Of course, but Germany belongs to the "West", too. I think GP alluded to e.g. human rights in China.
Well, I suppose you are missing all what happened after September 11 2001, including Guantanamo bay detention camp (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_detention_camp).
I find it mildly interesting that you both should mention the two somewhat incestuous partners, the US and the UK. (I don't live in either, so I may be somewhat insulated from these things and it's pretty easy to forget this stuff when it's not part of your daily life.)
I'm not going to argue that the Guantanamo situation is in any way a good thing, but at least it's not affecting a billion+ people every day. Obviously it's affecting several thousand people (and their relatives) way worse (individually) than the billion+ people are being affected in China.
Regarding the UK: Yes, it's terrible, but then again the UK population hasn't really experienced any real strife wrt. the powers wielded by its state... yet. That is, the populace at large probably haven't had any hands-on experience of just how badly things can go (Stasi, FSB, etc.). I truly hope it doesn't come to a 1984-type situation in the UK. At least it doesn't exist right now (cf. China). (EDIT: I would say that, post-Snowden, anyone who didn't believe that every nation on earth was spying on their own citizens in whatever way they could was probably being naive... but there are a great deal of people who have no idea who Snowden is.)
Anyway... these are definitely interesting times.
You might like to think so, but you'd be VERY VERY wrong. This year Trump surrogates began justifying their proposal to create a muslim registry by saying that the Japanese Internment gave precedence for their desired actions.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Edit: assuming the factual part of your comment is true, it isn't really off topic in an already-highly-politicized thread. I was reacting to what seemed like an injection of partisan politics, but there seems to be a reasonable connection between the two subjects, so we've put this back. The bit about making comments more civil when topics are divisive is still important, so please be mindful of that.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/18/us/politics/japanese-inter...
Is that a good enough source?
I mean, yes, I agree that we're seeing some extremely worrying signaling from the coming US administration, but it's not actually happening right now... and it would hopefully be struck down by (at least) the Supreme Court. Notwithstanding that, it's extremely worrying that these things are actually popular ideas... which I suppose speaks towards "moral superiority", so point taken.
But not to everyone, I'll agree.
..and we're still invading their lands and violating treaties with them.
Fact is, there was no future in which they were going to keep their nice things and in which we would be able to get where we are today.
(I'm not trying to discredit or diminish the Armenian genocide here, mind you, but rather point out we still have someone who committed genocide by the same terms on American money.)
Turkey, on the other hand, still tries to pretend that the Armenian Genocide did not happen, even prosecuting people who say it did.
We are by no means perfect, but I think nations which are able to acknowledge and learn from the mistakes of their past have a leg up on those that try to pretend everything was great.
The United States government has never acknowledged Native American genocide either.
The Nazi's downfall wasn't the genocide against Jews and other "undesirables", for all that that became the basis of punishment for some ex-regime figures after the Nazis were defeated.
Instead, please post civilly and substantively, and make your comments more civil and substantive on divisive topics, not less. That's the only way we can stave off a downward spiral in this place.
Edit: Actually, since there's evidence that you've violated the rules of this site many times previously, I'm banning your account until we get some indication that you'll stop doing this.
No, it's real, just not as real as we like to think. Between "imprison people of Japanese ancestry for the rest of the war, then free them" and "imprison people of Jewish ancestry, then kill them", there is a real moral difference. They are both wrong, but they are not equal.