Which is that all New World countries are basically Potemkin countries, the United States included, a country which, compared to the rest of the world, looks like it was scratched out on the back of a cocktail napkin last night some time.
What is America?
"America" is a piece of land which a colonialist government imposed their laws on and which invited settlers to settle. It imported black slaves to make the agricultural plantations profitable, fought against the natives of the country, and, later, after independence from the mother country, continued on as a business enterprise, importing first people from southern and eastern Europe and then people from Mexico and other third world countries to do the work which people born in the U.S. were demanding too much money to do. Too much money for those who controlled and control the U.S.
The business of the U.S. is business and it could be said without irony that the U.S. is a business construct more than a real country.
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
2 comments:
What people who criticize the origins of the united states often fail to understand is that every modern nation state has been formed by “war” “conquest” and the modern concepts you use of “injustice” and “exploitation” have often been even worse in other cultures and countries.
In india for example 1 in 6 indians is born to the lowest class… the sudra class, the untouchable class. They are slaves in the truest sense of the word and this has been going on for 1500 years.
In mexico for example, before the coming of Cortez the Aztecs made war upon neighboring tribes, enslaving some and sacrificing many to their gods on top of their pyramids. The Spanish subsequently conquered the Aztecs with the help of some of the neighboring tribes and formed the modern state of Mexico.
In the ancient world for example, the ancient Hebrews who had been slaves of the Egyptians carved out a state for themselves in the middle east but only by displacing and committing genocide on a mass scale in order to form their state.
So what is my point to all of this ? My point is that we should be a little more careful when using of the word “injustice” and “imputing guilt” when dealing with some of the stark exigencies of human existence and civilizations. America was the first nation on this earth to attempt to implement the idea of equality of rights, individual rights, equal justice before the law. It was the first nation on this earth that was not solely based on simple warfare.
If we are going to examine American civilization using the ethical criteria and moral judgments that you do, you should at least apply those same ethical criteria and moral judgments to other civilizations. I think in almost every case you will find that America for the vast majority of its citizens has beaten most other countries using those criteria.
No one, to my knowledge, has ever been able to completely remove some of the exploitive aspects of life. The world today is populated by 6.5 billion people. The idea of being able to extend economic, human rights, and equality to all people, provided this is our goal, is daunting as hell.
But we should also ask ourselves the question, what should the goals of our civilization be ? What kind of people should we be trying to create and foster ? And does the doctrine of equal rights carried to an extreme form lead to our impoverishment and dissolution ?
The noam chomsky’s and gore vidals of the world do point out some of the horrors, hypocrisies and inconsistencies of our civilization – but they lack perspective.
I for one dislike many of the moral prejudices and guilt complexes of liberals and socialists. I think they often create more misery on this earth than they relieve.
If we in the west destroy our future... rest assured, other peoples and other civilizations will fill the vacuum. There is no surer way to destroy a people or a civilization than to make them feel guilty, to make them feel criminal, to tell them have no right to their existence and that their existence is evil, a fraud, and a scam.
The underlying subtext of your message is ... Americans are all sinners and criminals before an angry marxist god.
The ethical ideas on which civilization rests have been wandering about the world, poverty stricken and homeless. No theory of the universe has been advanced which can give them a solid foundation... Albert Schweitzer
Post a Comment