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If your posts hadn't led me to believe you had never read one I would never have gone there, now upon reading your response I am just disgusted that having already known about the beautiful occurrences under imperialism, you were able to shrug off genocide, the degradation of human life, the exploitation of an entire people, and the total disregard for a nation and cultural autonomy and sovereignty.OK lets see here first of all, you really need to come up with opinions for yourself instead of getting them line for line from a 6th grade social studies book
No they did not "profit" from Africa and India, they raped Africa and India, along the way they created extreme poverty and treated their subjects as less than human. The British even went as far as to slaughter innocent protestors in Calcutta in an act of Tyranny that cost 3000 lives. Is that ok to you. BTW, I'm curious, you don't want me to bring up facts from my sixth grade history book, but you casually ignore MERCANTILISM ? There was nothing about the British colonial system set up to "nation build" as you seem to be implying. Also, the Indian society has certainly not reverted back to "tribal warfare" or backwards society, the fact that most of their natural resources are now sitting in London does say something as to the effect of why they are one of the poorest nations on earth.British: Of course they profited from Africa and India, what else would be the point of them being there? My point is, the Native population made gains during this time too in overall wealth of the country. Before the British got there the natives were segmented into many tribes constantly warring with one another. When they were there, they weren’t. After they left, they reverted.
Did you not read anything I wrote on the cause of tribal warfare? It was because of Imperialism, the British also didn't stop it during their control of their African possessions, they simply continued to exploit, exploit, exploit.
Not so fast chief, the Spaniards frequently went into Native American villages and purposely spread epidemics such as small pocks by giving the villagers infected blankets or leaving dead and uncovered soldiers to rot in public."Indians" on Cuba, Haiti, and the Rest of the Caribbean Islands were almost all knocked out by disease not mass slaughter as were all the native Americans in the new world even the ones in the US)
God where did you learn history, remind me to smack the teacher, have you ever heard of the Silk Road? Mongol rule restricted trade between the east and west, trade that had been flourishing since the times of the Roman Empire (Travels was published around 1200 a.d.) And that is the worst attempt at deflecting the accepted accounts that everyone with a degree in history agrees with, the Muslim lands were turned into wastelands, buffer regions to "protect" the Mongol empire, trying to deny it makes you no different then those people saying the holocaust never happened, just a figment of our imagination.Mongols: There are no accounts written by the Mongols themselves of their conquests. All accounts are written by the defeated and occupied. The fact remains that if an enemy surrendered, NO ONE was harmed and the local government was usually kept in place paying LESS of a tribute to the khans than they usually did to their original lord or king. During Genghis’ reign and afterwards the FIRST trade routes were established between East and West, enriching BOTH sides with new cultures, ideas, and ways of life.
I was being sarcasticFinally, to disagree with someone's opinions is fine. But to mock threaten physical violence, call someone a racist because of their ideas on events that happened hundreds even thousands of years ago on the other side of the world, and question their education and intelligence, in my opinion isn't.
Not everyone that disagrees with you is an uneducated redneck bully.
Right, and the Iraqi people seemed to be far more peaceful under Sadaam, I am not saying that he didn't use terror to achieve this, but the fact of the matter is, that quite a few Iraqi's are fighting us right now, not creating a new government, so what have we accomplished if we have created more chaos, but no new and stable government? The upcoming elections are for a cons utional convention, not a government bureaucracy. No new leadership. No new government. If Iraqis are busy trying to force what they see as occupiers out of their country, they aren't nation building, they are just setting up a new Lebanon.While government is a representative of a society in the international forum of ideas, the philosophies of that government don't necessarily reflect what the people actually want. Government can represent a group of people because the people actually want it that way or they can represent a group of people for other reasons.Thus, any government is the representative of the society it is providing order for.
Do you realize that Iraqis know less about their own country then we do? Most still are without the electricity we knocked out in our invasion, and they didn't get to watch our presidential debates and decide whom they thought was going to do the best for their own nation. Does that seem like democracy? They don’t even have a say as to whom will do more for the nation they never destroyed.
My point exactly, thus the whole Democracy must come from within deal from Gandhi, I wasn’t blowing hot air, I had a point, a people must create a democracy on their own, and another nation doesn’t have the right to do so.What does it mean to be perfect? And can any one particular form of government ever be perfect for everyone in a society? Either way, the people often get what they want. It sometimes takes a good bit of time, but the best (although not perfect) form of government for a particular group of people will often come to the forefront over time.
Read that to yourself, and if you don’t feel a little ashamed that is very bad for you my friend because, frankly, I was hoping most people were feeling as I do, that I didn't really want to find out how well hegemony can exist.And you can't look at the Russian example and prove that it will apply in all or even most cir stances. We simply don't know what a single nation is capable of over hundreds of years when it comes to exerting power, and the collapse of the Soviet Union doesn't prove that other nations will collapse under similar cir stances.
There are more people becoming millionairs in the PRC everyday than anywhere else in the world, their economy is the fastest growing economy in the world, and they are still attempting to achieve their ultimate goal, the creation of a population entirely made up of Bourgeoisies.Many Americans can tell you. And I'll reveal the answer since you don't appear to know. Our democratic republic is a political system that is tightly woven with capitalism. People may pretend that the political facets of communism are indeed most repugnant, but that's just a cover. The ability to control your own economic destiny is limited under a communist system. Communism is hated by many simply because of the economic implications of adopting it.
Also, just because Americans don't want to adopt communism doesn’t mean another culture shouldn't have the right to. Self-determination.
I'm missing the point?Again, that's not necessarily true. But you're missing the point anyway. Societies don't exert influence over the rest of the world for the sole purpose of spreading values. They do so because there is something in it for them politically or financially. You seem to think that nations spread values just to spread values. It goes beyond that.
I'm sure that sounds fine to you, well if it does it looks like I'm talking to a brick wall, and you proved my point about the superiority complex.They do so because there is something in it for them politically or financially.
I can tell you have studied the French revolution, but you’re exactly right, as long as a nation has a decent standard of living, they tend to support their government, and do you see a problem with that?And while people may not be content in a particular form of government, their daily lives need to degrade to a certain point before they'll take any action. It's hard for me to believe that East Germans supported communism in 1985 wholeheartedly but came to despise it just a few years later.
People are generally happy if they have a decent standard of living and their lives are comfortable and stable. If a nation is wealthy enough to provide for everyone under communism, people will be happy. If there are enough resources so that people can provide for themselves in a democratic republic, people will be happy.
People around the world, especially poor ones, don't care as much about political philosophy as they do about having the resources to live well.
As far as your comment about the poor, you must surely know what happened after the peasantry became involved in the French revolution, after the middle class loosened the reigns?
It isn't up for you to imagine. Do you realize that in history two democracies have developed in the middle east, and both are pretty shaky right about now (Turkey and Israel). This could very well be cultural phenomena, but when revolution starts in Arab countries we have seen gravitation towards theocracy, not democracy.but it's hard for me to imagine that the people were actually content with Saddam's rule. For your point to take hold, that needs to be the case.
And what if the people there end up embracing democratic politics? It still wasn't worth a war in my mind, but it certainly could happen. And if it does, those people will certainly think that the war was justified.
Prove to me that Iraq was a threat and I will agree we had the need to fight them, not suppress them, that only adds to your enemies, it never diminishes them.If another nation decides to attack us in the future, we better hope that our leaders disagree with you. If you are unwilling to suppress those hoping to destroy your country, you're bound to die as a nation quickly and without a fight. That idea doesn't justify the war in Iraq to me, but it does to some people. But it certainly would justify future wars to me.
I'm sure the 100,000 plus Iraqi civilians were glad to die for our oil your quite right crazy.I'm sure the several hundred thousand Iraqis killed by Saddam were glad it was their own government doing the killing.
And as our invasion was elected by the people and we aren't currently using force to control them, I will concede your point.Saddam was not the will of the people, he was a dictator controlling the people by force.
and allow the general will of the people to make the choice of the form of government they want.
Good of you to assume they would be unable to do so for themselves, how very American.
Let’s see if I understand this correctly. You ask for no "F" Bombs but turn around and call someone an idiot, then an illiterate idiot, and want kind responses from those whom you forced this on by posting not only in here but the Club?
I didn't call him a ing illiterate idiot, and I don't much care for people putting words in my mouth, or making an argument that makes no sense nor has any logical succession from the subject of our debate.
