1. The superstitions of the savages must be replaced by modern, scientific progress.
2. Primitive technologies and social arrangements should be replaced with civilized government.
3. Political action should be moderated, and conducted after slow deliberation.
4. Freedom of speech, within reason, has always been a superior characteristic of our civilization.
5. Certain territories are benighted by backwardness and xenophobia, as is demonstrated by their treatment of our visitors.
6. The social order may not always be perfect, but our institutions are essentially just.
7. The world is not shaped by conspiracies of elites, but by inevitable economic forces. You will sooner alter the seasons.
8. No power can seriously threaten our Empire, on which the sun never sets. At most there will be little peacekeeping actions -- the savage wars of peace.
9. Pacifism is the way forward, just like Oswald Mosley said.
10. We are all lambs, who are protected by our Good Shepherd, the Crown.
11. A proper education teaches each of us to do our own small duty within our rightful place.
12. We are not brutes but gentle-men.
13. The masses require guidance from the better sort.
14. The English language was perfected in Shakespeare's time, and it is for us simply to speak it correctly.
Sounds like a civilized country, with maybe a Mosley-shaped exception. And your method does a far better job to show how harebrained all these sounds-like-everything-comments are. (Which I am having considerable trouble believing, but maybe it's a language thing)
To give away the joke, my post should be read in the stereotyped voice of a British conservative with a mustache and harrumphing. Maybe not a full-on "fascist" (the Mosley sympathies I have projected onto him notwithstanding), but also very much not the person that Eco, or the people who want to use this ammunition, would want to lionize.
Also, some of the statements in my post, like (6), are at direct odds with what's currently trendy to say.
The main point, though, is that although I like Umberto Eco, this article has still never made a lot of sense to me.
1. The superstitions of the savages must be replaced by modern, scientific progress.
2. Primitive technologies and social arrangements should be replaced with civilized government.
3. Political action should be moderated, and conducted after slow deliberation.
4. Freedom of speech, within reason, has always been a superior characteristic of our civilization.
5. Certain territories are benighted by backwardness and xenophobia, as is demonstrated by their treatment of our visitors.
6. The social order may not always be perfect, but our institutions are essentially just.
7. The world is not shaped by conspiracies of elites, but by inevitable economic forces. You will sooner alter the seasons.
8. No power can seriously threaten our Empire, on which the sun never sets. At most there will be little peacekeeping actions -- the savage wars of peace.
9. Pacifism is the way forward, just like Oswald Mosley said.
10. We are all lambs, who are protected by our Good Shepherd, the Crown.
11. A proper education teaches each of us to do our own small duty within our rightful place.
12. We are not brutes but gentle-men.
13. The masses require guidance from the better sort.
14. The English language was perfected in Shakespeare's time, and it is for us simply to speak it correctly.