[ April 17, 2009, 11:06 AM: Message edited by: aspectre ]
Posted by paigereader (Member # 2274) on :
Have you ever been there? It is it's own little planet.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
Great now that I move here and can't find a job I'm cut off from all the welfare benefits and then forced to fight a civil war. And it's raining out! Could this day get any worse?
Hobbes Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
From the article,
quote:Dressed in jeans, boots and a baseball cap with a camouflage peak and a hunting outfitter's logo.
I was not aware you could use clothing to express sympathy towards that many different constituencies.
quote:While crowds yelled "SECEDE, SECEDE," Perry, 60 but telegenic and youthful, thought out loud that secession might be the outcome if Washington did not mend its "oppressive" high-spending, dictatorial ways.
Treason Treason! Looks like it's time to suspend habeas corpus again.
quote:Senator Hutchison has been criticized for a less than clear response on the issue. She voted against the stimulus bill, then said Perry should find a way to take the benefits without burdening employers in the future.
It provides me with endless entertainment to see folks in congress explain why they voted against the stimulus bill but still accepted the money.
Posted by Hobbes (Member # 433) on :
Very few bills ever get passed without any 'nay' votes but that doesn't mean that those states whose representatives voted against them don't have to follow them, or in this case pay the taxes and probably inflation costs that come with them (or whatever we think the negative consequences will be). I really can't understand how voting 'no' and accepting the funds after it passes could be considered hypocritical.
Hobbes Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Yeah, it does seem unreasonable to expect someone to stand on principle to the extent that they're still responsible for the costs/unintended consequences of the stimulus package while bearing none of the benefits. Especially when its not as if a state or district can "divorce" itself from the section of the federal debt that is attributable to the stimulus package.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
As long as they take their share of the national debt, I'd be happy to see Texas secede.
The question is how we calculate their share of the National Debt, should it be as a percentage of the population, as a percentage of GDP or should we do a detailed estimate of the difference between tax receipts from Texans vs. federal dollars spent on Texas. That one is a little hard to cleanly define -- how much of the Iraq war for example was fought for Texans?
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
If Texas seceded, Washington would invade to get the oil and the oil companies back.
Considering the housing bubble and the housing bust bypassed Texas completely, the USA would be better off if Texas just left. Calculate who owes what, and Washington would have to pay alimony.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Texas should secede and then have Chinese troops stationed there decrying the American attempt to use force to retake lands that have been an historical part of the geopolitical national concept of "America" for over 200 years which will result in a 50 year stand off until both sides decide that having the money from trade is more important then any sort of geopolitical concept of containment and swap the territories in question.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
quote:Originally posted by katharina: If Texas seceded, Washington would invade to get the oil and the oil companies back.
Nonsense! We would invade to spread democracy. Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
Ooh, new countries are always fun. It would be such a pain to deal with the Republic of Texas in NAFTA though.
EDIT: Well, I can totally see the RoT being reasonably dictatorial, so they might have reason to.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Teshi, what are you basing that on?
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
Basically "my totally seeing it". Nothing scientific or serious.
I don't see it being tremendously hospitable to certain populations, though. I could be wrong about that. I feel like should it secede a lot of more liberal residents would leave, meaning elections would likely result in the most right wing government in the Western world.
And that's not only economically, but likely also socially.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Texas should secede and then have Chinese troops stationed there decrying the American attempt to use force to retake lands that have been an historical part of the geopolitical national concept of "America" for over 200 years which will result in a 50 year stand off until both sides decide that having the money from trade is more important then any sort of geopolitical concept of containment and swap the territories in question.
I'm actually finishing up my BA in Polysci by doing a research paper on this very phenomenon Blayne.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Teshi,
That makes me wonder if you've ever been to Texas at all. It's a big place - you would appreciate and enjoy and benefit from a trip to Austin and Houston, I think.
In other words, you really don't know what you're talking about, and the result is less than positive for you or Texas.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by katharina: If Texas seceded, Washington would invade to get the oil and the oil companies back.
There is very little oil left in Texas and the companies are all multinationals so there no problem. We'd probably have to fight over the off shore oil rights, but I think the US Navy can easily win that one.
quote:Considering the housing bubble and the housing bust bypassed Texas completely, the USA would be better off if Texas just left. Calculate who owes what, and Washington would have to pay alimony. [/QB]
Might I ask how you come to the conclusion that the housing bubble/bust are the primary factors contributing to the national debt? The national debt was over 11 trillion dollars before the first cent was spent on the economic bailout.
Furthermore, given the level of integration of mortgage banking, the fact that Texas houses weren't strongly involved in the current real estate crash has little relation to whether Texas investors and insurance companies were involved in the crash.
I've looked through a bit of data, and could not find a single year in which Tax receipts from Texas were not less than federal spending in Texas. There is no way on this green earth that the rest of the country would owe Texas money if they left the union. There is no question that a good part of our 11 trillion dollar debt belongs to Texas -- we can argue about how much but it is absolutely not zero and certainly not negative.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
The USA has been lucky to have Texas. If Texas ever left, Washington should be grateful for the times it had.
The alimony will cover the cost of supporting the illegal immigrants that Washington's screwed up immigration policies created.
Posted by Teshi (Member # 5024) on :
I realise it's not a homogeneous state at the moment. And perhaps those wishing to secede really are a good representation of the many different social strata in Texas or perhaps they are not. And perhaps those undercurrents would become more mainstream (heh, river metaphor) in a Republic of Texas.
But, for example, applying it to Quebec which has a similar history blah-buh-blah, secessionists tend to have a vibe that is less than friendly towards English-speakers. That vibe might be more expressed in the Repubique de Quebec.
Posted by kmbboots (Member # 8576) on :
If you go, beware of the Nazi zombies.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Texas should secede and then have Chinese troops stationed there decrying the American attempt to use force to retake lands that have been an historical part of the geopolitical national concept of "America" for over 200 years which will result in a 50 year stand off until both sides decide that having the money from trade is more important then any sort of geopolitical concept of containment and swap the territories in question.
I'm actually finishing up my BA in Polysci by doing a research paper on this very phenomenon Blayne.
0.o
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley:
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Texas should secede and then have Chinese troops stationed there decrying the American attempt to use force to retake lands that have been an historical part of the geopolitical national concept of "America" for over 200 years which will result in a 50 year stand off until both sides decide that having the money from trade is more important then any sort of geopolitical concept of containment and swap the territories in question.
I'm actually finishing up my BA in Polysci by doing a research paper on this very phenomenon Blayne.
0.o
You might find Magyar, and Emerson M.S. Niou's work of interest if you want to break the ice.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Well I mean I was just being satirical I wasn't aware I actually stumbled upon something.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:The USA has been lucky to have Texas. If Texas ever left, Washington should be grateful for the times it had.
Texas was lucky the US let it in the first place. If we had left them on their own in 1836, Texas would be indistinguishable today from Mexico and a dozen other latin American countries.
quote: The alimony will cover the cost of supporting the illegal immigrants that Washington's screwed up immigration policies created.
And what cost would that be? All the studies show that illegal immigrants pay more in taxes than they consume in social services and contribute more to the economy than they are paid.
Furthermore, Texans have been complicit in most of Washington's failed policies. Two of the last 5 Presidents have been Texas and over half the national debt was accumulated on their watch.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Presidents have been Texans? That's the argument? That doesn't work at all. Do you understand why?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
As I observed on Ornery, we'd miss the oil briefly, until the sudden drought of oil lobbyists in Washington perhaps gave us a serious chance at oil independence. But the rest of Texas? Not so much. I can't think of a single downside to losing Texas that doesn't pale compared to not having to put up with Texans anymore.
The hardest part would be building a 12' wall around the Texas border, but -- as I suggested earlier -- we might be able to convince them to build it themselves.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Well I mean I was just being satirical I wasn't aware I actually stumbled upon something.
It was more your statement, "until both sides decide that having the money from trade is more important then any sort of geopolitical concept of containment and swap the territories in question." That applies to what I'm researching.
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
Considering Washington can't get it together to come up with a border policy for the borders they have now, the chance of coming up with one later is nil.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Yeah, you're probably right. Arizona and Oklahoma would probably have to put up signs like "No Texans Allowed."
Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
I don't know why you think so poorly of the people in Arizona and Oklahoma.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I didn't realize there were that many jobs to go around in Oklahoma; it always seems like they're complaining about it. But sure, if there are plenty of jobs to do, I'm sure they won't mind letting illegal Texans do 'em.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Aha. It seems inevitable, Chinas economy will likely keep on growing and Taiwans will soon stop when it reaches the max amount of development it can support, Japan has hit the same snag. We have already seen the first stage of this or preliminary if you will when the world pretty much as one switched recognition and put the PRC on the Security Council.
The next stage after that is consolidation, Taiwan and the PRC trying with affluence to convince the remaining or enough world leaders to stay in their pocket, this stage has passed as it is clearly apparant that Taiwan lacks the affluence it had 30 years ago relatively to compete with the PRC's new affluence forcing it to try a more "moral hey I'm a victim" approch.
Third stage, when this utterly failed when it comes perfectly apparent the world doesn't care about any actually issue unless oil or uranium is involved Plus the PRC's own rapidly growing attractiveness economically makes the Taiwanese more and more seriously considering compromise, with the "ProUnification" parties winning the recent elections we are already seeing a gradual realignment of Taiwan's views to that of negotiation.
Which begins the next stage, the clear admittance by omission that Taiwan cannot sustain its de facto independence indefinitely, that Reunification is potentially desirable by at least a significant margin of the population as long as it is on their terms and not become say Sinkiang, a province desired for its wealth and not for it becoming an integral part of the national framework.
So I predict that barring unforseen diplomatic and geopolitical circumstances and that Zhongnanhai remains as patient and far thinking as they so far have been and keep their cards together and play them right they can probly have unification down pat by about 2020 to 2050. Basically Taiwan will play hard to get and keeping in mind that Beijing wants the island intact and on good terms with the international community as a first priority plan alpha knowing this will try to hold out for the best deal possible. Taiwan will probably want lots of subsidies, immediate access to markets, preservation of its institutions, laws, and probly want an agreement like Hong Kongs of no economic interfearance for 50 years or something or other and maybe a statue or two dedicated to them, Beijing will at first refuse as they want only 1 centralized government not a federation but some compromise will probably be reached sometime around when their trade starts booming as the first steps obviously will be for the ProUni parties to open up trade and air travel links within the next few years which will lead the way.
The above of course is the best case scenario, possible additional option involving the above is that with America's current economic climate and say the fictional situation of Texas going AWOL and asking for Chinese assistance the US would possible offer or accept a deal to pull from Taiwan in exchange for China to pull from Texas, similar deals have been done before (Cuba/Turkey).
Further pressuring Taiwan to compromise possibly earlier and with slightely less then they'ld originally want to get away with.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: ... All the studies show that illegal immigrants pay more in taxes than they consume in social services and contribute more to the economy than they are paid.
The issue may be moot anyways. I daresay many of the illegal immigrants would probably leave rapidly in most of the scenarios that lead to an independent Texas. Heck, I daresay a non-insignificant number of recent legal immigrants and minorities would probably leave too.
Posted by scholarette (Member # 11540) on :
What about NASA? NASA is a very important national investment and anyone working for them or their corporate affiliates should be transferred to real US jobs immediately. (see job support thread if wondering why I care about companies contracting to NASA and their employees).
Posted by Javert (Member # 3076) on :
Would my friends down there be able to set up "The Independent City-state of Austin"? I mean, could they really object to cities seceding from them if Texas decided to secede from us?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Texas was lucky the US let it in the first place. If we had left them on their own in 1836, Texas would be indistinguishable today from Mexico and a dozen other latin American countries.
'Let'? Seems to me it wasn't as though Texas was banging desperately on our door to be let in, and the US only reluctantly and with great uncertainty said, "OK, I guess..."
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:I mean, could they really object to cities seceding from them if Texas decided to secede from us?
It is impossible to overstate a typical Texan's ability to object to something.
Posted by Lisa (Member # 8384) on :
quote:Originally posted by Javert: Would my friends down there be able to set up "The Independent City-state of Austin"? I mean, could they really object to cities seceding from them if Texas decided to secede from us?
I don't know. Could the Federal government secede from Britain and object to the South seceding from them?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Or more recently, IIRC, Quebec fully intended on denying separation to those areas of Quebec that are dominated by natives and wanted to go their own way in the event of Quebec separating.
Posted by adenam (Member # 11902) on :
I want to know what would happen to all the 6 Flags theme parks. Would they be renamed 7 Flags? Would Texas close all parks outside Texas out of spite?
Whatever happens, we must make sure not to lose our ROLLER COASTERS!!!
Posted by Javert (Member # 3076) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:I mean, could they really object to cities seceding from them if Texas decided to secede from us?
It is impossible to overstate a typical Texan's ability to object to something.
True.
Slightly unrelated, I loved John Oliver's segment about the Tea Part demonstrations the other day on the Daily Show.
He got more and more annoyed, because obviously his people (the British) were much more tyrannical than the current American administration. Posted by katharina (Member # 827) on :
quote:I want to know what would happen to all the 6 Flags theme parks. Would they be renamed 7 Flags? Would Texas close all parks outside Texas out of spite?
Whatever happens, we must make sure not to lose our ROLLER COASTERS!!!
They would still be Six Flags - the Republic of Texas is one of those flags, and Texas could go back to it.
Posted by maui babe (Member # 1894) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Yeah, you're probably right. Arizona and Oklahoma would probably have to put up signs like "No Texans Allowed."
Just like many many "back easters" you completely over looked New Mexico. Arizona doesn't even share a border with Texas. Despite what you may have heard, New Mexico really is a part of the US, you know.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
Yeah, I tend to forget about New Mexico. My mental image of the state is Arizona with slightly more dust and a lot more integrity.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:Texas was lucky the US let it in the first place. If we had left them on their own in 1836, Texas would be indistinguishable today from Mexico and a dozen other latin American countries.
'Let'? Seems to me it wasn't as though Texas was banging desperately on our door to be let in, and the US only reluctantly and with great uncertainty said, "OK, I guess..."
Actually that is a pretty reasonable summary of what happened. Mexico never signed the treaty ending the Texican revolution. Texas was under continual threat from Mexico and sued to join the United States for protection. Since Texas would become a slave state, their admission to the United States was fought strongly by abolitionists and it wasn't until Polk (a southern) became president that Texas was admitted to the union.
The US also assumed the debts of the Republic of Texas when it joined the Union.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Yeah, I tend to forget about New Mexico. My mental image of the state is Arizona with slightly more dust and a lot more integrity.
You really ought to visit New Mexico sometime. Your vision is quite off.
Posted by Kwea (Member # 2199) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Yeah, I tend to forget about New Mexico. My mental image of the state is Arizona with slightly more dust and a lot more integrity.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:You really ought to visit New Mexico sometime. Your vision is quite off.
Oh, I'm sure. But I don't necessarily want to find out that it has a lot less integrity. Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I met my husband in New Mexico. I don't know about the state by it would be hard to find a guy with more integrity than my husband.
Posted by scifibum (Member # 7625) on :
My wife has cousins in NM. They are largely loud, brash, and seem to make a point of never being introspective. They're fun people.
They have a hot air balloon festival there. And Carlsbad Caverns.
That's all I got.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Hardy-har, Tom.
Navajo. Silver and turquoise. Just to start.
[ April 17, 2009, 04:36 PM: Message edited by: rivka ]
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:My wife has cousins in NM. They are largely loud, brash, and seem to make a point of never being introspective. They're fun people.
They sound a lot like Texans. I'd be willing to bet they're from the southern part of the state -- Santa Cruz perhaps?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by rivka: Hardy-har, Tom.
Navajo. Silver and turquoise. Just to start.
Add to that pottery (Maria Martinez of San Ildefonso), weaving. photgraphy and painting (Georgia O'Keefe).
Northern New Mexico is a hot bed of art and artisans.
Ansel Adams said "New Mexico is the most completely beautiful place I have ever seen".
Posted by maui babe (Member # 1894) on :
The mountains and mesas of Northern New Mexico are some of the most beautiful landscape in the world. Not to mention the pueblos, Anasazi ruins, awesome art (ever hear of Taos?) and some of the best food you'll ever eat. MMMMmmmmm. You'd never believe what can be done with a green chile.
I lived in Los Alamos for 5 years and love to visit every chance I get.
Posted by rivka (Member # 4859) on :
Mmmm, New Mexcan cooking. I need to make some chilli verde for enchilda's some time soon.
The stars from the Jemez caldera. The smell of Ponderosa pines in the summer sun. The color of Aspens in the Sangre de Christo Mountains in Autumn. Watching a thunderstorm cross the desert from the top of a Mesa and then the spectacular sunset after the storm. The bloom of wildflowers in the spring.
The weirdest mix of high tech scientists, new age artists, indian reservations and extreme poverty of any place on earth.
That's Northern New Mexico.
Posted by maui babe (Member # 1894) on :
Rabbit, where is your husband from? Was he born and raised there, or did he work at one of the labs?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
No. My husband's family lived all over the place when he was growing up. His father did work as a cowboy on a ranch somewhere in New Mexico back before WW II, but that was before Rich was born.
When we met, we were both grad students working on the hill. When we finished our degrees, my husband taught at New Mexico Highlands University (in Las Vegas NM) for a while.
We met on the summer solstice in Jemez mountains. The moon was full, and we took a moonlight hike with friends that night.
Its been way too long since I've been to New Mexico.
Posted by maui babe (Member # 1894) on :
So (if you're not afraid to date yourself) when did you work on the hill? I may have been there around the same time. Were you one of the summer interns?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I was a summer intern on the hill in 1986. My husband did most of his chemical analysis there for his Ph.D. so he was back and forth between LA and Seattle for several years.
quote:(if you're not afraid to date yourself)
Not an onanism reference, I hope.
Posted by maui babe (Member # 1894) on :
I lived there from 1985 through 1991, so we did have some overlap. Did you attend the Los Alamos ward while you were there?
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
Yes I did attend the Los Alamos ward while I was there so we probably met but I really don't remember anyone I met at church that summer. I really should. One of the members of the ward helped me replace the head gasket on my engine. But its been over 20 years and I'm terrible with names.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
May I ask what you were doing in Los Alamos?
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
I suppose I need to mention that I find deserts in general utterly unlovely. But, that said, is it correct to conclude from these comments that the deserts of New Mexico are prettier than the deserts of Arizona?
Posted by maui babe (Member # 1894) on :
Well, I was the pregnant one with 3 cherubic children. It's a great ward. I miss those folks something terrible.
Posted by maui babe (Member # 1894) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit: May I ask what you were doing in Los Alamos?
Sorry I didn't refresh as see the new comments.
My husband was working at the particle accelerator (Meson physics?). I was a SAHM.
Posted by maui babe (Member # 1894) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I suppose I need to mention that I find deserts in general utterly unlovely. But, that said, is it correct to conclude from these comments that the deserts of New Mexico are prettier than the deserts of Arizona?
Well, southern NM is more desert, and similar to AZ, but northern NM is mountainous and quite lovely. The Jemez mountains west of Santa Fe and Los Alamos are >8000 feet and are full of pine and aspen forests. I can't remember exactly what the cut off is, but above 6000 feet or so there is quite a lot more moisture than below. The Jemez mountains are as lush and green as any forest in Washington or Oregon.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: I suppose I need to mention that I find deserts in general utterly unlovely. But, that said, is it correct to conclude from these comments that the deserts of New Mexico are prettier than the deserts of Arizona?
Only parts of New Mexico are desert. New Mexico has all the major biomes of the world except tropical rainforest. The areas where I lived were not desert, although there is some beautiful dessert not far from where I lived. First I lived in Los Alamos, which is the Jemez mountains and is predominately ponderosa pine forest. Later I lived in Los Vegas, at the foot of the Sangre de Cristo Mountains. Los Vegas is in Juniper and Pinion pine zone and as you head into the mountains you get into subalpine and alpine zones. picturepicture 2picture 2
There is some beautiful desert in New Mexico too, its hard to compare it to Arizona unless you talk about a specific place.
You can't just talk about the desert. Deserts have some incredibly beautiful spots and some spots that are just dry and dusty. When you ask, prettier than the Arizona dessert, to you mean prettier than the Grand Canyon or Monument valley -- probably not.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
quote:Originally posted by Javert: Slightly unrelated, I loved John Oliver's segment about the Tea Part demonstrations the other day on the Daily Show.
He got more and more annoyed, because obviously his people (the British) were much more tyrannical than the current American administration.
It does seem to be getting a disproportianate amount of media attention (possibly aided in part by Fox News, which practically made itself a co-sponsor.) For all the hue and cry, by many estimates the nationwide attendance of the "tea party" events was barely up to the amounts of, say, the anti-war protest in San Franciscio six years or so ago.
In fairness, I haven't spent a whole lot of time in Texas. But what I see and read, and hear from bizarre demagogues like Perry, leads me to feel that the loss of Texas wouldn't necessarily be nearly as big a loss to the Union as many Texans would like to think... So long as they take their polution, their rotting school system, their border violence, and their truly unique brand of political infighting and corruption with them.
"Texas- it's like a whole other country" has led to a lot of unkind satire, from what I've heard.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote: quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:Texas was lucky the US let it in the first place. If we had left them on their own in 1836, Texas would be indistinguishable today from Mexico and a dozen other latin American countries.
'Let'? Seems to me it wasn't as though Texas was banging desperately on our door to be let in, and the US only reluctantly and with great uncertainty said, "OK, I guess..."
Actually that is a pretty reasonable summary of what happened. Mexico never signed the treaty ending the Texican revolution. Texas was under continual threat from Mexico and sued to join the United States for protection. Since Texas would become a slave state, their admission to the United States was fought strongly by abolitionists and it wasn't until Polk (a southern) became president that Texas was admitted to the union.
Rabbit, I don't understand this. You say, "That's what happened," but then go on to describe how it wasn't what happened.
Just as an example, aside from American territorial ambitions, acceptance on the basis of furthering Southern interests in the slave-state/free-state debate seems an excellent example of how (parts of) the Union, at the very least, benefited as well.
Posted by The Rabbit (Member # 671) on :
I think you are missing a key point here. The situation was never that the US (even the pro-slavery parts of the US) were recruiting Texas. Texas was anxiously seeking to join the US. That request was met with mixed opinions in the US with the pro-slavery, pro-expansionist side in favor and the anti-slavery side strongly opposed. Eventually the pro-slavery, pro-expansion side won the day and Texas was admitted. So yes, I think its more than accurate to say that Texas was banging on our door to be let in and the US reluctantly said OK.
The fact that parts of the Union were in favor and benefitted from granting statehood to Texas in no way changes the fact that the Union as a whole reluctant.
Compare it to legal immigration into this country. Isn't it fair to say that many people from various countries are banging on the US door to get in and that the US reluctantly grants them visas? Isn't that still a fair assessment even though some US graduate schools are actively recruiting foreign students, most of whom will stay in the US after graduation? Isn't that a fair assessment even though some US companies are happy to hire and recruit foreign born scientist and engineers? The fact that some parts of our society benefit from immigration and encourage it, does not change the fact that the society as a whole is reluctant to grant visas to immigrants and it does not change the fact that immigrants are beating down our door to get in.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote: Isn't it fair to say that many people from various countries are banging on the US door to get in and that the US reluctantly grants them visas?
Hmm. Seems to me we may be dealing with a difference of starting points here.
Yes, it's fair to say what I just quoted. However, I don't believe it's fair to say that the US 'reluctantly grants' them, and leave it at that. We are after all founded on immigration, and no matter what some segments of our society say, profit hugely from it-illegal immigration as well as legal.
It reminds me of a situation I ran into with my boss the other day. He came to me and asked, "Do you want Friday off?" and I said, "No, but how about tomorrow?" because I had something I didn't think I'd be able to do.
He agreed, but later that week he hinted that I should have been grateful to him. Except the truth is, while he did give me the night off, and I was grateful for that, it was as much a benefit to him as me. He needed to cut hours that night somewhere, and I have quite a bit of seniority at that gig. Which in addition to giving me the right of refusal or acceptance (if asked, I can refuse and push it further down the line; if I want the night off and it's not offered to seniority first, the people skipped could make troube if they wanted) also meant that he was cutting higher-paying hours.
So the truth was we were doing each other a favor: someone was going to go home that night from his end; I wanted to go home that night from my end. So I didn't think it was very complete for him to have suggested he 'let' me have the night off, even though it was technically true.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:From The Rabbit: Texas was lucky the US let it in the first place. If we had left them on their own in 1836, Texas would be indistinguishable today from Mexico and a dozen other latin American countries.
Given that those clamoring the loudest for Texas annexation within Texas were white American transplants, I find this very unlikely, for a large number of reasons. First off, I would be extremely surprised if they had managed to maintain their independence from America for that length of time. It's such a massive hypothetical to ignore the expansionist tendencies of America at the time (and the century before and to follow) that I don't see it as anything resembling a hypothetical possibility.
But if in some strange alternative universe they'd managed to stay independent all that time, they'd probably be the most powerful non-US country in the hemisphere. Too many natural resources, farm power, and what I imagine would be extremely cheap labor in the form of slavery for several decades after the 1860's.
quote:From Blayne: We have already seen the first stage of this or preliminary if you will when the world pretty much as one switched recognition and put the PRC on the Security Council.
I have a feeling that if we'd known how China would soon turn out, they never would have been given a permanent SC seat. Japan would have gotten it (and they still might, depending on how the reform movement goes).
quote:Also Blayne: situation of Texas going AWOL and asking for Chinese assistance the US would possible offer or accept a deal to pull from Taiwan in exchange for China to pull from Texas, similar deals have been done before (Cuba/Turkey).
::snort:: yeah, because the land of the Minute Men and 'send the foreigners' home is going to jump at the chance for a foreign military presence on their soil. States that are as freakishly nationalistic as a hypothetical Texas would be would never invite an Asian communist power to set up military bases on their soil.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Rabbit:
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh:
quote:Texas was lucky the US let it in the first place. If we had left them on their own in 1836, Texas would be indistinguishable today from Mexico and a dozen other latin American countries.
'Let'? Seems to me it wasn't as though Texas was banging desperately on our door to be let in, and the US only reluctantly and with great uncertainty said, "OK, I guess..."
Actually that is a pretty reasonable summary of what happened. Mexico never signed the treaty ending the Texican revolution. Texas was under continual threat from Mexico and sued to join the United States for protection. Since Texas would become a slave state, their admission to the United States was fought strongly by abolitionists and it wasn't until Polk (a southern) became president that Texas was admitted to the union.
The US also assumed the debts of the Republic of Texas when it joined the Union.
To the best of my knowledge, the United States did not assume the debts of Texas when it entered the Union. It was either going to be us assuming their debt but getting all their land, or them keeping their debt and also keeping their vast amounts if public land, which would presumably be sold at a later date to pay off the debt. The Brown Amendment stipulated that Texas would keep their debt, but also keep their land. Later on in the Compromise if 1850 we ended up buying a vast portion of that land for a price that virtually wiped out the debt, but it wasn't quite so cut and dry at the time. Debt assumption was a huge sticking point that likely would have continued to derail the bill.
Also, Polk was only one of many players that were very important in the passage of annexation, the other two most important being President Tyler, and arguably Thomas Hart Benton of Missouri. I believe the treaty to annex Texas was actually signed before Polk too office. Tyler was the one who tricked it through Congress by calling I think a lame duck session where only a simple majority was needed rather than any sort of supermajority. This allowed it to pass the House more easily. Thomas Hart Benton, initially opposed to the measure, pushed it forward when he was personally promised by Polk that, under the terms of the bill, Polk would ignore the Brown Amendment and seek out alternative terms for admission. As soon as the bill was passed however, Tyler pushed for the Brown Amendment terms, and was backed up by Polk, who had betrayed his promise to a very, very pissed off Benton (Benton wasn't a guy you wanted to piss off back then).
Under the terms of the Brown Amendment, they kept their debt and their public lands, and were also granted the right to carve out four more states from Texas land that HAD to be accepted by Congress, in effect promising the South a theoretical 10 additional pro-slavery senators. This was devastating to northerners who felt they'd been tricked and cheated, but was considered essential to southerners who saw an eventual northern majority rendering them irrelevant. They needed to be able to keep a veto over constitutional amendments.
So yes, while it's true that Polk's duplicity was instrumental in the passage of the bill, a number of things had to come together to really make it a reality, and they didn't hinge on a southerner, but rather any sort of expansionist president, (like Lewis Cass would have been if he'd won the decade before). It was a party issue, rather than a sectional one.
ETA: I think I'd have to disagree off the top of my head that it was Texas that wanted to join more than we wanted them. That ignores the decades of thousands of American southerners who flooded into Texas for the expressed purpose of eventually taking it over, and they were doing it the entire time with an eye on joining America, and the US government was never blind to that fact. If not for the slavery question, I think there wouldn't have been a single problem with annexing Texas for most people, especially with the issue of debt having been pushed off for a couple decades. It wasn't a reluctant choice to let them in, not for a majority of Americans who voted in an expansionist Polk over a reserved Clay who preached against annexation. That election as much as any other was a mandate on the question of annexation, and annexation won. A majority of northern states as well as southern voted Polk in over Clay.
Posted by aspectre (Member # 2222) on :
Interesting that the only federal economic bailout money that the Republican governors refuse to accept is for extending the length of unemployment benefits, and for loosening the eligibility requirements for food stamps and free school meals. Which ain't even a minor fraction of the total amount that they accepted.
Especially considering that the only thing that has kept the GulfCoast Southern states from tanking is hundreds of billions of dollars in federal bailout money in the form of hurricane relief&rebuilding funds before the CreditCrunch hit.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn:
quote:From The Rabbit: Texas was lucky the US let it in the first place. If we had left them on their own in 1836, Texas would be indistinguishable today from Mexico and a dozen other latin American countries.
Given that those clamoring the loudest for Texas annexation within Texas were white American transplants, I find this very unlikely, for a large number of reasons. First off, I would be extremely surprised if they had managed to maintain their independence from America for that length of time. It's such a massive hypothetical to ignore the expansionist tendencies of America at the time (and the century before and to follow) that I don't see it as anything resembling a hypothetical possibility.
But if in some strange alternative universe they'd managed to stay independent all that time, they'd probably be the most powerful non-US country in the hemisphere. Too many natural resources, farm power, and what I imagine would be extremely cheap labor in the form of slavery for several decades after the 1860's.
quote:From Blayne: We have already seen the first stage of this or preliminary if you will when the world pretty much as one switched recognition and put the PRC on the Security Council.
I have a feeling that if we'd known how China would soon turn out, they never would have been given a permanent SC seat. Japan would have gotten it (and they still might, depending on how the reform movement goes).
quote:Also Blayne: situation of Texas going AWOL and asking for Chinese assistance the US would possible offer or accept a deal to pull from Taiwan in exchange for China to pull from Texas, similar deals have been done before (Cuba/Turkey).
::snort:: yeah, because the land of the Minute Men and 'send the foreigners' home is going to jump at the chance for a foreign military presence on their soil. States that are as freakishly nationalistic as a hypothetical Texas would be would never invite an Asian communist power to set up military bases on their soil.
Firstly, who said they would grant basis, I was being satirical originally.
Japan was an occupied power at the time, they didnt even sign the final peace treaties between Japan and some of the other allies until the 50's (the USSR comes to mind) it would've been completely impossible for Japan to have gotten it, also it was given to them because President Roosevelt predicted that China would become one of the Great Powers and should share responsibility for maintaining world security.
Gargh, it seems theres 2 possible interpretations of "soon turn out".
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Precisely, if Truman & Co. had known at the time that China would go communist and wouldn't be a long term ally, they would have made other arrangements. The US wanted a local ally to serve as a base in the Pacific for operations against the USSR, and to be a bulwark on Russia's eastern front. China was supposed to fill that role, but went down a different path.
Lacking anything close to another major power in the region, I think they would have left the seat open, with an eye on Japan. Though I guess the USSR would have vetoed that, so they probably would have just stuck them in anyway. You can't use the excuse that they were destitute, as the UK was on rations for a decade or more, and both the UK and France were rebuilding for a long time, though technically Japan wasn't self governing for another several years, so I guess that'd be a hiccup, but I'm sure they could get around it. The US had a lot of weight to throw around at the time.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Actually Chiang Kai Shek was just as likely as to be Pro Soviet considering the massive amount of political support he had originally gotten. Stalin had originally supported Chiang and only switched over to Mao after 1949 when Mao paid a visit to Moscow and got military gaurantees and financial aid. The Soviets were notoriously poor allies to the PRC before then and soon after.
In fact Truman had as his first act was to end all support to Chiang kai Shek and left him to rot, only sending the 7th fleet to "stabilize" the straits with Chinese intervention in the Korean war.
It was a massive American diplomatic screwup. The Maoists were very inclined to be Pro American at various points and properly handled the whole thing could have happened very differently.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:In fact Truman had as his first act was to end all support to Chiang kai Shek and left him to rot, only sending the 7th fleet to "stabilize" the straits with Chinese intervention in the Korean war.
Well remember Truman's decision was in stark contrast to what most of the military and his staff wanted to do.
I'm actually quite grateful Truman didn't try create an invasion force that would attack from Taiwan and from Korea at the same time. I am even more glad he took nuclear weapons off the table of options when the Chinese misguidedly assisted North Korea.
Posted by pooka (Member # 5003) on :
If I'd only known that the state I occupy was what determines my integrity I'd have moved to New Mexico long ago.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:In fact Truman had as his first act was to end all support to Chiang kai Shek and left him to rot, only sending the 7th fleet to "stabilize" the straits with Chinese intervention in the Korean war.
Well remember Truman's decision was in stark contrast to what most of the military and his staff wanted to do.
I'm actually quite grateful Truman didn't try create an invasion force that would attack from Taiwan and from Korea at the same time. I am even more glad he took nuclear weapons off the table of options when the Chinese misguidedly assisted North Korea.
It wasnt misguided, it was perfectly in keeping with centuries of Chinese political thought, Korea, Communist or otherwise was always seen as a part of the Chinese sphere of influence, culturally and politically. It was feared that the Americans would keep going and not stop.
NOWADAYS the Chinese are having second thoughts of having North Korea around and have an aim to have it collapse in a "controlled" fashion in an effort to get Korea to Unify and as an extension get US troops to leave the peninsula. South Korea and China right now are massive trade partners and China I think is SK MFN (most favoured nation) trading partner.
Also to show how hings could have gone George C Marshall had visited the Maoists himself during the time before the Civil war renewed and was favourable to them aside from certain diplomatic... screwups (assuming certain leaders were bellboys...)
The accusations of "losing china" only came later so I'm skeptical of Red China scare was on the higher ups minds (late 40's) at the time considering the outright Pro Soviet/Pro Communist leanings of the FDR administration.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Blayne:
quote:It wasnt misguided, it was perfectly in keeping with centuries of Chinese political thought, Korea, Communist or otherwise was always seen as a part of the Chinese sphere of influence, culturally and politically. It was feared that the Americans would keep going and not stop.
I can accept that the US did a bad job advising China of our intentions in crossing the 38th parallel. The decision by the Chinese to assist North Korea was misguided for several reasons. It was misguided in that the US had no intention of invading China. It was also misguided as China after stopping UN forces, did not stop at the 38th parallel, but instead ironically tried to "invade" South Korea. It was also misguided (but China could not possibly have known this then) in that North Korea has become an aggravation for all of Asia. I agree with you that China would probably prefer Korea to simply be united under a government similar to what South Korea uses.
Ultimately it would have been in China's best interests to not assist the North Koreans in their unprovoked attack on South Korea.
Could you link to Marshall's visit to mainland China, such a visit is not anywhere I have read.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: The decision by the Chinese to assist North Korea was misguided for several reasons.
I dunno. I've agreed with most of what you've said so far but this seems dubious.
quote: It was misguided in that the US had no intention of invading China.
Well, as you said at that time most of the military establishment did favor invading China and it was only Truman who was against it.
As we know, even today in the "War on Terror", these things have a way of spreading. Can we be sure that the US would really have stopped at the border if a full-scale Iraqi style insurrection developed in North Korea?
Besides, even in the best case, if a temporarily stable US/China border established, I would find it hard to see a world in which it remains stable through the excesses of the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and whatnot. Remember, the Gulf of Tonkin was faked by Americans. The whole thing is just one step away from a major war.
In the worst case, the whole thing could have immediately snowballed into a larger battle in Manchuria where the two sides wouldn't be bottle-necked and even the Soviet Union might have to get involved.
Either way, the scenarios don't fill me with childish glee. I can see the decision to intervene totally sucked for North Koreans. But from a Chinese perspective, it seems to have been the right move (and thats not even taking into account the domestic dividends for the CCP).
quote: It was also misguided as China after stopping UN forces, did not stop at the 38th parallel, but instead ironically tried to "invade" South Korea.
That we can agree on, but keep in mind the UN (really the US) didn't stop at the 38th parallel first. So at this juncture, it would be hard to believe that the US wouldn't take the opportunity of a stop to build-up an organized counter-attack, so the point may very well be moot anyways.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Mucus:
quote:Either way, the scenarios don't fill me with childish glee. I can see the decision to intervene totally sucked for North Koreans. But from a Chinese perspective, it seems to have been the right move (and thats not even taking into account the domestic dividends for the CCP).
We'll never know will we? The idea of a UN/China/Soviet clash in Manchuria was not a possibility I had given serious consideration of. I think the fact Truman stopped MacArthur is indicative of at least that administration being unwilling to move all the way into North Korea to say nothing of further. But who knows, maybe later administrations would have felt differently.
I don't fault the Chinese for sending troops, the US was acting like it may very well do the things China feared. I suppose having said what I have said in this post, misguided might not be a good word for it as it's hard to say what would have happened if the Chinese hadn't shown up.
quote:hat we can agree on, but keep in mind the UN (really the US) didn't stop at the 38th parallel first. So at this juncture, it would be hard to believe that the US wouldn't take the opportunity of a stop to build-up an organized counter-attack, so the point may very well be moot anyways.
Right, but the North Koreans were the ones who violated the treaty in the first place. I guess in a war where both sides openly walked over the line the only thing you can prove is just how far you can get. Obviously China/North Korea and the UN attempted to do just that.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:It wasnt misguided, it was perfectly in keeping with centuries of Chinese political thought.
These two concepts are not necessarily contradictory.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:It wasnt misguided, it was perfectly in keeping with centuries of Chinese political thought.
These two concepts are not necessarily contradictory.
This man speaks the truth.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: I think the fact Truman stopped MacArthur is indicative of at least that administration being unwilling to move all the way into North Korea to say nothing of further.
Yeah, but you know what they say about good intentions. Plans made for Iraq or Afghanistan's future before sending in the troops don't bear too much resemblance to what we got afterwards.
quote:... I guess in a war where both sides openly walked over the line the only thing you can prove is just how far you can get. Obviously China/North Korea and the UN attempted to do just that.
Yep.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Blayne:
quote:It wasnt misguided, it was perfectly in keeping with centuries of Chinese political thought, Korea, Communist or otherwise was always seen as a part of the Chinese sphere of influence, culturally and politically. It was feared that the Americans would keep going and not stop.
I can accept that the US did a bad job advising China of our intentions in crossing the 38th parallel. The decision by the Chinese to assist North Korea was misguided for several reasons. It was misguided in that the US had no intention of invading China. It was also misguided as China after stopping UN forces, did not stop at the 38th parallel, but instead ironically tried to "invade" South Korea. It was also misguided (but China could not possibly have known this then) in that North Korea has become an aggravation for all of Asia. I agree with you that China would probably prefer Korea to simply be united under a government similar to what South Korea uses.
Ultimately it would have been in China's best interests to not assist the North Koreans in their unprovoked attack on South Korea.
Could you link to Marshall's visit to mainland China, such a visit is not anywhere I have read.
Mao A Life By Philip Short, sorry I read it in the autobiography of Mao and I think in passing reference in Rise and Fall of the Great Powers.
Wikipedia also is not too detailed though it does reference it in passing.
quote: In December 1945, Truman sent Marshall to China to broker a coalition government between the Nationalist allies under Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek and Communists under Mao Zedong. Marshall had no leverage over the Communists, but threatened to withdraw American aid essential to the Nationalists. Both sides rejected his proposals and the Chinese Civil War escalated, with the Communists winning in 1949. His mission a failure, he returned to the United States in January 1947.[29][30] As Secretary of State in 1947-48, Marshall seems to have disagreed with strong opinions in The Pentagon and State department that Chiang's success was vital to American interests, insisting that U.S. troops not become involved.
My statement as such isn't unlikely, though if you absolutely insist I will eventually dig up the book and transcribe the passage(s) in question.
Now as for Korea, I think it would have been negligent at best and incompetent at worst for China's leaders at the time to have sat back and let the US take North Korea, Korea had already been used as a springboard once before to invade Manchuria by Japan, do you think considering current US-USSR tensions that it would have been wise for them at the time to let US troops waltz around on the Yalu?
Posted by vonk (Member # 9027) on :
quote:It is impossible to overstate a typical Texan's ability to object to something.
I object to that.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Now as for Korea, I think it would have been negligent at best and incompetent at worst for China's leaders at the time to have sat back and let the US take North Korea, Korea had already been used as a springboard once before to invade Manchuria by Japan, do you think considering current US-USSR tensions that it would have been wise for them at the time to let US troops waltz around on the Yalu?
Sort of ignores the fact that the US had the chance to invade China earlier in the century and chose not to. Instead we protected China from outside influence and kept them open for all.
Also ignores the fact that we just finished fighting a war that removed Japan from China, and that instead of seizing European land like the Russians did, we defended them, and went to great expense to ensure both their defense and their prosperity.
Frankly I don't see how that doesn't earn us as least a little benefit of the doubt. Unlike the belligerent nations of the world, it had been 50 years since we'd done anything close to launching a war of aggression. Oh, and the previous war of aggression had earned us the Philippines, and we gave them their freedom before the Korean War ever started.
A little perspective helps.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Instead we protected China from outside influence and kept them open for all.
Heh, yes. Would you like to estimate how thin the line between this and plain colonisation looks to a Chinese leader? You sound as though you expect the Chinese to approve of the open door! When they'd spent the past two centuries trying to keep the dang foreigners out!
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Well, between that and being carved up like Africa had been, I'd certainly recognize the far lesser of two evils.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Lyrhawn (second last post): I'm not going to get dragged through most of that self-serving rhetoric. But I think we can agree that many people outside the US have a decidedly different view of US imperialism.
Personally, I wouldn't even give the US the benefit of the doubt today with two foreign wars in one presidency, let alone at that time when as BlackBlade said, most of the military establishment and many politicians were openly in favor of an invasion.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Well, between that and being carved up like Africa had been, I'd certainly recognize the far lesser of two evils.
Right, because that was purely due to the forbearance of the US. Had nothing to do with the balance of power in Europe or the size of the Chinese army. Sheesh. As for the Japanese, don't you think it might have been nice, if you wanted to be seen as rescuers, to commit to that in 1936 when they really needed the help? Rather than fighting in your own good time for completely unrelated reasons.
Posted by Sterling (Member # 8096) on :
I suspect democratically elected leadership combined with an incredibly diverse population makes the United States seem downright schizophrenic to many outide nations with longer histories, stronger senses of racial/religious/cultural identity, and leaders (even figureheads like the British royals) who reign for decades.
If I were an outsider viewing the Texas theatrics, it would only reinforce the impression.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Lyrhawn (second last post): I'm not going to get dragged through most of that self-serving rhetoric. But I think we can agree that many people outside the US have a decidedly different view of US imperialism.
Personally, I wouldn't even give the US the benefit of the doubt today with two foreign wars in one presidency, let alone at that time when as BlackBlade said, most of the military establishment and many politicians were openly in favor of an invasion.
I'm not sure what the outside view is on American imperialism. I think compared to the other imperial powers of the world, we look amazing. i think on our own, we've been appallingly bad. South America and Africa are about the only continents I'm willing to listen to criticism from when it comes to American imperialism. Europe and Asia should look to their own wounds, for they're either just as great or far greater.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by King of Men:
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Well, between that and being carved up like Africa had been, I'd certainly recognize the far lesser of two evils.
Right, because that was purely due to the forbearance of the US. Had nothing to do with the balance of power in Europe or the size of the Chinese army. Sheesh. As for the Japanese, don't you think it might have been nice, if you wanted to be seen as rescuers, to commit to that in 1936 when they really needed the help? Rather than fighting in your own good time for completely unrelated reasons.
I'm not arguing that we didn't have self-serving reasons that were married to our actions.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Well, obviously you don't look all that amazing from the outside. In fact, you usually look just about the same as everyone else with the only particularly unique quality being that you're (as a group) remarkably hypocritical and self-righteous while going about the same old.
Plus from an Asian POV, America doesn't really get its own ledger separate from the rest of the Europeans. With an incredibly short history (as Sterling touched on) you're just another set of white guys who were just a bit late to the imperialism party.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
"The lesser of two evils is still evil" - Penn & Teller
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: Well, obviously you don't look all that amazing from the outside. In fact, you usually look just about the same as everyone else with the only particularly unique quality being that you're (as a group) remarkably hypocritical and self-righteous while going about the same old.
Plus from an Asian POV, America doesn't really get its own ledger separate from the rest of the Europeans. With an incredibly short history (as Sterling touched on) you're just another set of white guys who were just a bit late to the imperialism party.
I'll admit to not knowing a heck of a lot about the internal politics of western European imperialists, but from what I know of America's, and from the execution of American imperialism, the differences look pretty dramatic to me. Though yes, I recognize the evils within, and some of the similarities, but the lasting evils of imperialism worldwide are overwhelmingly European, not American, which is amazing considering the crap we've messed up in the last 50 years.
Also, that's a little hypocritical as well coming from Asians. It's not like they don't have a lot of their own sins to answer for. You don't have to be white to be an imperialist.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Europeans and Americans are effectively the same thing. One just looks like the extension of the other. Its not like Americans got a "Get Out of Jail Free Card" just because they effectively wiped out the actual native Americans and call themselves "American."
The fact that you're working with a dinky 50 year time frame should be a major clue that you're working off of totally different perspectives on time.
Plus even close to that time frame, the only Asian empire that arose was the Japanese empire, which was essentially both created by and brutally crushed by America, something which hardly gets you any points.
You don't have to be white to be an imperialist, but it was generally white people who gave the most nauseating rationales about it. White man's burden, gunboat missionaries, wars on drugs (in order to deal drugs, not to stop them), and as KoM mentioned the "open door policy."
Asians can't even begin touch that although its debatable whether we didn't due to lack of opportunity or lack of willingness. I mean, whats the best we have ... the Mongols? Sure, they conquered a huge swath of the world but they weren't generally hypocritical about it. They told you what they wanted.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
America created the Japanese empire? Just because we kicked down the door doesn't mean we take responsibility for the crap they did later. And I don't hear the Koreans or the Manchus complaining about our crushing of the Japanese. Or the Filipinos (though they have some other complaints). Or Australia. Or New Zealand.
You guys get China too. Nepal, lower Mongolia, eastern China. Brutal repressions. That all counts.
I don't think we get a get out of jail card either, though I do think that maybe the native American thing gets emphasized for the wrong reasons. It sounds an awful lot like you're saying "you're all white so you're all the same." American imperial politics were radically different from Europe's, even after we actively got in the game on an international basis around 1900. And our actual execution of imperialism had some radical departures as well. Things look a lot different when you do more than scratch the surface.
Though I'll also admit, I'm mostly referring to pre-1950 America, when most of the damage was done by Europeans. Still, I think post 1950, the damage done by Europeans before us has had greater lasting influence, and I maintain that they're different, especially Britain.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
If I recall the Japanese were only following the example everyone else including the United States had already set for them.
If I recall, Nepal was colonized by Britain and Lower Mongolia was a part of the Yuan Dynasty that stayed a part of China, eastern china as in the east coast of it had been colonized by Han chinese thousands of years ago, dont see the imperialism there.
All of this was centuries before the Europeans even made wooden boats.
The Imperialism of well Imperial countries in say the Roman sense of "we'll take over you and make you better" vs the Colonial Imperialism of "We'll take your land, drain your resources and rape your culture and language..."
I think there's quite the distinct difference, back in the Ancient days of say the mongols, the intent was "we'll conquor you and make you a part of us" ie the Romans or Mongols note, China when controlled by Han Chinese if I recall never actually expanded via military conquest, the major territorial pushes were by foreign dynasties like the Yuan or the Qing.
The European sense of Colonial Imperialism starting in the 1500's was more like "your less then us, we don't want you but you can work and serve for us for we are your masters" there always seemed to be a distinct separation between the European landowners and colonists, and the Aborginals of the lands they colonized.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: America created the Japanese empire? Just because we kicked down the door doesn't mean we take responsibility for the crap they did later.
No. You take responsibility because you *exploded* open their door, forced them to buy your stuff, taught them to go empire building, sold them precisely what they needed to fight in China and create an empire, and then when they started doing too well you added the "yellow peril" racial crap. Only when they turned on you, then you took notice.
Even their war slogan, "Asia for Asians" reflects precisely the love-hate relationship they had with you.
quote: Or Australia. Or New Zealand.
No guff. The guys giving the orders are European.
Gee, I wonder where all the natives went. Even while trying to illustrate "Asians" you accidentally point at the graveyards you created.
quote: You guys get China too. Nepal, lower Mongolia, eastern China. Brutal repressions. That all counts.
The heck? We're talking about exploiting *each other*. If we wanted to discuss how you guys found ways to kill and oppress each other, well, the results literally fill books. (Also, eastern China? Do you mean the Qin, should I be comparing them to Romans? Lower Mongolia? We've already discussed the Mongols)
In fact, European success at colonizing Asia is a direct result of you guys being so good at killing and oppressing each other. Our suckiness at resisting it is a direct result of us not doing it.
Its almost impossible to understate how sophisticated the European colonization machine was. Military destruction of the target's defenses and the population, forcible economic exploitation and domination including slavery, and religious indoctrination of the remainder.
Three waves of oppression. We can't even come close to touching it.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:No. You take responsibility because you *exploded* open their door, forced them to buy your stuff, taught them to go empire building, sold them precisely what they needed to fight in China and create an empire, and then when they started doing too well you added the "yellow peril" racial crap. Only when they turned on you, then you took notice.
Even their war slogan, "Asia for Asians" reflects precisely the love-hate relationship they had with you.
We taught them to go Empire building? The heck? Their first two foreign wars were with Russia and China at or around the time we were fighting our FIRST imperialist war with Spain. They'd finished fighting Russia before we were even done fighting Aguinaldo in the Philippines. As for training them, we had a geographically tiny island "empire" abroad, whereas they were gunning for a massive Asian one. And for that matter, their army was Prussian based, and their navy was I think Russian based (might be wrong on that one, but it wasn't American).
quote:No guff. The guys giving the orders are European.
Gee, I wonder where all the natives went. Even while trying to illustrate "Asians" you accidentally point at the graveyards you created.
You'll have to expand on that, I'm not sure what you mean. I think what you're trying to say is that America is somehow responsible for British atrocities in Australia and New Zealand, which sounds a whole lot like that "white people are all the same" thing you were spouting earlier.
quote:In fact, European success at colonizing Asia is a direct result of you guys being so good at killing and oppressing each other. Our suckiness at resisting it is a direct result of us not doing it.
Its almost impossible to understate how sophisticated the European colonization machine was. Military destruction of the target's defenses and the population, forcible economic exploitation and domination including slavery, and religious indoctrination of the remainder.
Three waves of oppression. We can't even come close to touching it.
You're right, the Europeans were very, very good at it. I'm not disputing that. We're not European though.
I'd also add that inter-African warfare often included a LOT of what you're talking about. Slavery and forced indoctrination were around a long time before European boots hit the ground. They were just really good at it.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: We taught them to go Empire building? The heck? Their first two foreign wars were with Russia and China at or around the time we were fighting our FIRST imperialist war with Spain.
Again, way too late. After you blew open their doors, among the first exports were military technology and tactics. American experts were among those that retrained the Japanese military to fight their civil war and Americans were the first to sell the Japanese an ironclad. It was precisely this reformation of the Japanese military along American technology and tactics that allowed them to be so successful.
quote: You're right, the Europeans were very, very good at it. I'm not disputing that. We're not European though.
Please.
Even the faces of your leaders (and most of your population) up to the very very last one are largely indistinguishable from Europeans.
Its almost insulting for you to claim that you're Americans. The real native Americans are mostly dead and in the ground. You're mostly just Europeans that live on top of them and pretend that its always been yours. "America is a Christian nation" and "illegal immigration" ring any bells?
No, not all white people are the same. But Americans are effectively and culturally European in all the ways that really count.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Not when it comes to foreign policy, despite the fact that we must all look alike to you.
You either really don't know what you're talking about, or you do, and you're being either really disingenuous, or really racist. Or a both.
You seem to live in a lovely fantasy world where whites, as an amorphous indistinguishable mass, are to blame for everything. It's funny too, because a lot of whites used to use this justification for attacking you guys. Actually it's not funny, it's sad.
If Americans were JUST like Europeans, Mexico, Latin America, the entire Caribbean, and I imagine a lot of South America would just be called the southern United States. Our anti-imperialists were a lot more powerful vocal minority than were Europe's in that they actually got stuff done.
The fact that you think we taught Japan to be imperialist after they'd coveted Korea for a couple hundred years (and in fact conquered them long before we "blew open their doors") and China as well, shows you're just searching for anti-white man lines more than you are actually grasping real material.
Posted by TomDavidson (Member # 124) on :
quote:But Americans are effectively and culturally European in all the ways that really count.
In the same way, Koreans and Japanese are really just Chinese.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
And the idea that the Chinese gov't wasn't hypocritical about invading and controlling other nations is naive. For instance, many of the times China has invaded a country in something like the last two hundred years, the official main reason has been "mistreatment of the minority Chinese population" -- mistreatment they were more than happy to ignore (and often allow worse inside China) when the other regime was being politically cooperative. That's not being honest, that's lying. People in China now are being upfront about it, but people in the west are similarly upfront about most of our old imperialism.
Of course, if we want to talk about current Chinese self-deception with regard to past invasions, there's the idea that most of the people in Tibet wanted to be invaded by China. I've heard that from every recent Chinese immigrant I've had a conversation about Tibet with.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: You either really don't know what you're talking about, or you do, and you're being either really disingenuous, or really racist. Or a both.
You can deal with the facts or ignore the facts and call people names*. It would be racist if I said Europeans did what they did *because* they were white. Its not racist to simply observe that European imperialists were white and as even you admit set new records in exploitation and imperialism.
* Perhaps I should call you a racist for assuming that I hold the views that I do simply because of my race.
quote:You seem to live in a lovely fantasy world where whites, as an amorphous indistinguishable mass, are to blame for everything.
No, I simply live in a world where I don't measure time in 50 year slices and the occupation of North America is uncomfortably close.
You said that Chinese people should have given Americans the benefit of the doubt for dubious actions over a handful of years. We say prove it over time.
quote: If Americans were JUST like Europeans, Mexico, Latin America, the entire Caribbean, and I imagine a lot of South America would just be called the southern United States.
Monroe doctrine, "banana republics" ring any bells. It just never got as bad as European work because you guys had less time.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson:
quote:But Americans are effectively and culturally European in all the ways that really count.
In the same way, Koreans and Japanese are really just Chinese.
Yep. Go on.
(With the only caveat being that Chinese immigration and cultural diffusion to those places occurred multiple full dynasties ago where as European colonization of America is only roughly 200 years ago)
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: People in China now are being upfront about it, but people in the west are similarly upfront about most of our old imperialism.
You should inform Lyrhawn who still uses self-serving rhetoric like "protected China from outside influence" or "we just finished fighting a war that removed Japan from China" which started the whole conversation.
Meanwhile, my first line on the conversation was:
quote:Originally posted by Mucus: In fact, you usually look just about the same as everyone else with the only particularly unique quality being that you're (as a group) remarkably hypocritical and self-righteous while going about the same old.
That includes Asians.
quote: I've heard that from every recent Chinese immigrant I've had a conversation about Tibet with.
Dubious. Not unless you didn't talk to immigrants from Hong Kong or Taiwan or any immigrants under 30. (Or alternatively, just many immigrants) My experience is fairly different and they usually recognize the realpolitik aspects of the whole thing in one form or another.
In fact, you can search this very forum for the thread on the recent Tibet riots which *I* started.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Of course a tiny minority of the Chinese population with a vastly different recent history from most of China might have a different stance. Where did I say every Chinese person thinks like that?
It also does not preclude thinking the invasions were realpolitik; only a couple of the people I talked to thought China invaded partly because it wanted to help Tibetans change their government, most of them just thought people shouldn't complain due to that perceived attitude.
And all of the immigrants in question have been, at oldest, early thirties. I can think of about ten such conversations specifically, and several of those are early 20s.
And I'd like to quote the part of your first line that I was disagreeing with:
quote:with the only particularly unique quality being that you're (as a group) remarkably hypocritical and self-righteous while going about the same old.
China's been just as hypocritical and self-righteous about their invasions. And since more than one of their last several invasions with hypocritical reasons given were in the last fifty years, by your standards they're still going about the same old.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Where did I say every Chinese person thinks like that?
You literally said "every recent Chinese immigrant."
quote: China's been just as hypocritical and self-righteous about their invasions. And since more than one of their last several invasions with hypocritical reasons given were in the last fifty years, by your standards they're still going about the same old.
Of course they are and so is the US. Thats what the same old means.
The only real disagreement I have is with the "just as hypocritical." If you think a handful of military invasions where we barely got out the front door, let alone overseas or to other continents is even in the same ballpark as the systematic economic, religious, and military colonization of whole continents and tens of millions of people then you have very little sense of magnitude.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Now you're resorting to selective quotation. Take a look at the entire quotation "every recent Chinese immigrant I've had a conversation about Tibet with."
So our unique quality is in not being unique?
We haven't done whole continents and tens of millions of people for quite some time. China's done millions of people too, of course; not all of its invasions just got out the door. However, I never said China was just as good at being an invader and colonialist, especially in modern history, only just as hypocritical.
edit: we've done tens of millions of people recently if you count Iraq, but given attitudes about the war so soon after, it is among our least hypocritical.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Now you're resorting to selective quotation. Take a look at the entire quotation "every recent Chinese immigrant I've had a conversation about Tibet with."
Which is of increasing selectiveness as we take apart that claim. The problem is that you were attempting to create a picture of the Chinese immigrant community but then focused only on immigrants from mainland China. In fact, in both Canada and the United States the recent immigrant population is still dominated by Cantonese and people with Hong Kong roots. Its only in very recent years that the trends are toward mainlanders and they have quite aways to catch up.
quote: So our unique quality is in not being unique?
Seriously, read the quote again and work on your concentration, "with the only particularly unique quality being that you're (as a group) remarkably hypocritical and self-righteous while going about the same old."
See the "remarkably"? The remarkable aspect is not in that fact that you go about the same old but the remarkable hypocrisy and self-righteousness. Its pretty plain English.
quote: We haven't done whole continents and tens of millions of people for quite some time.
Again, different views on time. A couple hundred years in Chinese history doesn't even get you out of the last dynasty and nets only a handful of invasions. Vietnam and Tibet mostly.
A couple hundred years in United States history gets you to the enslavement of Africans to the extent that they form a full 10% or more of your population. The number of invasions in Latin America, Asia, and the Middle East, I can't even begin to count.
It just doesn't compare.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Assuming 200 years ago starts at roughly 1805 It would appear that China hasn't invaded a single country in that time. Tibet doesn't count as its essentially indistinguishable from reclaiming previously controlled territory a fact recognized by the international community.
Also why wouldn't tibetans want the Chinese to have moved in? Tibet was 95% Slaves and Serfs owned by a aristocratic land owning ruling class that made up 5% of the population whose worth was measured in their weight in gold and the worth of a peasant was worth a length of string. The Chinese introduced secular rule, land reform, social equality and economic aid and development.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
See, even the foreigner is more hypocritical on Chinese invasions than I am. At least I count Tibet as an invasion Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
I'm more interested in the attitudes of Chinese people, and mainland immigrants are more indicative of those on the whole.
Also, you're wrong about the recent immigrant population being dominated like that. Not counting HK and Taiwan, as of 2006 there were 1,357,482 people born in mainland China living in the US ( http://www.migrationinformation.org/USfocus/display.cfm?id=685 ). If you include HK but not Taiwan, the number only goes up to 1,551,316. Note that this isn't recent immigrants, this is all immigrants still living in the US. Recent immigrants are even more heavily dominated by mainland China.
According to the stats from the census bureau from 2000 ( [url=http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/stp-159/STP-159-china(inclTaiwan).pdf] here [/ur] -- strangely the site won't allow parentheses in a url, but if I put it in url tags it'll leave it as plaintext) , those from China including Taiwan were numbered at 1 518 650, while not including Taiwan ( http://www.census.gov/population/cen2000/stp-159/STP-159-china.pdf ) they were numbered at 1 192 435 . So unless there's been an incredible upsurge since then in the percentage from Taiwan, they don't dominate total living immigrants, much less recent immigrants, of which there's been a big increase in the number from mainland China.
I don't have stats for Canada, but I doubt they're grossly distorted from those.
quote:Seriously, read the quote again and work on your concentration, "with the only particularly unique quality being that you're (as a group) remarkably hypocritical and self-righteous while going about the same old."
See the "remarkably"? The remarkable aspect is not in that fact that you go about the same old but the remarkable hypocrisy and self-righteousness. Its pretty plain English.
I wasn't construing you as saying the remarkable part was going about the same old, so I don't think it is my reading comprehension that needs much improvement. I was referring to how you were suddenly starting to concede at least some hypocrisy on the part of China. And I continue to disagree that any hypocrisy and self-righteousness on the part of westerners about our endeavors in invasion and control is not especially unique to westerners in contrast to Chinese people.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Blayne: China never invaded Korea or Vietnam, either? You should stop spending so much money on drugs.
Mucus: if we're taking Blayne as an example, he's totally not hypocritical in the ways you've been talking about wrt the west's treatment of east asia Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Uummm. A large portion of southern china are cantonese not just including HK.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Blayne: China never invaded Korea or Vietnam, either? You should stop spending so much money on drugs.
Mucus: if we're taking Blayne as an example, he's totally not hypocritical in the ways you've been talking about wrt the west's treatment of east asia
Please explain how China sending 200,000 volunteers to aid North Korea any different from the US sending fighter pilots to China in 1937?
Also "invaded" Vietnam? Border war/retalliatory strike != Invasion and in any case they didn't occupy Vietnam or Korea either way. Maybe its you who needs to lay off the drugs and crack open a history book.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
fugu: Your numbers are for first generation immigrants, not recent immigrants.
All of your statistics I already touched on myself with, "Its only in very recent years that the trends are toward mainlanders and they have quite aways to catch up"
Again, you're using very small Western-based assumptions on time. Recent for Chinese people means like in the last 50 years. The largest group of Chinese immigrants that we classify as non-recent would be immigrants that came over to build the railways.
It *would* be hypocritical for us to call Americans Europeans with a max of 200 years of settlement and then in the same breath turn around and call Chinese Americans after a mere 50 years or so. But we're not like you (collective).
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Blayne: China never invaded Korea or Vietnam, either? You should stop spending so much money on drugs.
Korea is already out because as BlackBlade noted both sides were walking freely across the lines. China invaded South Korea only after the US invaded North Korea so its basically a wash.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Blayne: China had every intention of invading Vietnam, in fact Deng Xiao Ping out and out told Carter that was his intention. It was the 40,000ish casualties in the first month that saw the Chinese drastically change their strategy.
quote:Although Hanoi said it was forced to do so to stop Pol Pot's genocide and to put an end to his cross-border attacks against Vietnam, Deng saw it as a calculated move by Moscow to use its allies to encircle China from the south. Soviet "adventurism" in Southeast Asia had to be stopped, Deng said, and he was calculating (correctly, it turned out) that Moscow would not intervene in a limited border war between China and Vietnam. Carter's National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said Deng's explanation to Carter of his invasion plans, with its calculated defiance of the Soviets, was the "single most impressive demonstration of raw power politics" that he had ever seen.
But I suppose that again plays on China's fear of European intrigue in the Asian realm. But even with that motive Blayne you need to acknowledge that China did try to invade Vietnam, they did it with the Monguls, and during Deng's administration. You'd think Deng would have learned something about the fact that although the Mongol hordes were able to plow through Europe they were completely stopped in Vietnam hundreds of years ago.
edit:
quote:Please explain how China sending 200,000 volunteers
Volunteers? Please. Sure many, I'll even grant you most enlisted, but don't pretend Mao was above impressing people into the army to fight. -----
Mucus: You seem a bit more angry than you typically are discussing these topics, is everything OK? Besides American immaturity of course.
email me through the forums if there is anything wrong.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
All quotes from Mucus
quote:The largest group of Chinese immigrants that we classify as non-recent would be immigrants that came over to build the railways.
Yeah, and that happened in the 1850s, 60s and 70s, so you're saying a 150 years ago doesn't count either? Or did they come over en masse to build the highway system in the 1950s time frame that you're referring to?
quote:You should inform Lyrhawn who still uses self-serving rhetoric like "protected China from outside influence" or "we just finished fighting a war that removed Japan from China" which started the whole conversation.
You're right, I shouldn't have said protected China from outside influence. I should have said protected their territorial integrity. We did it for selfish reasons, but we didn't do what the Europeans would have done, which would have meant grabbing our own slice of China for ourselves and let others grab theirs. I think you could argue that we limited outside influence, and it might not have been what the Chinese wanted, but being conquered and ripped apart I would imagine would be something they'd want even less.
quote:You can deal with the facts or ignore the facts and call people names*. It would be racist if I said Europeans did what they did *because* they were white. Its not racist to simply observe that European imperialists were white and as even you admit set new records in exploitation and imperialism.
Europeans? Sure. Americans? Not really. Maybe you could argue economically in the last 50 years, but by that accounting, China is on the verge of, if not already, guilty of the same thing. It IS however racist to say that all white people are the same, which is part of what I glean from what you're saying.
quote:* Perhaps I should call you a racist for assuming that I hold the views that I do simply because of my race.
I don't care what what you're race is, I'm talking about what you're saying, not who you are. Your race never entered into it. That's a pretty half-assed attempt at deflection, and isn't remotely the same thing.
quote:No, I simply live in a world where I don't measure time in 50 year slices and the occupation of North America is uncomfortably close.
You said that Chinese people should have given Americans the benefit of the doubt for dubious actions over a handful of years. We say prove it over time.
50 year slices? America has been around for 230 years. If you're only counting actions since 1950, then you don't get to use American Indians for your purposes.
quote:Monroe doctrine, "banana republics" ring any bells. It just never got as bad as European work because you guys had less time.
What does less time have to do with anything? Europe carved up and subjugated Africa in a generation. America had been a country for a hundred years at that point. The timing issue has nothing to do with it. If we had really wanted to, we could have conquered all that territory and could have added it to our holdings. That you don't see the differences is to me indicative of either a lack of willingness to try, or just total ignorance of the subject. You know the anti-American lines that every non-American seems to know by heart and learn at some point in their lives, but the specifics aren't really holding up from what I see.
Why isn't Cuba part of America? Why isn't Panama? Haiti? Nicaragua? Mexico?
Because we actively rejected the European style imperialism that would have led them to annex those countries, but we chose not to, and in many cases, went in to stabilize and got out as fast as we could. And the Monroe doctrine kept European colonial powers OUT of an area that we didn't end up taking for ourselves. We only took the Philippines through international peer pressure, and it was a huge mistake and an awful act. But even in the biggest overt act of foreign imperialism in American history we still did a better job than Europe did in theirs.
I don't think we did it all for altruistic reasons, we did a lot of it to limit European influence in what we saw as our sphere of control, and for economic domination (which was a dubious argument considered we generally skipped the raping of natural resources that Europe did, and considering these places had no money to buy our goods). But I do think there were altruistic movies mixed in, and I think the results speak to that effect.
I'm not saying that we didn't make a lot of mistakes or that we didn't commit any atrocities, because we did, just like Asians have, just like Africans have, just like Europeans, but on nowhere near the same scale as that last group. What Japan did, they didn't learn from us.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: ... Mucus: You seem a bit more angry than you typically are discussing these topics, is everything OK? Besides American immaturity of course.
email me through the forums if there is anything wrong.
I think addressing this is probably more productive then rehashing the quotes that Lyrhawn brought up and that I've already addressed.
Stepping back and taking a look at the thread, I *am* more angry than normal and if some one of that venom hit Fugu in the crossfire.
fugu13, I apologise for conflating you with Lyrhawn
No, this is mostly between Lyrhawn and I for a number of reasons. But I think I'll take up BlackBlade's offer to look over something that I wrote in one big go as a first pass filter to avoid inflaming this even more (Sorry BlackBlade).
Posted by Samprimary (Member # 8561) on :
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: Assuming 200 years ago starts at roughly 1805 It would appear that China hasn't invaded a single country in that time. Tibet doesn't count as its essentially indistinguishable from reclaiming previously controlled territory a fact recognized by the international community.
If you just didn't know what 'invading' means, that would be forgivable. Here, you're trying to avoid calling a spade a spade.
Tibet was invaded. conquered. all that jazz.
Posted by fugu13 (Member # 2859) on :
Mucus: someone born here was never anything but an American citizen. I don't count them as immigrants. But given the vastly larger number of people who live here who moved here from mainland China than from HK + Taiwan, I want to see some numbers for second and later generation immigrants, out to whatever number of generations you deem reasonable, that show mainland Chinese are not the majority.
And that's all a side note, of course. Since mainland Chinese are the vast majority of Chinese, they are clearly the appropriate immigrants to talk to if one wants to get any idea of majority Chinese attitudes towards things.
Also, whatever one's stance on other things about the Chinese invasion of Korea, it was definitely an invasion (which Blayne appears to roundly deny happened).
[ April 22, 2009, 08:55 PM: Message edited by: fugu13 ]
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:No, this is mostly between Lyrhawn and I for a number of reasons. But I think I'll take up BlackBlade's offer to look over something that I wrote in one big go as a first pass filter to avoid inflaming this even more (Sorry BlackBlade).
If it makes it any better, there's no particular inflammation on my side, this just happens to be a subject I take special issue with, but I'm not upset or angry.
I'm not sure why you're taking particular umbrage at me, as I don't think I've been offensive or vitriolic, but if this particular subject has special significance to you and you've taken extra offense on account of that then I apologize if any of my statements, through that lens, were taken with extra offense.
Though, apologizing for the packaging doesn't mean I'm retracting the substance of what's inside.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Mucus: someone born here was never anything but an American citizen. I don't count them as immigrants. But given the vastly larger number of people who live here who moved here from mainland China than from HK + Taiwan, I want to see some numbers for second and later generation immigrants, out to whatever number of generations you deem reasonable, that show mainland Chinese are not the majority.
And that's all a side note, of course. Since mainland Chinese are the vast majority of Chinese, they are clearly the appropriate immigrants to talk to if one wants to get any idea of majority Chinese attitudes towards things.
Also, whatever one's stance on other things about the Chinese invasion of Korea, it was definitely an invasion (which Blayne appears to roundly deny happened).
Please explain your definition of invasion and at what time and place did China invade a country known as "Korea" and in what way sending troops to aid a Comintern Ally (DPRK) somehow an invasion, they didnt occupy the country or institute regime change.
"If you just didn't know what 'invading' means, that would be forgivable. Here, you're trying to avoid calling a spade a spade.
Tibet was invaded. conquered. all that jazz. "
For an invasion to take place, there would need a country to invade, for all intents and purposes Tibet was circa 1949 a part of the Republic of China a fact recognized on the maps of every power that mattered, since it was not a legal sovereign entity then de jure then no invasion took place just the central government stabilizing a remote province not recognizing the rule of the central government at the time.
Find an example of China in the last two hundred years when it was ruled by Han Chinese that it took an army declared war on, and invaded with intent to occupy/annex another Sovereign nation recognized by the league of nations or the united nations.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by fugu13: Mucus: someone born here was never anything but an American citizen. I don't count them as immigrants. But given the vastly larger number of people who live here who moved here from mainland China than from HK + Taiwan, I want to see some numbers for second and later generation immigrants, out to whatever number of generations you deem reasonable, that show mainland Chinese are not the majority.
Well, I took a look and its hard to get hard numbers. But I think you only need second generation immigrants like myself to get the trends that I'm speaking of. Unfortunately, the Canadian government does not track it directly but I can demonstrate it with at some confidence using statistics rather than personal observation.
On page 26, you'll see the breakdown on immigrants from between HK, Taiwan, and PRC. Simply summing up the values gives roughly 377 thousand first generation immigrants from HK and Taiwan and roughly 366 thousand immigrants from the PRC.
That already gives us a small majority only with first generation immigrants. (Although I admit that data past 2005 would probably bump the PRC substantially indicating that I am a little out of date.) Sadly, my own parents immigrated in the 70s are are simply off the map.
For the second generation we need to use some circumstantial evidence since it appears the Canadian government doesn't explicitly track it.
What we do know is that the peak of HK immigration is from 1991-96 where as the peak for the PRC is 1996-2001, which would give that group that much more of an advantage when it comes to children. Also, if you look at the included maps for Toronto and Vancouver, you see that the current percentages for places of birth for Hong Kong + Taiwan are usually larger or competitive to those for the PRC. With a reasonable distribution split for the Canadian-born group, you should see that the HK + Taiwan group should be relatively dominant (although perhaps not for many decades more).
I think that should give some indication that the numbers do follow my intuition to some degree.
quote: And that's all a side note, of course. Since mainland Chinese are the vast majority of Chinese, they are clearly the appropriate immigrants to talk to if one wants to get any idea of majority Chinese attitudes towards things.
Yeah, I was mostly objecting to the characterization of the recent immigrant community.
On the issue, perhaps, but you have to realize that there are a few flaws with such an approach. In particular, one should consider how people talk with outsiders and in particular when in a country that is largely hostile to one's home.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:Three waves of oppression. We can't even come close to touching it.
Why do you think this is?
quote:Monroe doctrine, "banana republics" ring any bells. It just never got as bad as European work because you guys had less time.
So you think time was the limiting factor that prevented us from, say, annexing part of Central America?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Rakeesh (first question):
Thats actually a very interesting question. I recently read a book about Joseph Needham who was a Western scientist who visited China during WWII in order to find out exactly what the Chinese developed all those years ago (it turns out a very remarkable amount) and why Chinese technological development. It raised a few issues that I'll sum up.
One theory is that China is just too dang big, hard to govern, but relatively unified for most of its history. With these aspects, there is both little impetus to develop in a competitive way. Where as the Europeans had to go out of Europe to look for soft targets, it was viewed in China as almost exile to go out and deal with the rest of the world.
One example, during the Ming Dynasty, Zheng He made six separate voyages to Africa. Here is a summary of the results:
quote: Zheng He's fleets visited Arabia, East Africa, India, Indonesia and Thailand (at the time called Siam), dispensing and receiving goods along the way.[8] Zheng He presented gifts of gold, silver, porcelain and silk;in return, China received such novelties as ostriches, zebras, camels, ivory and giraffes.[8][10][11]
Zheng He generally sought to attain his goals through diplomacy, and his large army awed most would-be enemies into submission. But a contemporary reported that Zheng He "walked like a tiger" and did not shrink from violence when he considered it necessary to impress foreign peoples with China's military might. He ruthlessly suppressed pirates who had long plagued Chinese and southeast Asian waters. He also intervened in a civil disturbance in order to establish his authority in Ceylon, and he made displays of military force when local officials threatened his fleet in Arabia and East Africa. From his fourth voyage, he brought envoys from thirty states who traveled to China and paid their respects at the Ming court.
In 1424, the Yongle Emperor died. His successor, the Hongxi Emperor (reigned 1424–1425), decided to curb the influence at court. Zheng He made one more voyage under the Xuande Emperor (reigned 1426–1435), but after that Chinese treasure ship fleets ended. Zheng He died during the treasure fleet's last voyage. Although he has a tomb in China, it is empty: he was, like many great admirals, buried at sea.
I bring this up for a couple reasons. First, the tributary system doesn't really encourage interaction with foreigners. The value of gifts given was normally greater than what was received. This was to show how great China was. Condescending, yes. But ultimately not an incentive to trade.
So that handles the economic sphere. Without incentives to colonize, trade, or settle, both are sunk.
The last sphere is military. On that one, we did go out and pillage. The Mongols are still known in Europe and did a pretty daring (and crappy) invasion of Japan and the Qing weren't particularly nice people either. Zheng He also illustrates that we had the ability to do these things.
So, we have one sphere out of three. We had capability but are particularly lacking in motive. Would we have developed more in time? I don't know. Possibly. But we didn't, which is perhaps good for the world, but ambiguous for us.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: I'm not sure why you're taking particular umbrage at me, as I don't think I've been offensive or vitriolic, but if this particular subject has special significance to you and you've taken extra offense on account of that then I apologize if any of my statements, through that lens, were taken with extra offense.
OK, I think burning off some steam to BlackBlade and taking a few breathers helped.
I think I can address why you pressed my buttons that you did and why I specifically went off on you versus a more hawkish conservative, which would be more predictable.
quote: Though, apologizing for the packaging doesn't mean I'm retracting the substance of what's inside.
Thats OK. I don't think many people change minds here, the best I think we can do is understand one another.
So first, I've been doing a bit of reading on things Chinese recently, history, movies, media, etc. And not even all that much from PRC, mostly Western/CBC books about China or media from Hong Kong. But in effect, its partially heightened my sense of identification, but not necessarily with the current Chinese government, just in a very diffuse general way.
So, the type of rhetoric is almost bringing to my mind images of me as a regular Chinese person back in the age of imperialism and hearing you say stuff like "protecting China", freeing China from the Japanese, and then acting as though we should be grateful. You could almost imagine a black American hearing from a white American about how slavery wasn't all that bad and it could have been a lot worse with Europeans. Well, maybe ... but not the best button to push.
I don't think that Americans (or truth be told, Canadians) really have moved all that far away from the years of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1948). I don't have to go far to read stuff telling Chinese Americans to go back to China, so I'm especially sensitive to any back-sliding, particularly when it comes the "good guys" (that would be you ... I'll get back to this).
Second, you first insinuated I was racist for bringing up that "Plus from an Asian POV ... you're just another set of white guys who were just a bit late to the imperialism party." You further added "You either really don't know what you're talking about, or you do, and you're being either really disingenuous, or really racist. Or a both."
Well, no. You don't get to call me ignorant, you don't get to call me disingenuous and you especially don't get to call me a racist. At least the way I was educated, we're taught to debate over the issues and the facts, if we're wrong then thats what we focus on, but we don't go for the name-calling and the insults.
But back to race, I think I'll split this out.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
This will just be on race. (The next is on you (Lyrhawn) as one of the good guys)
The simple fact of the matter is that for both Americans and Europeans (let alone Asians), imperialism as it was historically practiced is explicitly tied up with race.
You can examine the *very first* phrase that I referenced on page 2, "white man's burden."
quote:"The White Man's Burden" is a poem by the English poet Rudyard Kipling. It was originally published in the popular magazine McClure's in 1899, with the subtitle The United States and the Philippine Islands. Although Kipling's poem mixed exhortation to empire with sober warnings of the costs involved, imperialists within the United States latched onto the phrase "white man's burden" as a characterization for imperialism that justified the policy as a noble enterprise.
I don't want to go through each and every point I brought up, but the fact is I didn't just make this stuff up, Europeans created it and Americans adopted it with enthusiasm. Its actually kind of generous to view this cultural problem as being a result of American ideas being the product of European ideas. The alternative is to think that Americans created it de novo.
Now let's examine the focal issue of how Japan turned into an imperialistic power. Consider the following fairly conventional historical text:
quote: On the other hand, few Europeans would admit that Japanese culture, however defined, qualified as being fully civilized. So the elite Japanese who struggled to master European culture faced a most vexing attitude from many of the very people they tried to emulate: you may not because you cannot, and you cannot because you may not! Many European commentators reacted negatively to alleged Japanese "aping" of European ways. There seem to have been two related tendencies underlying this negative reaction. First was a desire in the minds of many Europeans for Japan to remain quaint and exotic. Second was a feeling of cultural and racial superiority such that no non-European people could possibly master the ways of Europe in any deep or "true" fashion. Japanese adoption of European cultural forms must, therefore, be a case of mere superficial imitation or "aping" of their European betters. To what extent do such ways of thinking continue in the present? ... Japan, however, was still part of Asia in Western eyes, and thus, by definition, could never become fully civilized. Notice in the links between technology and machines, forms of government, religion, race, and degree of civilization expressed in the passages above. In this way of thinking, Japan could, at best, merely imitate the world's most civilized countries, never quite coming up to the same level. Recall Wirgman's admonition that "you may wear spectacles till you are blue in the faces, [but] you never can look like Germans, positively never." Recall also the images of Japan and its people that came to the fore during the Second World War (see the first chapter).
Why the obsession with rigidly fixed categories? Part of the answer is the racial thinking discussed above. If races are a hard-wired biological entity, they cannot be easily changed. But underlying this way of thinking was, among other things, Western imperialism: the economic, military, and cultural dominance of the world by a small number of countries. These countries were *reluctant to let any new members, especially from exotic lands,* into their exclusive club ( http://www.east-asian-history.net/textbooks/MJ/graphics/ch3/14.htm ). By the turn of the twentieth century, many Japanese had grown deeply resentful of the hypocrisy that relegated Japan to the ranks of the "semi-civilized" because it lacked Western cultural forms but derided and ridiculed its attempts to master those very cultural forms. This resentment took several different forms, and it was a major background contributor to conflict of the middle twentieth century. ... By the 1920s, two distinct positions had emerged among Japan's elites with respect to foreign policy. One position said that Japan was functionally a Western country and should therefore cooperate with the Western powers in the conduct of world affairs. Though they did not say it this way, what they meant was that Japan was an imperialist power just like England, Germany, France, and the others, and would thus be better off in the long run by playing along with the imperialist "club," even if the other members of the club had the unpleasant tendency to look down their noses at Japan culturally. Notice that this position adopted the view of Fukuzawa that Japan should not be part of Asia, albeit with some modification.
The opposing position adopted the Miyake/Okakura view that Japan was and should be a part of Asia and that it should opposed Western imperialism there. "Asia for the Asiatics" was one of their slogans. Advocates of this point of view thought that Japan should stop trying to cooperate with the West and should instead forge a mighty empire out of the vast resources of Asia. The more extreme elements of this point of view envisioned a massive Armageddon-like war between "Asia" and "the West" in which one group would completely destroy the other. This way of thinking mirrored "Yellow Peril" fears on the part of many Europeans and Americans who shared the same gloomy view of the future. This position combined elements of both cooperative and chauvinistic nationalism.
Sadly, we know which side "won." Even more gloomy, one can see China and America heading along a partly similar course.
But on race, one should note two major points. First, the pivotal role race played in the way the West viewed Japan. Second, and more damning ... the fact that imperialism as defined by the West themselves was so inextricably tied to race, they couldn't conceive of the Japanese joining the "imperialist club."
The full article is worth reading, it demonstrates how the Japanese viewed themselves as going on an imperialist rampage to impress Europeans and just how condescending the West was to them.
Most importantly, its even a standard Western view (its not even an Asian one), written in the United States by a Western professor.
So yes, one can be politically correct and whitewash (hmm) the issue by claiming that there's something objectionable to the phrase "white guys" to describe Western imperialism or we can look at the truth and see that that was the way that everyone viewed it at the time, Western or Asian.
It would be racist to claim that white people practiced imperialism because they were white. It would be racist to claim that non-whites couldn't have done the same thing if they were working off of the same ideas and had come up with "scientific racism" as its called in the article.
Its not racist to observe that "Western imperialism" as it is called in the article was practiced both by white guys who saw themselves as white (click on the cartoon for a disturbing example ... the author's name is Bigot for example) and seen from an Asian perspective as coming from white guys (and explicitly no or very few women too).
I can sympathize and see how it kinda sucks if you're a white guy to hear this. But thats how it was and I don't think one should hide that.
Onto why explicitly you as one of the "good guys."
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
So why you (Lyrhawn) going forward.
Finally, yesterday.
This sounds silly.
However, I had just finished watching the Daily Show, a fairly typical (but one-day delayed) show but one that illustrated a list of the ways that Americans tortured people, the judgment that probably no one will be brought to justice (even with a new administration) despite lying about it, representatives of a significant portion of the American population who would rather believe that it didn't happen or just want to sweep it under the rug, and in the interview even a brief jab to the large influence of evangelicals in America's military in Iraq.
Thats one show. Only one episode of one show. A comedy show.
This illustrates one of the most troubling aspects of the situation as going forward. See, China tortures people, period. But everyone knows that. Practically every Chinese person knows that. We don't have to be reminded. On both sides of my family, I'm only a couple degrees away from relatives who fled the land reforms, or survived the worst of the cultural revolution, or who have to deal with institutional corruption today. We *know* the government is lying.
What insidious about the American situation is the way it can all be swept under the rug and then the next moment, the US is held up as a moral exemplar for the world to admire. The United States isn't like everyone else, its an exception to all that. What we just did or are doing now, its justified. Or at least thats the press. And many many Americans buy it.
But you're part of the "good" guys. You're supposed to be bringing change and pushing the Bush ideas out.
Let's observe something that predates even my first upset response.
quote: South America and Africa are about the only continents I'm willing to listen to criticism from when it comes to American imperialism. Europe and Asia should look to their own wounds, for they're either just as great or far greater.
Think about this rationally and if you had heard this from President Bush. You'd expect him to ignore *whole continents* and to forge on ahead blindly. But rationally, does this make any sense? Who better to know what oppression is than people who had to live through it? Do their leaders at some nebulous time really write off the experience of the people there forever?
If a British person calls out an immoral act, does his leader multiple generations back discard his opinion permanently? Or does he maybe have some special perspective having had vicariously done the same thing and regretted it? And what if he's immigrated somewhere else?
No, I expect terms like "Old Europe" used to discard the opinions from whole areas from the last administration.
I expect better now.
You have to be willing to hold your own feet to the fire otherwise you become complicit in stuff like:
Well, yes, they tortured people ... but we'll just not punish anyone (and embolden future torturers). Well, yes, they started warrantless wiretapping ... but we'll just keep it anyways.
If one views the US as an exception and better because, well, its the US ... it just lets you rest on your laurels and ends up being corrosive to the admirable American phrase about eternal vigilance.
I think thats all. Yikes. Damn thats long and I hope I toned it down from what BB got enough.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote: This illustrates one of the most troubling aspects of the situation as going forward. See, China tortures people, period. But everyone knows that. Practically every Chinese person knows that. We don't have to be reminded. On both sides of my family, I'm only a couple degrees away from relatives who fled the land reforms, or survived the worst of the cultural revolution, or who have to deal with institutional corruption today. We *know* the government is lying.
That poses an interesting question.
Which is worse? Everyone knowing that torture is going on, but no one being allowed to say or write about it for, well, fear of imprisonment or torture? Or some people knowing that torture is going on, but many not, while those who do are free to shout from the rooftops that it's happening?
I think that latter is the reason we are, and should be, held up as an example, though thankfully as time has passed many have taken our very imperfect example and adopted it for themselves, to be examples in their own right.
---------
As to historical Chinese might-have-been colonialism, it seems the foundation of their not going out and colonizing was basically a staggering cultural and racial sense of superiority. Middle Kingdom and all. That's...well, not really a very persuasive moral platform for favorably comparing China to Europe or America, in my opinion.
It's different, but that's about it.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
Rather than a massive response, I'll do it in pieces like you did:
quote:So, the type of rhetoric is almost bringing to my mind images of me as a regular Chinese person back in the age of imperialism and hearing you say stuff like "protecting China", freeing China from the Japanese, and then acting as though we should be grateful. You could almost imagine a black American hearing from a white American about how slavery wasn't all that bad and it could have been a lot worse with Europeans. Well, maybe ... but not the best button to push.
Grateful? Maybe not grateful, but I'd hope you'd recognize the differences. If you don't see a substantive difference between economic and physical imperialism, then I think we're already worlds apart. Forcing China to trade with everyone in the world, which is what we did, was certainly unfair, and not something I'd be grateful for...but what would have happened if we hadn't done that would have been the carving up of the country by European powers. And if you want to know how well that goes, look at Africa, now look at China again. Now tell me there's no difference. I don't want a thank you from China. We did it for selfish reasons; we wanted a place to offload trade goods. But banging down the door as a door to door salesman is a heck of a lot different than banging down the door and then taking your house. We'd just done that in the Philippines and it was atrocious, and Americans knew that and were sick of it after one helping.
quote:I don't think that Americans (or truth be told, Canadians) really have moved all that far away from the years of the Chinese Exclusion Act (1948). I don't have to go far to read stuff telling Chinese Americans to go back to China, so I'm especially sensitive to any back-sliding, particularly when it comes the "good guys" (that would be you ... I'll get back to this).
Second, you first insinuated I was racist for bringing up that "Plus from an Asian POV ... you're just another set of white guys who were just a bit late to the imperialism party." You further added "You either really don't know what you're talking about, or you do, and you're being either really disingenuous, or really racist. Or a both."
I've never really understood how the special emphasis on anti-Chinese feeling ever really proliferated here. Racism isn't a surprise, we were born and bred on racism (Europe was the same way, China and Japan were and still are, that way, to varying degrees), and anti-Catholicism, and anti-immigrantism, despite being a nation of immigrants. We've always been oddly fond of shrugging off the shackles of oppressors so we can come to America and by golly do some oppressing on our own terms.
But nothing I've said to you has had anything to do with the fact that you're Chinese (I'm guessing you're Chinese?) or Asian, or even Canadian (I sympathize with the last one, I'm French Canadian on my mother's side). The reason I tend to get heated in these debates is two fold, and I'll admit that it's usually with Europeans rather than fellow North Americans: I'm sick to death of Europeans wagging their finger at us, having seemingly forgotten the sheer mass of crap that they did to the world, and I'm mostly looking at you Britain, and the sheer mass of the problems that continue to perpetuate because of the things they've done. I don't mind someone telling me not to do something that's bad if they've done it themselves. They'd know better than anyone how bad it was! But to do it lathered in moral superiority is irksome, just as irksome as when the US does it to other people, which I also hate by the way. The other thing I don't like, and this is going to sound 100% typical American, is not getting credit for having done things better, and this is mostly I'd say pre-1950s, as, sadly, and honestly, I don't really know the details of all the crap we did post 1950s, but before that, you could say we were on equal footing with Europe, and we looked at Europe and we tried the whole imperialism thing in the Philippines, and we didn't have the stomach for it.
That's exactly why Rudyard Kipling was writing White Man's Burden. The subtitle of the poem is something like "To America in the Philippines," he was writing a recommendation and a call to arms. We listened, but regretted it, and we tried to make amends. You talk down about the Monroe Doctrine, but that ignores the fact that without our selfish need to treat the Caribbean like an American lake, the whole area would have been in thrall under Europe, and everything they touched had a tendency to wilt. We really weren't just like every other white guy out there...more on this later.
I honestly don't think I was ignoring facts and reason to throw insults. But I'm honestly offended by what you've said. I think that in the balance, what you've said has equated to "all white people were the same," and I while I can't imagine that's what you're intending to say, that's how it's come across. As far as ignorance, you're ignoring a lot of American history in your accusations, and European as well, as far as the comparing and contrasting goes, especially if you think we're all just one blob of unsortable white people.
So alright, you aren't racist, or ignorant, or disingenuous, but you are ignoring a lot of things, or were anyway, and you were saying some borderline offensive things to me. I'll apologize for the backhanded swipe at you, as one shouldn't put a label on someone after a single offense, but generally I don't have a problem calling a spade a spade when spadelike behaviors are present. That's why I said it.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: That poses an interesting question.
I thought so
quote: Which is worse? Everyone knowing that torture is going on, but no one being allowed to say or write about it for, well, fear of imprisonment or torture?
Well, thats not quite true. I'm obviously saying something about it. Obviously, my relatives had to say something for me to know about it. Empirically, people in Hong Kong say or write about it and if you take a glance at blogs that cover the Chinese media like RConversation and EastSouthWestNorth, you'll see that while there is an attempt at suppression but its not all that effective.
In fact, its pretty much a consensus that everyone is more free to talk about these things than at any other point in Chinese history and it has been getting better for quite some time.
quote: Or some people knowing that torture is going on, but many not, while those who do are free to shout from the rooftops that it's happening?
Well, its a bit of a wash really.*
See, does it matter all that much in the end? Either way, the torturers get away with it. As you mentioned in the other thread, there probably will be no trials or any real reprocussions beyond maybe a slap on the wrist for a few scapegoats.
And both ways, it may very well happen again. Waterboarding in its Western incarnation afterall has been used in Vietnam and has been developed since the Korean War.
* And at the juncture that it starts looking like a wash, you have to ask the question. If you find yourself benchmarking against China, a self-admitted developing nation, dictatorship, and corrupt ... but not coming up fundamentally better, maybe you should be holding yourselves to higher standards.
quote: As to historical Chinese might-have-been colonialism, it seems the foundation of their not going out and colonizing was basically a staggering cultural and racial sense of superiority. Middle Kingdom and all. That's...well, not really a very persuasive moral platform for favorably comparing China to Europe or America, in my opinion.
First, I want you to acknowledge that wasn't actually the question. Your question was about "why" the Chinese never developed it or practised it. A question about the moral implications of that is a different question
But if we must move on, the way I see it, yes. There is a difference.
Because its really only one step away from pacifism. From the belief that one's nation is superior to others and because of that it shouldn't conquer others, its not a huge step to pacifism as its practiced now.
i.e. Don't occupy others, don't fight with others, it doesn't drag them down, it drags you down. At the very bare minimum, wait for an international consensus.
These were the ideas that compelled Canadians to *not* enter the Iraq War, the refrain summing up all of that was, "We don't invade other countries, we're not like the Americans." Cultural superiority.
Sometimes it matters less *why* you don't do something, it matters more that you don't.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:I don't want to go through each and every point I brought up, but the fact is I didn't just make this stuff up, Europeans created it and Americans adopted it with enthusiasm. Its actually kind of generous to view this cultural problem as being a result of American ideas being the product of European ideas. The alternative is to think that Americans created it de novo.
It's true, for a time we did adopt Kipling's exhortation wholeheartedly, but there was an extremely vocal subsection of the population that condemned imperialism, including former presidents like Grover Cleveland and presidential candidates like William Jennings Bryan, and leading authors like Mark Twain. The same month that the White Man's Burden appears in McClure's, The Real "White Man's Burden" was published as well. It's people like Crosby who would end up having their way. I think after the Philippines, we lost our stomach for it. Censorship tamped it down a bit, but there was no hiding the horrors of the Bolo War. The British and the French just kept going, but we stopped. You can point to occasional interventions in the Caribbean and Latin America, but the difference is that they were interventions (just like China had), and when we were done, we left. We didn't stay and force them to worship America.
quote:Its not racist to observe that "Western imperialism" as it is called in the article was practiced both by white guys who saw themselves as white (click on the cartoon for a disturbing example ... the author's name is Bigot for example) and seen from an Asian perspective as coming from white guys (and explicitly no or very few women too).
The part that I take issue with is the assumption that Americans and Europeans are one in the same simply because we're all white. You don't see a difference? That difference is the crux of what we've been discussing.
Also, if your excuse for Japan is "he started it," then you have to excuse the United States too. The only reason we even took the Philippines or stretched beyond our continental borders was the idea that to be a first rate power in the world, one had to have an empire. We wanted to be a first rate power, so we gave into peer pressure. I think by the way, there's a disconnect somewhere in your logic and understanding of what was going on in America when we took our foray into imperialism. Why are you giving Japan excuses and us the blame? Following your logic, we're in the same boat as Japan.
The difference of course being, when we got in that boat, we didn't form a massive Pacific empire and use people for medical experiments. Again, they didn't learn either of those things from the US.
I'm sorry I didn't get a chance to read the linked article in full, I will later. I have to go now, I have two finals later today and I need to study, one oddly enough is in a Japanese studies course.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
(This was written before the immediately preceding post)
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Grateful? Maybe not grateful, but I'd hope you'd recognize the differences.
Yeah, but not on an emotional level. Note the analogy with slaves. Americans from some POV may have treated the slaves better, heck, they went to war about it. But you're not going to just say it to a black guy, eh?
quote:And if you want to know how well that goes, look at Africa, now look at China again. Now tell me there's no difference.
I really don't. I guess we might be working off different assumptions. My assumptions are that the Europeans already mostly did their thing, Hong Kong, Macao, Shandong, etc. Even the Europeans knew they couldn't split the whole country up so they did it in drips. And when the Europeans did do stuff like invade during the Boxer Rebellion, Americans tagged right along.
So KoM really summed it up. I don't think the differences are due to the US, they're just due to the circumstances.
quote:Racism isn't a surprise, we were born and bred on racism (Europe was the same way, China and Japan were and still are, that way, to varying degrees)
Similar ways, not the same. Read the section in the article on "scientific" racism. The European variant is much different from the Chinese variant which is much more akin to ethnocentrism.
quote: But nothing I've said to you has had anything to do with the fact that you're Chinese (I'm guessing you're Chinese?) or Asian, or even Canadian (I sympathize with the last one, I'm French Canadian on my mother's side).
Then how could you possibly have said that I was a racist? I mean I could have been a self-hating white person, but that just seems fairly improbable.
quote: The reason I tend to get heated in these debates is two fold, and I'll admit that it's usually with Europeans rather than fellow North Americans ... But to do it lathered in moral superiority is irksome, just as irksome as when the US does it to other people, which I also hate by the way.
Understood on both counts. But realize that being irritating doesn't make someone wrong.
quote: That's exactly why Rudyard Kipling was writing White Man's Burden. The subtitle of the poem is something like "To America in the Philippines," he was writing a recommendation and a call to arms. We listened, but regretted it, and we tried to make amends.
I was under the impression that it was supposed to be ironic/satirical rather than a recommendation as it was taken. But thats a quibble.
quote:... and you were saying some borderline offensive things to me. I'll apologize for the backhanded swipe at you
Not particularly, unless you assume implications about the motives for what I said. Thats a difference between what we said, you need to assume and extrapolate from what I said to take offence. The literal terms you used, they're offencive on their own.
But I will apologize for causing offence and I would also like to ask how you made that leap in order to prevent it in the future.
* Oh and if its not explicit. Thanks for the retraction of the terms, I appreciate it.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Mucus,
quote:Well, thats not quite true. I'm obviously saying something about it. Obviously, my relatives had to say something for me to know about it. Empirically, people in Hong Kong say or write about it and if you take a glance at blogs that cover the Chinese media like RConversation and EastSouthWestNorth, you'll see that while there is an attempt at suppression but its not all that effective.
Granted, but if I'm not mistaken, both you and your parents no longer live in the nation that suppresses dissent, right? So obviously y'all don't count.
Hong Kong residents count, of course, since they do live in that nation. And while I will admit it's an unknowable question, I have to wonder that if Hong Kong hadn't ever been ceded to Britain after the 19th century War for Drugs, would those people living in Hong Kong be able to blog so freely? Why was Hong Kong afforded unique status once Britain's contract expired?
quote:In fact, its pretty much a consensus that everyone is more free to talk about these things than at any other point in Chinese history and it has been getting better for quite some time.
Granted. I think anyone can see that. The near-pacifistic Chinese haven't been running folks over with tanks lately that I can recall.
quote:* And at the juncture that it starts looking like a wash, you have to ask the question. If you find yourself benchmarking against China, a self-admitted developing nation, dictatorship, and corrupt ... but not coming up fundamentally better, maybe you should be holding yourselves to higher standards.
Just to be clear, I'm not benchmarking my country against China. I think it's horrid that even on a few issues we're in the ballpark of China. I was responding more to your tone, really, which has been distinctly adverserial and pro-China when comparing to the United States (or 'Europe' as you call it:p). That's probably just a product of the discussion itself, though, and largely unavoidable.
quote:First, I want you to acknowledge that wasn't actually the question. Your question was about "why" the Chinese never developed it or practised it. A question about the moral implications of that is a different question [Smile]
Well, it's a bit irritating to have demands like that set to me, but I do acknowledge it. I never meant to suggest it was the original question.
I do, however, think it's an implicit question to the other one.
quote: Because its really only one step away from pacifism. From the belief that one's nation is superior to others and because of that it shouldn't conquer others, its not a huge step to pacifism as its practiced now.
i.e. Don't occupy others, don't fight with others, it doesn't drag them down, it drags you down. At the very bare minimum, wait for an international consensus.
No, it's not really pacifism at all. Nor even a cousin. Not even a kissing cousin to pacificism. That comparison would only be fair if that reluctance to do violence because they're 'above it all' manifested itself across the board in their dealings with difficulty.
Plainly that is not the case.
Of course it should be said that ever since there was a PRC, they haven't been in a position to get colonial on anyone's asses in most places. If we're going to talk about modern times, surely that bears mentioning. Where could the PRC expand right now?
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Rakeesh: Granted, but if I'm not mistaken, both you and your parents no longer live in the nation that suppresses dissent, right? So obviously y'all don't count.
Depends on what you mean by count. We're still Chinese. And trivially, I never said that we only socialised and disseminated these things after we got to Canada. And its not as if these issues don't arise when we go back.
The whole system is incredibly porous, which is why I'd like to re-emphasize those two blogs RConversation and EastSouthWestNorth if you want to learn more about how the censorship in China works.
quote: I do, however, think it's an implicit question to the other one.
I think that they're fairly different. The question as to why China developed the way it did is still an open question which occupies much work and study. But its one that can be studied in a decently objective way.
The hypothetical question about the moral implications of how China developed and how to weigh that against others? That requires much interpretation based on culture.
quote: That comparison would only be fair if that reluctance to do violence because they're 'above it all' manifested itself across the board in their dealings with difficulty.
Plainly that is not the case.
I disagree. Chinese reluctance to do violence IS manifest across the board in many ways. It explains the attraction of Chinese people to decidedly non-violent religions. It explains why a relatively small number of Mongols or Qing easily controlled a much larger Chinese population before ultimately being assimilated. It explains the lowly social status of the soldier in comparison to the scholar or the bureaucrat as compared to the West. It explains the building of the Great Wall and associated city walls. It even explains why the Japanese committed their massacre in Nanking, the development of actual Chinese resistance in Shanghai was totally unexpected to their understanding of Chinese character. The examples go on and on.
It is precisely a counter-reaction to the failure of this reluctance to do violence in dealing with foreign imperialism that lead to events such as the May 4th Movement and which explains the popularity of the CCP.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Yeah, but not on an emotional level. Note the analogy with slaves. Americans from some POV may have treated the slaves better, heck, they went to war about it. But you're not going to just say it to a black guy, eh?
I don't buy the analogy, sorry. While I do think that American slavery was different than other forms, and that could be a separate argument, I don't think that European vs American slavery is analogous to European vs American imperialism.
quote:I really don't. I guess we might be working off different assumptions. My assumptions are that the Europeans already mostly did their thing, Hong Kong, Macao, Shandong, etc. Even the Europeans knew they couldn't split the whole country up so they did it in drips. And when the Europeans did do stuff like invade during the Boxer Rebellion, Americans tagged right along.
So KoM really summed it up. I don't think the differences are due to the US, they're just due to the circumstances.
I don't get that. It was there for the taking. Look at those places that the Europeans already had, and they wanted more. We chose not to take a piece of the pie. I don't see how you can't see the difference there. We didn't go right along. Going right along would have meant taking our piece of the pie European style, like they'd always done there and elsewhere. Instead we said no, you can't have territorial concessions as punishment. That was a HUGE break with the normal way of doing business. I don't understand why you fail to recognize this.
quote:Similar ways, not the same. Read the section in the article on "scientific" racism. The European variant is much different from the Chinese variant which is much more akin to ethnocentrism.
Scientific racism only came about like 150 years ago. That, and religion, where some of the principle motivating factors used to justify imperialism, and we used them a little bit here too, but it was a temporary phase of American racist views. Americans far more often fit into the vein of ethnocentrism you describe, with the exception of a multi-decade love affair with men like William Graham Sumner and social darwinism, which actually applied equally to whites and blacks, and in fact serves only to emphasize I think the differences you're bringing up. Below blacks on the American social strata were the Irish. And they used scientific explanations for that too, though more importantly they used religious justifications.
quote:I was under the impression that it was supposed to be ironic/satirical rather than a recommendation as it was taken. But thats a quibble.
Among Kipling's many nicknames was "The Tubthumper of Empire." He was being extremely literal. Basically he was telling America to get over herself, grow up, and take her part in civilizing the world, because up to that point the Europeans had been doing it all themselves. Hell, even the Europeans at the time were trying to get us into something we hadn't been doing and never did very much of. The link that I posted from Ernest Crosby is the anti-imperialist viewpoint in America, the men who opposed that type of expansion. That's your satirical point of view.
quote:Not particularly, unless you assume implications about the motives for what I said. Thats a difference between what we said, you need to assume and extrapolate from what I said to take offence. The literal terms you used, they're offencive on their own.
That's splitting hairs. I qualified my statements. I said how it looked to me and gave you a chance to defend yourself. I didn't say "Mucus, you are a racist!" I said you sounded a certain way, but I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt despite what sounded pretty obvious. There needed to be assumption on my part to assume offense, that's true, but nothing I said to you was offensive unless you chose to take what I said as a literal attack. If you don't fit the bill, it shouldn't have been particularly offensive.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
On on the third post of yours that I never had a chance to cover:
quote:Think about this rationally and if you had heard this from President Bush. You'd expect him to ignore *whole continents* and to forge on ahead blindly. But rationally, does this make any sense? Who better to know what oppression is than people who had to live through it? Do their leaders at some nebulous time really write off the experience of the people there forever?
If a British person calls out an immoral act, does his leader multiple generations back discard his opinion permanently? Or does he maybe have some special perspective having had vicariously done the same thing and regretted it? And what if he's immigrated somewhere else?
I covered this earlier a little bit. I'm not writing anyone off, and I'm willing to listen to criticism, but I can't stomach hypocrisy. We're dealing with enough of our own messes and for that matter, a lot of the legacies of Europe's messes too. I can rattle off a half dozen problem spots in the world that are the direct creation of Britain's meddling in world affairs, and a couple more from France, maybe a few from Spain and Portugal, and one or two from Germany, Belgium and Italy. Pretending that Europe is the high and mighty defender of morality against their crazed little American brother makes my blood boil. It forces a small part of my brain to clamp shut and ignore everything that comes out of their hypocritical mouths, and it's an uncontrollable autonomic response.
If they want to talk to me in a way that actually gets through, they'd start a lot of their sentences with "Hey, we know about the problems you have, I mean look at all the messes we created, maybe you could try doing this..." I don't even need them to say "you aren't screwing up NEARLY as bad as we did, here's what NOT to do."
Comparing me to Bush is nearly laughable. I think I get why you'd try to make such a comparison given the quote we're referencing, but I'm not even close to Bush on the jingoism scale.
The problem with Bush is that he only ever emphasized the good qualities in America. The problem with Europe, and the rest of the world, tends to be that they only ever emphasize the bad things we do. Personally I try and toe the line by recognizing and emphasizing both, demanding that we do better than we have in the past, while not forgetting all the good we've done as a people, and realizing that American exceptionalism has been a goal as often as it's been a reality. You're falling into the latter category in my mind at the moment, hence my reaction.
You're carving out a lot of interesting exceptions that puts America to blame for things I don't think are fair. And you're carving out a lot of interesting exceptions that blames America for Asian problems despite the fact that we have been in similar positions with respect to Europe. I'd like a response to my 12:19 post, then I think I'll see where you really stand on that question. You seem to be going out of your way to assume American fault, and to ascribe something in the core of American thinking that got us to where we are, and then whenever we chose NOT to do something the bad way, you say it was all timing or opportunity. Sounds like a bunch of excuses to me when you really get to the heart of the issue. And you're going out of your way to excuse Asia as well, and some of it I think isn't justified. That's strange too because my real problem isn't with Asia, it's with Europe. But feel free to defend away, anyway.
I'm off to study for my second of two finals today now; Astronomy. I think I did pretty good on the Japanese final. This one I'm not so confident about.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
No, this is what you said.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: You either really don't know what you're talking about, or you do, and you're being either really disingenuous, or really racist. Or a both.
Three possibilities linked by OR clauses.
(And not entirely dissimilar from the structure of "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic" without the Lord)
Not even the possibility that I may know what I'm talking about but simply disagree with you.
Its fairly stark.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote:No. You take responsibility because you *exploded* open their door, forced them to buy your stuff, taught them to go empire building, sold them precisely what they needed to fight in China and create an empire, and then when they started doing too well you added the "yellow peril" racial crap. Only when they turned on you, then you took notice.
I don't have time to get into this thread much at the moment - hopefully tomorrow - but this was bothering me all afternoon at work.
We taught Japan 'how to go empire building' in a Western style. We certainly didn't teach them empire building.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
Sure.
(In context this was a response to the serious understatement that all the US did was kick down Japan's door. If that is the only serious quibble you have with the paragraph, I think I've made my point sufficiently)
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Three possibilities linked by OR clauses.
(And not entirely dissimilar from the structure of "Lord, Liar, or Lunatic" without the Lord)
Not even the possibility that I may know what I'm talking about but simply disagree with you.
Its fairly stark.
Based on some of what you've said, I'm not entirely sure you know what you're talking about. Not as far as US History goes anyway. You're painting a picture that I think comes closer to historical fiction than non-fiction. I'm still waiting for a lot answers to questions I raised throughout the day. You're hoisting a whole lot of blame on us that I think is greatly misplaced, and I think your understanding US imperialist history is incomplete.
quote:Sure.
(In context this was a response to the serious understatement that all the US did was kick down Japan's door. If that is the only serious quibble you have with the paragraph, I think I've made my point sufficiently)
I don't agree with this. We were learning it the same time they were, from the same teacher. I would agree that, along with other countries, we played an equal part in giving them the tools necessary to create an empire, however.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: ... Pretending that Europe is the high and mighty defender of morality against their crazed little American brother makes my blood boil.
I'm going to try to be more concise and address two points. One that I think is important and the one you highlighted at 12:19.
First, this is actually the third time (at minimum) that you've gone off on Europeans in this thread in responses to me.
Now, since I am both a) Canadian and b) Chinese *, this somewhat puzzles me. I've never pretended that Europe has been much superior to the US and it may be more productive for you to point out where you think I have.
* I don't think this is a contradiction anymore although I fully realize this may be controversial to the audience. But I assert that there are interesting Canadian and Chinese viewpoints that make this possible.
Restated shortly, my consistent thesis has been that (in the age of imperialism, a Western term mind you) Europe not only committed their crimes but had plentiful opportunities. The US on the other hand had much fewer crimes but also much less opportunity.
So your consistent anger at Europeans, its a bit puzzling to me. If I may be so bold, I can only wonder if you're having some trouble separating me as a Chinese-Canadian from Europeans that you may have interacted with before.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Restated shortly, my consistent thesis has been that (in the age of imperialism, a Western term mind you) Europe not only committed their crimes but had plentiful opportunities. The US on the other hand had much fewer crimes but also much less opportunity.
You'll have to expand on this. How did we have less opportunity? You've mentioned this multiple times, but I still don't see the reasoning behind it.
quote:First, this is actually the third time (at minimum) that you've gone off on Europeans in this thread in responses to me.
That specific instance was in reference to the charge that I'm writing off whole continents (such as Europe) a la Bush. I'm not, but for a very specific reason, and that's why I emphasized the point with Europe. And that includes Asian nations with imperialistic pasts in the same way that I'd use it against a Sioux American Indian.
I'm not particularly sure why you keep emphasizing your Chinese heritage. It couldn't possibly matter less to me, except theoretically as a clue to your own defense of Asian history, though I don't know why it'd lead you to defend Japan so much, I didn't realize there was so much intercountry Asian brotherhood in that sense, so I don't think that's the reason.
By the by, just because Westerners invented a term for it, doesn't mean it hasn't happened before in other places that didn't call it that. Murder isn't not murder just because no one came up with a term for it.
Indeed you haven't pointed out that Europe is superior to the US. You've emphasized many times over, that but for some historical timing issues, and not even that in many cases, we're not even separable from Europe, and that we're one in the same.
You're putting forth the theory, by implication, that if America had had more "opportunity," we have been just as bad as Europe. I see no evidence thus far put forth to support this other than your own opinion. This might be the crux of the argument right here.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: Based on some of what you've said, I'm not entirely sure you know what you're talking about.
Sure, if that is the way you wish to go about it. But remember that charitable interpretations go both ways.
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: It's true, for a time we did adopt Kipling's exhortation wholeheartedly, but there was an extremely vocal subsection of the population that condemned imperialism ...
Sure. You get marginal points for that. But actions speak louder than words.
Let's take a more modern example. There was an extremely vocal subsection of the population that objected to the war in Vietnam or Iraq too.
Due to your anger with Europeans, I would note that Canadians didn't join Vietnam and we didn't join Iraq despite considerable American pressure both times. Results do matter.
quote:The British and the French just kept going, but we stopped. You can point to occasional interventions in the Caribbean and Latin America
See, this is a good example of what I'm taking about. By this time we're already on the brink of the 1900s. If you accept that American history up to this point is correctly deemed as imperialistic as Europe, my case is already roughly three quarters complete.
Remember, the original point of conflict is whether the US should have gotten as you put it "the benefit of the doubt" from the Chinese of 1950.
Even if the remaining quarter of the time was indisputably great (and I think even you can agree that there is plenty of room for alternative opinions here. Latin American perception of American Imperialism is not a tea party either), you're already sunk.
quote: The part that I take issue with is the assumption that Americans and Europeans are one in the same simply because we're all white.
Not the same, the best word I've used before is "product." Americans of that time were not native Americans, they weren't Africans, they weren't Asians. They were products of Europeans, both in heritage and in culture. Even if every single European that became American had immigrated before 1800, that still only gives 200 years for divergence. Plus, as you acknowledged, the cultural ideas that motivate imperialism still flowed back and forth until at the very least your admission of the Philippines at the turn of the century.
So, no, not the same. But I think its telling of a lack of perspective to simply declare and expect the rest of us accept by fiat that you're Americans and that means a clean break from Europe. From the Asian perspective there's less difference between you and the Europeans and say ... Chinese and Japanese people with more than a thousand years of divergence, a different language, etc. (And as Tom pointed out, we still felt very close to them)
quote: Also, if your excuse for Japan is "he started it," then you have to excuse the United States too. The only reason we even took the Philippines or stretched beyond our continental borders was the idea that to be a first rate power in the world, one had to have an empire.
Sure. Like I said, product.
quote: Why are you giving Japan excuses and us the blame? Following your logic, we're in the same boat as Japan.
I don't really. If was talking to Japanese people that were proclaiming a lack of responsibility, I'd have even more choice words. Following the crowd isn't really an "excuse" that deflects moral responsibility. Its a statement about historical causality.
(ex: Germans started WWII partly as a product of their treatment after WWI. It in no way excuses their behavior, it explains it.
Maybe you're reading more into my words than I'm really saying and that is upsetting you.
(Oh, and I hope you had good luck on your exams)
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Let's take a more modern example. There was an extremely vocal subsection of the population that objected to the war in Vietnam or Iraq too.
Due to your anger with Europeans, I would note that Canadians didn't join Vietnam and we didn't join Iraq despite considerable American pressure both times. Results do matter.
I think we have different ideas of what imperialism even is. Do you think US actions in WWII were imperialistic?
Don't get me wrong, I think Iraq was an awful idea, and is the biggest US blunder of the last 20 years at least. But I don't think it was imperialistic. Anyone who has any ideas about the American mindset would know that we'd have zero intention of staying there, regardless of what the outcome had been. I certainly respect Europe's stance on the issue. You seem to have ignored me earlier when I said I don't have as much of a problem with Europe's current stance. Now a days they tend to get things more right, though I think their timidity is taken too far in the other direction from time to time as well. It's when they scold us without recognition of their complicity that I get annoyed. Britain didn't do it, so I don't have a beef with them, but if they had I would have reminded them that they created part of the mess in Iraq to begin with (we supplied the other half, so maybe we'd call that one even). I don't for a second think that it was imperialistic. I don't think South Korea was either, or Vietnam, or our invasion and conquest of Germany (twice) or Japan. How do I know? Because we aren't in control of any of the countries I just mentioned, and the ones we were in control of were for extremely brief periods of time, and without that effort, millions more would have died, and for that matter, I think the progress of SK, Japan, and Germany in the world from the point of our intervention onward should say something for what we did.
I'm curious as to why you didn't include South Korea in with that list.
quote:See, this is a good example of what I'm taking about. By this time we're already on the brink of the 1900s. If you accept that American history up to this point is correctly deemed as imperialistic as Europe, my case is already roughly three quarters complete.
Woah, hold up there. I don't for a second agree that American history up to that point was as imperialistic as Europe. I don't even come close to agreeing. In fact I disagree rather loudly.
quote:Remember, the original point of conflict is whether the US should have gotten as you put it "the benefit of the doubt" from the Chinese of 1950.
I thought we were talking about the Chinese of the late 19th century, originally, but I guess in the end it doesn't really matter.
quote:So, no, not the same. But I think its telling of a lack of perspective to simply declare and expect the rest of us accept by fiat that you're Americans and that means a clean break from Europe. From the Asian perspective there's less difference between you and the Europeans and say ... Chinese and Japanese people with more than a thousand years of divergence, a different language, etc
Well, I don't really have time to write a whole essay on the subject, but I think there was a cultural difference from Europe by the late 19th century at the very least, and much earlier in reality. America might have been formed by Europeans and with European ideas, but we were still colonial, and colonial life in America bred a new culture that changed even more rapidly after independence. Don't forget that a great many people first came to America to get AWAY from Europe, not to build a proto-Europe overseas, and the people who build the political structure of the country were specifically building an antithesis to the governments that constituted Europe.
To you it might look like the difference between a Golden Delicious and a Red Delicious apple, and I don't necessarily think there are racial reasons for thinking that, I think it comes as a consequence of not being European or American, and the education you got growing up. But, if I had the time, I could make I think a very strong case that Americans were culturally different, but with cultural bridges to Europe. Certainly that'd be an easy case to make today wouldn't you agree? Europeans most decidedly are not interchangeable with Americans, despite the fact that "Westerner" lumps them all together (with Canadians too). If you can recognize the difference there, it shouldn't be too hard to backtrack it a century or two.
quote:I don't really. If was talking to Japanese people that were proclaiming a lack of responsibility, I'd have even more choice words. Following the crowd isn't really an "excuse" that deflects moral responsibility. Its a statement about historical causality.
Heh. I still think you're missing something there. Like I said before, Japan didn't learn that from us. Learning new warfare techniques isn't the same thing as learning all the things that they ended up doing. What we did might have enabled them to do what they did, but it certainly didn't cause it. That's an important difference.
Also, I'm not particularly upset. Puzzled, is probably closer to where I'm at emotionally.
(And thanks, I actually think both my exams yesterday went surprisingly well!)
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
I think Iraq was in fact Imperialistic with the aim of setting up a puppet or at least US dependent Government to give preferential oil contracts, aimed primarily to do it before the Chinese and Russians could in a post saddam Iraq get the oil development contracts first.
The fact of the matter is not whether you can stay but whether any government left over is capable of letting "the spice flow" to the US rather then your emerging rivals.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
Blayne: And yet those oil contracts are not the exclusive peruse of US companies. The only thing I think can be reasonably extrapolated on this topic is that the US saw Iraq's oil a means to finance the expensive war it was considering at the time.
What evidence have you got that we would have setup a puppet government? Trying to get public fair elections created seems pretty counter intuitive to the objective you've given us.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Woah, hold up there. I don't for a second agree that American history up to that point was as imperialistic as Europe. I don't even come close to agreeing. In fact I disagree rather loudly.
It is true that the US didn't go much in for overseas expansion until ~1890 or so. But you were certainly building up your territory in an explicitly imperialistic way. Does the phrase 'Manifest Destiny' ring a bell? Indian tribes, Mexico, Louisiana. Forty-four forty or fight. Florida. Alaska. Are you really claiming that these are not imperialistic actions?
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
quote:Forty-four forty or fight.
Point of order, we followed up that whooping political slogan with a hefty pouch of money for Great Britain in exchange for Oregon. Also wasn't Alaska purchased from a willing Russian government? I'll give you everything else.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
(Follows KoM's post)
Yeah, thats precisely what I'm going for. See, American expansion was so innately threatening and aggressive that fear of a unilateral and unprovoked American attack was the number one reason for Confederation of Canada in 1867.
(i.e. If Canadians couldn't even trust Americans up till at the bare minimum decades after 1867, you can certainly understand Chinese reluctance in at least say the turn of the century)
That isn't even an Asian perspective. That is from the perspective of (now) your closest ally.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade:
quote:Forty-four forty or fight.
Point of order, we followed up that whooping political slogan with a hefty pouch of money for Great Britain in exchange for Oregon. Also wasn't Alaska purchased from a willing Russian government? I'll give you everything else.
The British would not have sold that territory if there were no credible threat of war. They didn't come to rule a quarter of the earth's surface by giving away land whenever there was a dispute, after all! Notice that several generations of British politicians followed the policy of giving in to the US - 'appeasing' them, if you like - whenever there was a conflict in the American continent, because they knew they could not win a war. They'd get whatever compensation was going, but they wouldn't fight. As for Russia, they had just lost the Crimean war and weren't in any position to defend Pacific possessions. And in both cases, aren't these rather excellent examples of expansion for its own sake? It's not as though Oregon is a major contributor to the US economy, and as for Alaska, Seward didn't know anything about the oil.
Edit: And have a look at the (from Wiki) motivations of the American government:
quote:The treaty was promoted by Secretary of State William H. Seward, who had long favored expansion, and by the chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, Charles Sumner. They argued that the nation's strategic interests favored the treaty. Russia had been a valuable ally of the Union position during the U.S. Civil War, while Britain had been a nearly open enemy. It seemed wise to help Russia while discomfiting the British.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
quote:Originally posted by BlackBlade: Blayne: And yet those oil contracts are not the exclusive peruse of US companies. The only thing I think can be reasonably extrapolated on this topic is that the US saw Iraq's oil a means to finance the expensive war it was considering at the time.
What evidence have you got that we would have setup a puppet government? Trying to get public fair elections created seems pretty counter intuitive to the objective you've given us.
Public and free elections for a leadership that is almost entirely dependent on American aid and military support? Riiiight.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Come, Blayne, fair's fair. The Americans have been building up an Iraqi army. It won't be of any use for invading Saudi Arabia, but for keeping tribal militias under control? There's a limit to how much artillery you need for that. A government that can control its own territory and deliver oil to anyone who will pay is in the end not dependent on anyone.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
I don't have a lot of time, I'm off on a trip for most of the weekend. But there is one thing that I'd like to cover before attempting a paragraph by paragraph response and its been tumbling around my head since last night.
I wonder how much our cultural perspectives are shaping this conversation.
As a Canadian I have a hard time relating to your desire to "divorce" yourselves from your European ancestors. We take "credit" for the 1812 defeat of the American invasion and the "guilt" for the slaughter of the native Americans before Confederation.* While I consider the US almost a misguided product of Europeans, we're a mixed bag of better and worse. We're *lackeys* to British imperialism through till at least WW1, not just products and while we've forged our own path past WW2, our institutions, names, and whatnot are still distinctively evolutionary products of British ones.
* I remember a chilling start to a documentary on Canada on CBC about how Hudson's Bay Company blankets were given to the native Americans laced with disease. Hudson's Bay is "ours" in national mythology but its factually British
Maybe French Canadian antipathy towards being conquered by the British and resulting opposition to every time we went along with the British (Boer, WWI, etc.) has kept us honest. They've been a strong influence on our politics and policies. There may be many reasons. But we don't have an equivalent to American rhetoric about "Old Europe" and "New Europe."
But in the end, we're not that different. You fought a war for independence, we dealt with it diplomatically. Our patterns of settlement aren't amazingly different with the exception of American slavery. Our religious patterns aren't all that different in proportion.
Its an interesting difference in cultural perspectives.
Posted by BlackBlade (Member # 8376) on :
KOM: Your point is well taken, but are you so certain America would have risked an armed conflict with Britain again for Oregon? I wasn't there obviously so the general disposition of the government is not something I could say with any certainty, but isn't it plausible that the government was making alot of noise for the citizens sake while discussing quite civilly diplomatically?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Originally posted by Blayne Bradley: I think Iraq was in fact Imperialistic with the aim of setting up a puppet or at least US dependent Government to give preferential oil contracts, aimed primarily to do it before the Chinese and Russians could in a post saddam Iraq get the oil development contracts first.
The fact of the matter is not whether you can stay but whether any government left over is capable of letting "the spice flow" to the US rather then your emerging rivals.
Considering none of the charges you've leveled there actually ended up happening, one wonders what you used, other than personal conjecture, to produce them.
The idea that the war would pay for itself via oil isn't particularly shocking, at least not back when we were talking about a three month tiptoe through the tulips that could be done surgically with little cost.
If the fact of the matter is in fact what you say it is, then by your own definition it wasn't imperialist.
quote:From KoM: It is true that the US didn't go much in for overseas expansion until ~1890 or so. But you were certainly building up your territory in an explicitly imperialistic way. Does the phrase 'Manifest Destiny' ring a bell? Indian tribes, Mexico, Louisiana. Forty-four forty or fight. Florida. Alaska. Are you really claiming that these are not imperialistic actions?
Pretty sure it was fifty-four forty or fight, but that's a rather minor quibble, though I'll come back to this in a minute. Yes, I'm aware that a lot of our continental expansion was imperialistic, but not all of it. Expansionist and imperialistic aren't the same thing. Alaska wasn't imperialistic, we bought it. I think the oft leveled charge that Americans systematically committed genocide is off base too. The grand majority of American Indians died as a result of disease, and, stories of smallpox blankets aside, it wasn't a mass attempt at slaughter via germ warfare. Intra-indian warfare did a lot of the killing, as well as their own overhunting of the buffalo before we even got over there. Indian policy was a conflicted subject in American history, but in the end I'd agree with Mucus that actions speak louder than words in that regard, and we have a lot to be ashamed of when it comes to Indian policy, but I still don't think it's as black and white as people like to portray it at.
The original point however, was not that Americans to 1890 weren't imperialistic at all, but that we weren't nearly as bad, and I stand by that. I'm not going to do it today, I'm pretty academically burnt out, but there's a complex evolution that takes place in the 20th century in how Americans, as a people and through government policy, viewed American Indians, and there's a pretty big shift around the 1870s that has both negative and positive repercussions, and in both instances it's a radical departure from what Europeans practices abroad.
quote:From Mucus: See, American expansion was so innately threatening and aggressive that fear of a unilateral and unprovoked American attack was the number one reason for Confederation of Canada in 1867.
Ironic coming from the people who launched the only two foreign wars on American soil. It was British aggression that started 1812. You call it an invasion of American forces, but Canada was still Britain back then. At worst it was a counter-invasion, and that's using terminology more favorable to you. It absolutely wasn't unprovoked aggression. Impressment on the seas, British support and arming of Confederate rebels (a huge point on contention), trade policies, are you seriously trying to argue that Britain wasn't being provocative during this era? We still weren't going to invade Canada in the 1860s, but it's not like we didn't have legitimate beefs with Britain.
quote:From KoM: The British would not have sold that territory if there were no credible threat of war. They didn't come to rule a quarter of the earth's surface by giving away land whenever there was a dispute, after all! Notice that several generations of British politicians followed the policy of giving in to the US - 'appeasing' them, if you like - whenever there was a conflict in the American continent, because they knew they could not win a war. They'd get whatever compensation was going, but they wouldn't fight
It was saber rattling, pure and simple. Polk (I think it was Polk) used 54'40 or fight as a campaign slogan to get the people all riled up specifically so Britain did think that the US was serious about war, but all Polk ever wanted was Puget Sound so he would have another deep water Pacific harbor. Using fifty four forty or fight as an example of American imperialism is also silly because look at the current boundary. It ain't the fifty four forty, it's the 49th.
quote:As for Russia, they had just lost the Crimean war and weren't in any position to defend Pacific possessions. And in both cases, aren't these rather excellent examples of expansion for its own sake?
Well we weren't going to TAKE it. They called it Seward's Folly for a reason.
Posted by Mucus (Member # 9735) on :
quote:Originally posted by Lyrhawn: We still weren't going to invade Canada in the 1860s, but it's not like we didn't have legitimate beefs with Britain.
See, you're really missing the forest for the trees. The point is not that Canada was blameless, the point is that the imperialistic bickering of the two sides is of an intensity such that even fellow North Americans (not Asians, not Europeans) felt that it was threatening to share a border with the US in 1867. (And Canadians genuinely thought the US might invade in the 1860s, in fact concurrent with Confederation, the US was turning a blind eye to raids launched from US soil)
In fact, I've checked and Canadian defense plans against an American invasion date well into the 1920s.
And yes, you've put plenty of American spin on the events but you can easily see that the situation was messy enough to see that actual Canadians would have viewed things quite differently. For every piece of spin you place on an event, we have many counters that many perfectly rational people accept.
...
Or can you?
See, I'm starting to wonder if you have a fundamental inability to see things from anything *but* an American position no matter the time period.
You claim that Chinese people should have given the US the benefit of the doubt in 1950 (or worse, you thought we were talking about 1900!?) when it came to sharing a border with Americans.
Now you seem to be edging toward claiming a similar stance for Canadians in 1867, which seems to be a critical misunderstanding of the Canadian positions of the time.
If you can't even understand that Canadian position (I'm not asking necessarily asking for you to agree to it), I wonder if its even possible for you to understand a Chinese position after you layer on the many foreign invasions, systemic American racism, treaties by blackmail (and then secret treaties with the Japanese on top of those), and so forth. And you know ... a huuuuuge difference in culture.
There just seems to be a fundamental disconnect here.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Yes, I'm aware that a lot of our continental expansion was imperialistic, but not all of it. Expansionist and imperialistic aren't the same thing.
I disagree. What is the difference as you see it?
quote:The original point however, was not that Americans to 1890 weren't imperialistic at all, but that we weren't nearly as bad, and I stand by that.
How do you quantify this? Acres expanded per year? Wars fought? In terms of ideology, Manifest Destiny doesn't seem any less widespread or arrogant than Trade Follows the Flag, mission civilisatrice, or Lebensraum. (The last is a later development, to be sure.) Are you sure you're not just saying "It was us, so we couldn't have been as bad as the others"?
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
I'm afraid I don't see much difference between 'expansionism' and 'imperialism' either, Lyrhawn. To my mind the only difference is context.
When I say 'imperialism' I think of some country going far away, smacking down some locals, and taking over. When I think of first European and then American behavior in North America, I'm afraid the only substantial difference I can think of is that once we got here, we didn't have to go very far at all.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:See, you're really missing the forest for the trees. The point is not that Canada was blameless, the point is that the imperialistic bickering of the two sides is of an intensity such that even fellow North Americans (not Asians, not Europeans) felt that it was threatening to share a border with the US in 1867. (And Canadians genuinely thought the US might invade in the 1860s, in fact concurrent with Confederation, the US was turning a blind eye to raids launched from US soil)
Isn't that kind of a no brainer? When Canada's parent country, Britain, acts in an extremely provocative manner towards the United States, doesn't it sort of make sense that Canada, right next door, is going to naturally be threatened as a result of those actions? It feels like you're trying to make a much bigger deal out of that than it really is.
And if those "raids" are the ones I'm thinking of, then you've really stretched the term to apply it to what actually took place. I imagine they would have had some sort of defense plan in place partway into the 20th century until the US and Britain drew closer as allies. Canada as a lone country however would have been just fine if it hadn't been for their connection to Britain.
I think the idea that we'd invade in the 60's, given the political climate of the US though, is questionable. The only thing that might have pushed us towards such an action would have been the blatant acts of aggression from the UK in arming and supporting the South, and at that point, you have to wonder if there isn't a legitimate cause to go to war, but even then I still don't think we would have, we had enough on our plate.
quote:And yes, you've put plenty of American spin on the events but you can easily see that the situation was messy enough to see that actual Canadians would have viewed things quite differently. For every piece of spin you place on an event, we have many counters that many perfectly rational people accept.
I think you're spinning in the opposite direction. I think the facts back up what I'm saying, and I don't think I'm saying anything particularly out there. I'm not saying that the United States is bathed in awesome and has a little halo that shines over the continent that makes us paragons of virtue and morality. We've made a lot of mistakes. We've made some whoppers. I've ceded that where I've felt it's fair to do so. But I think the extent to which America, pre-1960s or so, gets blamed for the world's problems, and the extent to which America is labeled imperialistic, is comparatively melodramatic most of the time. My automatic response is just to chalk it up to anti-American sentiment that most people seem to at some time absorb into their psyche, as an automatic assumption. But I think a careful analysis of events that took place show a departure from that view. I'm not convinced that such an automatic response is really fair though. Defending America's history seems to automatically come across as spin or whitewashing. It seems that anything other than total admission of fault to whatever charges are leveled against us is chalked up as some ultra-nationalistic American self-denial.
I don't buy that. I think the truth lies between. There are a lot of Americans who do in fact do that, and brush all our sins and crimes under the rug of American exceptionalism and virtue, and then there are those who have very, very few good things to say about America's past. I fall in between.
quote:You claim that Chinese people should have given the US the benefit of the doubt in 1950 (or worse, you thought we were talking about 1900!?) when it came to sharing a border with Americans.
What proof were they working with in 1900? Everyone has to have a reason to believe what they do, what were theirs?
quote:Now you seem to be edging toward claiming a similar stance for Canadians in 1867, which seems to be a critical misunderstanding of the Canadian positions of the time.
I can consider that such an event would be possible, but we're framing it in entirely different ways. You'd call it a land grab I think, and I'd call it cassus belli. And I think somewhere in there is where our disconnect is. I think a real look at America during that time period would show that invading Canada wasn't anywhere near a priority. We were far too self-involved, which really makes me wonder what Canadians were seeing if they seriously feared an invasion. Did they really not know what was going on? Were they listening to British propaganda? Or was it just unfounded skittishness?
I think that perhaps combining America's westward march (though seriously, westward, not northern) with increased British/American tensions in the 60s could have given them suspicion to fear some sort of reprisal. I just think that in the end, such fears were seriously misguided.
KoM -
quote:I disagree. What is the difference as you see it?
I think imperialism implies differing amounts of control, whether it's cultural, military, economic, whether the people are indoctrinated or live in thrall, etc. Expansion in the case of something like buying Alaska or the Gadsden Purchase wasn't imperialist. We didn't march into Alaska and start rounding up the Inuits into camps. In many ways it was just land for the sake of land that really, really ended up being good value for the money.
Setting up a colony, for example, in a place where there are no people, isn't imperialistic. Though it could become that I guess if it was used as a military launching point for conquest.
quote:How do you quantify this? Acres expanded per year? Wars fought? In terms of ideology, Manifest Destiny doesn't seem any less widespread or arrogant than Trade Follows the Flag, mission civilisatrice, or Lebensraum. (The last is a later development, to be sure.) Are you sure you're not just saying "It was us, so we couldn't have been as bad as the others"?
You can use numbers if you want. Look at what Europe controlled, between huge swaths of South America, the whole of Africa with maybe the exception of Ethiopia and a tiny piece of land called Liberia, the Indian subcontinent, and large parts of the Middle East as well. That's a billion people, millions upon millions of whom were killed, multiple continents and vast tracts of land that don't even compare to the size of America. There were less than three million American Indians in America when the first colonists arrived. Between then and 1900, the grand majority would die of disease, and many more from intratribal warfare. It makes the atrocities committed against them no less bad in their own right, but it also gives us a sense of scale, and that we weren't on the same scale.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
quote: quote:I disagree. What is the difference as you see it?
I think imperialism implies differing amounts of control, whether it's cultural, military, economic, whether the people are indoctrinated or live in thrall, etc. Expansion in the case of something like buying Alaska or the Gadsden Purchase wasn't imperialist. We didn't march into Alaska and start rounding up the Inuits into camps. In many ways it was just land for the sake of land that really, really ended up being good value for the money.
Setting up a colony, for example, in a place where there are no people, isn't imperialistic. Though it could become that I guess if it was used as a military launching point for conquest.
Lyrhawn, I very much doubt if KoM was talking about just Seward's Folly and Gadsden.
quote:That's a billion people, millions upon millions of whom were killed, multiple continents and vast tracts of land that don't even compare to the size of America. There were less than three million American Indians in America when the first colonists arrived. Between then and 1900, the grand majority would die of disease, and many more from intratribal warfare. It makes the atrocities committed against them no less bad in their own right, but it also gives us a sense of scale, and that we weren't on the same scale.
Why do you think things were different in South America? There, disease did most of the European work as well. Also, it seems you're collectively balancing all of Europe against the United States. I'm not sure how reasonable that is.
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
No, I don't think he meant just Alaska and Gadsden, but he implied that all expansion was equal to imperialism. I'm trying to make a distinction, and those were perfect examples. I'm certainly not going to argue the point when it comes to something like Indian wars. Obviously I cede that.
Yeah, disease did a number on South Americans (though that doesn't excuse them on any other continents), but you also have to consider acquired immunity. Europeans colonizing South America by and large did so as individual men and intermarried with local women. Europeans colonizing North America did so in family units who all came with a large degree of immunity (though still suffered by the millions from things like malaria, hookworm, yellow fever, etc). It gave South Americans a better chance to defend against those diseases over time, whereas they continued to ravage native American populations centuries after colonization first began. The rest of the damage they did themselves, but that's still a valid point I suppose.
And another valid point as far as a collective Europeans go.
We can separate out individual European countries easily enough and I still think that, by and large, the individual damage wreaked by each one is much greater than America's individual sphere of responsibility. Germany conquered most of territorial Europe and proceeded to kill 12 million Jews, gypsies and other undesirables. I don't think I even have to go into their Pacific and African holdings to prove my point on that one. Great Britain enslaved India, bits of China, chunks of South America and the Caribbean, chunks of the Middle East where we can thank them for the mess in Palestine and the ethnic mess in Iraq, and then of course you get to Africa. France held southeast Asia in thrall for a century and change, and also had there own large bits of Africa where they radically reordered the politically and social landscape for millions to make everyone into proto-Frenchmen but without any of the basic rights that Frenchmen got, then used them for fodder in their wars (oh, count Britain in for that one too!). Belgium tried their hardest to join in the club with the messed up situation they created in the Congo, but in terms of scale rather than revulsion I guess they fall short.
And, as a precaution, I'm not saying that we didn't do anything wrong. I just don't think it's nearly on the same scale.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
Not for lack of trying! I really don't think you get to claim a meaningful difference between killing 90% of a population of 10 million, or 5% of a population of 180 million. And really, the Europeans were not that big on genocide, outside of Europe. (I'm aware of examples like the Herero, but there's nothing like the systematic campaign over a whole continent.)
Further, it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that Britain 'enslaved' India. 'Conquered', certainly. Ruled for their own benefit, definitely. But there were no slaves. I had far rather be an Indian coolie under the Raj, than a plantation slave, or even a nominally-free black sharecropper, in the same period.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Setting up a colony, for example, in a place where there are no people, isn't imperialistic.
And where did you expand that had no people? Do the Inuit have no right of self-determination?
Posted by Lyrhawn (Member # 7039) on :
quote:Not for lack of trying! I really don't think you get to claim a meaningful difference between killing 90% of a population of 10 million, or 5% of a population of 180 million. And really, the Europeans were not that big on genocide, outside of Europe. (I'm aware of examples like the Herero, but there's nothing like the systematic campaign over a whole continent.)
Disagree. Disagree. Wow, that's really a glowing endorsement, but there's more to it than that (and disagree on the systemic campaign bit too).
quote:Further, it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that Britain 'enslaved' India. 'Conquered', certainly. Ruled for their own benefit, definitely. But there were no slaves. I had far rather be an Indian coolie under the Raj, than a plantation slave, or even a nominally-free black sharecropper, in the same period.
Alright, we can replace "enslaved" with "conquered and extracted wealth at the expense and labor of the locals."
quote:And where did you expand that had no people? Do the Inuit have no right of self-determination?
It was a general example in the argument for a difference between expansion and imperialism.
And so far as I know, Inuits were never put in reservations, and were treated very differently from the continental American Indians. And for that matter, there are like 15 people in Alaska, and the space is vast, there is something like one person per square mile. I don't know a huge amount about Alaska native history, but near as I can tell, almost no one went there for the first 20 years or so that we had it, then a few thousand people did for the gold rush, then most came back, then they rushed back out again decades later for oil, but even now it's one of the most sparsely populated states. I don't think it was the same issue as it was in the continental US.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
Lythawn please explain how and why in gods name should the somewhat isolationist, paranoid, and slightely xenophobic leadership of a country that has been all of the above for 300 years ever give any of the round eyed devils the benefit of the doubt? Especially when there IS a history of secret and unequal treaties, foreign interventions, invasions, on top of other humiliations when they had just come out of the above and were finally in Mao's words "China stands up!" in his 1949 speech? Isn't the first rule of international relations in the realpolitik world of that era DONT TRUST the Great Powers to be your friends?
Now if Truman had publicly announced his intentions to not only renounce ties with Chiang Kai Shek (which he temporarily did) but also stated he wished to seek out relations with "Red China" and wished them friendship and a helping hand in development with maybe a few minor preferential trade concessions then maybe the Korean war would have been different, and this makes SENSE from a realpolitik view because A) There's always been a historical rivalry between russia and china, B) Russia was the BigBad at the time so getting an ally from China would've made sense Red or not Red (in the 80's the CIA with Chinese permission operated a communications spy station in Chinese territory) and would've fit their strategy of containment perfectly.
With China not so isolated.... heck you'ld probably have had the moderates like Deng or Zhou with more influence since most of Mao's power came from him pointing out how surrounded they were.
Since truman did none of this and seemed perfectly content to leave America's position on Red China ambigious to hostile after 49' can you blame the Politburo for reacting with the assumption that the Americans are probably hostile?
How the heck do you pronounce your name.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Blayne talking about 'round eyed devils' is hysterical.
Posted by Blayne Bradley (Member # 8565) on :
And your pretty dense in your inability to determine that I am merely observing the common perception of the nationalistic segment of chinese activists and politicians of the era and not me as myself referring to them. If your unable to distinguish that then there's little point in you contributing to the discussion as virtually everything will be a personal attack on me based on the misinterpretetion or the misconstruction of what I am saying.
Posted by Rakeesh (Member # 2001) on :
Yeah, I was incapable of making that determination.
Posted by King of Men (Member # 6684) on :
quote:Alright, we can replace "enslaved" with "conquered and extracted wealth at the expense and labor of the locals."
Yes, I will give you this. But I'd also suggest you consider the counterfactual, which is that the local aristocracy extracts wealth at the expense and labour of the locals. I'm unconvinced it matters whether the exploiter is from a far-off island, or right next door. And another point: The British did at least invest their loot; they build factories, railroads, eventually an entire industrial civilisation, and yes, some of that did come back to India. So compared to having the local princes grab the loot, I'd rather have the British. Note that this is not symmetric with the situation in the Americas, where there was no local aristocracy; not that a hunter-gatherer society is a dance on roses (with or without wolves) but it's fairly egalitarian.
I'll agree that Alaska is the weakest of the examples given, but what the heck, Australia wasn't very heavily populated either, without this detracting from the overall British imperialism. The point is that an outside observer, trying to determine whether Britain or the US was more imperialist, could likely make it come down either way by choosing his criteria right. More weight to acres expanded, or people subjugated? To the difference in exploitation levels, or to deaths? And so on. It's just a fact of life that pretty much everyone was an imperialist at the time, the colonised peoples not excepted. In fact if you study the history of British dominion in India, it's clear that at the start, the Company was only armed so it could keep from getting robbed blind, and the directors in London explicitly ordered their agents in India, multiple times, not to get involved in 'country wars'. (Which worked about as well as ordering colonists in America to stay east of the Appalaches.) And the Indians were pretty aggressive, too, around 1800; the Company had some pretty good excuses for getting into several of its wars, on the order of "They sent an army into our city and began raping and pillaging!"
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Arizona doesn't even share a border with Texas. Despite what you may have heard, New Mexico really is a part of the US, you know.