Do you feel your adherence is "radical" or "extreme", and/or have others told you that you're an extremist/radical/ideologue?
What (or who) does your position make you unable to tolerate, if anything (or kind of person)?
Has your belief changed over time, or what do you think would change it?

There's lot of academia out there that suggests that everyone has blindspots, topics and issues that we take with so much certainty that we would not even think to question them, people who so rarely enter into our concerns that we do not think to consider their needs or concerns, etc.

It's hard to know exactly what our own blindspots are because by their very nature as soon as they are identified they lose some of their power. This sort of self-awareness is difficult even on the best day, but it allows us to more reasonably address people who don't hold our views, so I think the exercise is justified.

This topic is intended to be introspective. Wherever you identify politically (left, right, moderate, anarchist, libertarian, the works), what are some topics and groups that your political people tend to struggle to focus on?

I've been consuming the darkness that is wartime histories from the past three or four centuries and I feel like I've encountered a lot of people who had what they believed to be justifiable reasons to launch wars against other powers. There are people who thought they had divine right to a particular position of power and so would launch a war to assert that god-given right. There are people who believed in a citizen's right to have some (any) say in how their tax money gets used in government and so would fight wars over that. People would fight wars to, as John Cleese once said, "Keep China British." Many wars are started to save the honor of a country/nation. Some are started in what is claimed to be self-defense and later turns out to have been a political play instigated to end what has been a political thorn in their sides.

In all this time, I've struggled to really justify many of these wars, but some of that comes with the knowledge of what other wars have cost in terms of human carnage and suffering. For some societies in some periods, the military is one of the few vehicles to social mobility (and I think tend to think social mobility is grease that keeps a society functioning). Often these conflicts come down to one man's penis and the inability to swallow their pride to find a workable solution unless at the end of a bayonet. These conflicts also come with the winning powers taking the opportunity to rid themselves of political threats and exacting new harms on the defeated powers (which comes back around again the next time people see each other in a conflict).

So help keep me from embracing a totally pacifistic approach to war. When is a war justifiable? When it is not only morally acceptable but a moral imperative to go to war? Please point to examples throughout history where these situations have happened, if you can (though if you're prepared to admit that there has been no justifiable war that you're aware of, I suppose that's fine if bitter).