|
|
|
| Authored by: Anonymous on Saturday, May 11 2013 @ 06:19 PM EDT |
> I've said
enough before how "no taxation without representation" was a somewhat
manufactured and bogus excuse ...
Not really. *Were* the colonies represented in Parliament? No. Unless you want
to maintain that they were "virtually" represented just as well in
Parliament as lots of people who lived in England, and were thus not being
specifically picked on because most English did not live in a few rural
"rotten boroughs," either. But that only digs the hole deeper, doesn't
it, by pointing out Parliament was just about as unrepresentative of English as
it was of colonists. So we need not go there.
>The problem is, going right back to the founding of the colonies, let alone
the
US itself, the philosophy of "might is right" has been a driving
force
through pretty much all of Anglo-Saxon American history.
> This is just more of the same ...
Perhaps if you had said "Anglo-Saxon" instead of "Anglo-Saxon
American" history I might agree more easily. One might ask, after all, with
whom did those founding fathers go to school, and where did the more prominent
of them or their fairly recent ancestors come from? Where did they learn their
values? From England, of course.
But not all. Some of them came from Scotland. Some even claim that the American
Revolution was, in essence, the revenge of the Scots on the English. Why would
anyone think such a thing? Why is someone like John Paul Jones practically
considered a national hero -- by the Scots?
I certainly do agree that we in the US have more than our fair share of
hypocrisy, in which the naked self-interest of a small class of people is
dressed up as the salvation of civilization and fed to the rest of society as
eternal truth or a matter of national pride or interest. I have had some pretty
strong words to say about that, above in this thread. But the US has no monopoly
on false altruism and false pride, only the current power to commit more abuse
in the name of fake principles than others can do.
So, let us not try to hold up England as the shining beacon of civilization. It
was the English, after all, who thought that the Chinese were violating
international law and the sacred principles of free trade when the Chinese
wanted to cut down on the unrestricted import of opium. It was the English who,
in the name of international law and free trade, went to war with China, won the
war, and forced those backward Chinese to rescind the restrictions on importing
opium. History is full of similar examples. It was very easy just to pick one at
random. Moreover, one might ask, just what did average people in England get out
of all those imperial adventures, anyway, except for better cuisine? I
understand that economists and historians have not resolved the question of
whether the whole program of imperialism was of benefit to anyone at all in
England outside of a very narrow political and economic elite, nor even whether
it was a a net loss to economic well being of the country as a whole.
National pride can be a good thing when justified. It can be a very dangerous
and twisted thing when realities are ignored, or when people are deceived or
fooled for the wrong reasons. And it strikes me that no country and no society
in the world is perfect.
[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
| |
| Authored by: PJ on Sunday, May 12 2013 @ 04:02 AM EDT |
That's not the American dream. It just
isn't. I'm not saying it's not a dream
that some Americans have. But the phrase
has a meaning, and that's not it.
And taxation was an important issue that
did play a role. Maybe it's hard to
understand America if you aren't American,
even its history.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
|
- Oh, would some power the giftie gie us ... - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 12 2013 @ 05:04 PM EDT
- Oh really? - Authored by: jbb on Sunday, May 12 2013 @ 08:10 PM EDT
- Oh, would some power the giftie gie us ... - Authored by: PJ on Sunday, May 12 2013 @ 08:18 PM EDT
- OK - Authored by: Anonymous on Sunday, May 12 2013 @ 11:35 PM EDT
- OK - Authored by: PJ on Monday, May 13 2013 @ 01:01 AM EDT
- OK - Authored by: kuroshima on Monday, May 13 2013 @ 04:37 AM EDT
- OK - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 13 2013 @ 07:01 AM EDT
- nonverbal cues - Authored by: Anonymous on Monday, May 13 2013 @ 07:19 AM EDT
- nonverbal cues - Authored by: Anonymous on Tuesday, May 14 2013 @ 05:15 AM EDT
- OK - Authored by: Wol on Monday, May 13 2013 @ 10:51 AM EDT
|
|
|
|
