[The Military]

And last I checked, the Iraq war wasn't about economics, but national security.  Turned out that was one hell of a crap premise. 

 

Hardly. All wars, when it comes down to it, are about economics. National security was a convenient issue to justify the war, but like you said, it's a crap premise.

 

And they'd be doing just fine, by the same standards, if Western imperialism had never taken place at all. 

 

Not true. Ask any victim of colonialism, and they'll tell you that the first thing they learned from Western imperialism was that it's a conquer-or-be-conquered world. You can't isolate yourself. You can't drive out the invaders. You can't defend your resources. Not unless you were modernized and on par with the foreign powers. Keep doing what you were doing is the equivalent of national suicide, as the fatal victims of Western imperialism - those nations and peoples that disappeared right off the map altogether - will attest to.

 

But it brings up an interesting point, since we're in a military thread: a society should be capable of defending itself.  You want to rely on universal goodwill, you're more than welcome to.  Smart money's on making sure you can compete.

 

Of course. And this is what gets me each time the Bush administration, with typical hypocrisy, accuses so-and-so nation for possessing weapons of mass destruction or spending more money into military goods. Come now. They're doing it because they know that in a world dominated by the US, if one cannot defend oneself, then one had better become a servant of America asap. The sad thing is, the arguments put forth by places like Iran makes perfect sense: the Americans have nukes, why shouldn't we have them? Sure, they're more likely to use nukes for nefarious purposes than the US, but until the US disarms its entire arsenal, what fairness is there in proclaiming the virtues of non-proliferation?

 

No.  Third worlds are poor today because they lacked the capacity to advance. 

 

Bull****. Third worlds are poor today for the same reason people are poor today: because the opportunity passed them by, and now the gates of luxury are welded shut by those who have great stakes in maintaining their present wealth. You can't become rich in a world where wealth is already concentrated in the hands of a few. Take the corporations, for example: who can really compete with Microsoft in the OS department nowadays? Doesn't really matter if your OS is superior - they control the resources and the markets, and you'll be damned if you were ever going to get access to those sources of wealth.

 

Like you said, if third world countries weren't able to offer cheap labor, they would be bankrupt. Why is this? Unless we abide by some twisted notion of Eugenic ethnocentrism that suggests anyone but Caucasians are incapable of modern civilization, it makes little sense that the rest of the world is "incapable of advancing." Unless, of course, they were kept from advancing by those who were already advanced. I need only name a few examples in support (and they are: corporate penetration displacing local economies, exclusive resource contracts on foreign soil, WTO trade policies); this argument's well-supported if you do a bit of research.

 

Correct me if I'm wrong, but the United States didn't start out fabulously wealthy.  It is now.  Unless we just happen to be the example that proves the rule?

 

Yes, everyone who's rich was poor once. That's more chance than anything else - the luck of the draw, so to speak, of whether you were there when the opportunity struck. That doesn't mean, however, that just because you got lucky, the rest of the world must bow to your dominance. The rich should not become richer; the poor should not get poorer. Effort, not heritage, not nation, not legacy, should be the end determinant of wealth.

 

Capitalism favors those who can adapt and survive, much like evolution and life in general.  I am completely all for assisting nations, groups, and individuals that find themselves in unfortunate circumstances - I tend to vote Democrat, after all - but at the same time, it's important to realize that such assistance is dependent wholly on the good mood of the benefactor.  They're in no way obligated to assist simply because the other guy can't keep up.

 

Kinda like how Hitler justified the destruction of other races on the basis of evolution - all to the benefit of the master race.

 

Last I checked, we weren't forcing them to accept our cash.

 

Yeah, they can either choose to starve under US sanctions, or borrow cash from the US and become an indentured servant. What a great choice.

[The Military]

There will come a day when the US will no longer be able to maintain its influence in those countries. It's already happening, really. South Korea's ties with the US are weakening. Israel is increasingly confronted with a hostile and armed Middle-East. Taiwan (not Tiwan) cannot declare independence lest both the US and China turn against the island (the US has pledged to China that Taiwan will not declare independence, in return it obtains the guarantee that China will not force the issue... But that's only a temporary solution).

[The Military]

The benefits of American commerce has little to do with Iraq, unless you're suggesting that in order to maintain our commerce, we must continue to invade other countries. Last I checked, the Iraqi invasion did not improve US commerce. Quite the opposite, really. I mean, we certainly tried to churn a profit by selling oil contracts, but that didn't work out, did it?

 

Would I like to see an end to dollar-a-day wages in third-world countries? Sure. But tell me something; what were those countries doing before they provided cheap manpower for the US? Don't act like America came in, demolished their flourishing societies and economies, and put them to forced labor. Working for a dollar a day is better than getting nothing at all.

 

Last I checked, before Western imperialism the rest of the world got along just fine. In many cases, the West *did* simply come in, demolish the native society through colonialism, corrupt its economy through the introduction of drugs like opium, exploit its resources, and then force said society into labor. Doesn't operate like that on the surface nowadays, but tell me this: what came first - the world's dependency on the dollar or imperialism, which caused said dependency?

 

It's more complicated than that, but the term "third world" exists only relative to the presence of "first worlds." First worlds exist because of two things: 1) the scientific revolution and 2) imperialism. If you want to trace things back to the source, the reason many nations are poor today has less to do with the fact that they were poor to begin with and more to do with the fact that they are measured by a system that predetermines their poverty. The very system of capitalism favors those who already have control over the wealth of the world - ie the US - and forces everyone else into servitude for scraps. This is the essence of economic imperialism.

[The Military]

There's a difference between good interference and bad interference. We've already established that the US interferes for its own interests (and therefore the argument that the US invades with "good" intentions is blatantly false). What needs to be established is whether those interests correspond to the interests of the native people. That must be done on a case by case basis and, unfortunately, can only be understood in hindsight. In the case of WW2, I'd say that US interference was a good thing, because in this case non-interference would've led to the deaths of many more millions. In the case of Iraq, removing Saddam was initally a good thing for pretty much the same reason. Unfortunately, we overstayed our welcome in a futile attempt to establish a pro-US secular government. That failed, as the election results indicate. Besides, even if the US succeeded in establishing a pro-US regime in Iraq, how long before it turns against us? Saddam was our responsibility since we, in many ways, put him in power - and if the next government, very likely dominated by Shi'ites this time around, institutes its own version of Saddam's terror? The blood will be, once again, on our hands.

 

It's hard to say whether the US should adopt an isolationist policy. My thought in this is that an isolationist US would be like throwing the baby out with the bathwater: we remove US aggression, it is true, but in the same breath prevent US interference in cases where interference is truly justified. This does not suggest, however, that the US should maintain its current foreign policy, which is overly aggressive, essentially self-serving, and gratuitously meddlesome. If the US wants to be the police man of the world, fine - but good cops don't act in their self-interest, they act for the betterment of society and uphold the laws. If the US can't fill these shoes, then it doesn't deserve to be a cop at all.

[The Military]

Do not confuse countries with empires. Countries respect one another's sovereignty, empires do not.

[The Military]

Calax: And really, we're going about the wrong way to achieve that dominance.

 

It's clear, from both history and human relationships, that those who rule through force are eventually overthrown. Instead of trying to keep others from becoming as good as you, strive to become better than yourself: that is the key to being a progressive and respected leader. No one is going to listen to a US billions of dollars in debt presided over by a dumbass of a president. I know that if I were China or any other rising power I'd certainly not want to follow US example in either politics or economy, because the US simply isn't a shining example of the future.

 

But perhaps that is, in some sense, impossible in the economic arena. Resources are limited, and a nation's dominance has always come at the expense of other nations. Modern society has made that more apparent than ever. Here then, the US must concede to maintaining the status quo, as ALL dominant empires must, because when you're at the top, the only way to stay there may just be to keep others down.

 

That doesn't mean, though, that the US cannot lead in other areas through example, and so it's very much a pity that American society has become reactionary rather than progressive.

[The Military]

That's just typical US exceptionalism, Eldar. Your argument, which rests on the basis of the US being more progressive and liberal than the rest of the world, is valid only insofar as the US served as the basis for progressivism in the last, oh, ~50-60 years. Other nations have served in that position for much longer, and no doubt will in the future.

 

US progressivism has reached its end. At the moment, the US still benefits from a legacy of liberal values, but its direction has reversed. For the last decade or so the US has actually taken steps backwards in terms of legal, social, and political progressivism (what with more censorship, more state control, the actual controversy of teaching science in schools, etc.) As many have noticed, America has become decadent, absorbed in its own *intrinsic* exceptionalism, which by defintion is without regard to self-improvement. And so you no longer hear of great social movements in the US. You no longer see universities being the champions of the dispossessed. You no longer get great presidents who push the nation and the world forward towards a brighter future. All you have are charlatans who ride upon reactionary values, whose only goal is to maintain the status quo. All you have are opportunists whose drive in life is self-interest, whose deep cynicism towards humanity has come to pervade the entirety of society. This is not enlightened self-interest we're talking about: this is the postmodernist sense of despair.

 

How can you be the champion of the world when you have become nothing more than a preserver of the present state? The US is at the top of the world - that much is true - but what good is it doing there? All nations operate in their self-interests, and the self-interest of the US - of any dominant empire - is inevitably that of preserving what it has. Ever since the end of the Cold War the US has been like a great corporation lacking viable competition, slowly becoming the antithesis, rather than the proponent, of change and progress. Where are the great US leaders with a sense of self-improvement? Where are the great US thinkers (who are listened to) demanding for societal change? All we have today are people who revel in the glory of the US present, who defend US priviledge by reiterating traditional values. These are not your saviors, folks. These are the same kinds of people that capture the imagination of civilizations at the beginning of their downturns.

 

If the West has taught humanity anything, it is that we must always strive to be better than ourselves. The West came to power through movements that subjected European society to a deep scrutiny, at which point it realized the decadency inherent in its systems and moved to change them. What is the Scientific Revolution, after all, if not the realization that things can be done better than they are? What is democracy, if not the result of a progressive social liberalism? These are the very foundations of the West's rise to power, without which what we call the "West" would be nothing more than a collection of feudal states much less advanced socially, culturally, and technologically than the likes of China, India, and even the Middle-East. The world had much to learn from the West, in this respect. Too bad the cost of that education was Western imperialism.

 

The decline of the West began the moment its powers were utilized in the exploitation of other societies. Its doom was sealed when those societies rebelled. So it is that the progressivism of Western values would be identified with the carnage of colonial policy, and the rest of the world, horrified, turned elsewhere - to Communism - and inwards - to nationalism - for its salvation. To be sure, the former was a failure, but the latter remains, and represents the world today: nations, many born as a result of Western imperialism, divided and each serving its self-interest, adopting the benefits of Western ideas without the fundamental impetus that drove those ideas into being: the belief in progress. Well, not entirely true. Most nations these days believe in *economic* and *technological* progress, but social progress, which the West might have once represented, was fundamentally tainted by European and American hypocrisy during the age of imperialism.

 

Thus, if social progressivism was once the West's gift to the world, the time during which the West could have imparted humanity with that gift has passed. The entirety of Europe no longer stands as symbols of change - they are decadent, reactionary, and their populations are disappearing (after all, what have they to live for? Children are born to societies that believe in a better future, not to individuals concerned only with their self-interest). Their time is over, and the time of the US is fading. The future lies with the reactionaries: the fundamentalists in the US, the Islamic pragmatists of the Middle-East, the conservative-capitalists of China, etc. For these are the people who have adapted to the ideas of Western economic and technological progressivism without the belief in social change. And it will be long, I fear, before that aspect is again revived in the world.

 

A few more contentions:

 

I'm a great admirer of the United Kingdom, our older cousin. It sought to keep markets open while preventing European Hegemony. It was smart to do so. Would it have been any different if they had planned for failure by assuming that they would face a sharp decline after the catastrophe of World War I/II?

 

The UK had no intention of preventing European Hegemony. If it could've maintained its empire, it would have. However, the UK saw at the end of WW II that it was impossible to maintain its colonies. Unlike certain other Imperialists, the UK realized the inevitability of its empire's collapse and moved to mitigate this fact by a form of economic and cultural imperialism, which is much more subtle and not nearly as effective, as the UK's decline has attested to. Nevertheless, the US took up some of that slack, and the UK benefits as a close associate.

 

If Islamic extremism or Chinese capitalistic-communism carry the day, Western Europe won't be the inheritor of Western Democracy. To borrow another phrase, it will inherit only the wind.

 

If demographic changes are of any indication, Europe will inherit practical-Islam, the US will have as its majority Christian conservatives (whose ethnicity depends on how hard the US cracks down on immigration), and the Chinese will dominate Asia until the rise of India. As far as ideologies go, though, I tend to think that the world will become united under the great banner of capitalist (and perhaps corporate) self-interest. No matter whether you're American, European, Chinese, or even Muslim, that seems to be the prevalent flavor of our days.

 

In the end, it's only technology that's become more advanced, and even then we're not sure whether advancement means better or worse. Living standards have rose because we're now more capable of producing resources and maintaining biological survival, but at what costs to the environment? What if science was no more than the siphoning of our future for the benefit of our present - what if for every gain in living standard today, our children suffer all the more when they inherit the world? Still, the belief in scientific progress is a potentially good legacy of Western imperialism. Everything else is questionable, and in some sense modern society can be summed up as such: scientific progress, social stagnancy.

[The Military]

The US could really care less whether there was a democratic government in Iraq so long as said government supported US interests. We are not the liberators of the world; if we were, we'd have gone after much worse dictatorships in Africa. Moreover, we have overthrown numerous democratic governments during the Cold War when they were not to our liking, and in some sense the current chain of events is a direct legacy of those times.

 

The truth of the intent is, then, two-fold. One, if we left without doing *something* to the system we cast down, we'd be leaving Iraq in a power vacuum into which much bloodshed and anarchy would simply result in another dictatorship hostile to US interests and US world image ("this is what happens when the US invades...")

 

The second reason is that democracies, especially those ran by US-backed candidates, are often the most vulnerable to capitalist penetration. The US does not need to rule Iraq through military occupation if Iraq became a pro-US democracy - at this point, the US could automatically get from Iraq what it's after - ie oil - through economic tactics. The only worry for the US, of course, is that one of those fundamentalist clerics will come to power *through* democracy, at which point the US would've "liberated" Iraq only to be kicked out by the people's will.

 

Now, democratic institutions *could* be one of the beneficial legacies of the US invasion of Iraq, but that does not justify US invasion. You can, perhaps, forcibly engineer the world to be a better place - but at what cost? Physical imperialism failed because people realized that the imperialists did not have their subjects' best interests at heart, even if imperialism had its benefits (ie industrialization of third world sectors). It seems to me that the US breed of imperialism is the same but in a much more subtle way. On one hand, we do not actively exploit those who we conquer for their resources (at least, not legally; I do recall that when we first went into Iraq oil contracts were drafted to finance the war but soon realized to be null and void due to international law). On the other, we do - through forcing them to adopt our mode of government and economic system, after which our superiority in said areas would clearly make us the dominant leader of world politics.

 

I wonder, however, whether this tactic will really benefit the US in the long run. After all, economic domination presumes that our economy will always be the best in the world, and democractic institutions presume that democracies will be pro-US. But what will happen when another country, such as China, which is not a direct ally of the US and won't be even if full democracy were implemented, exceeds us? In the coming years, I think we will witness the drama of such a situation play out on the global scale of real politks. Whether the US is truly a champion of ideological systems or a self-serving nation that hides behind ideological masks will be measured by how it reacts to those who stand to usurp the superpower throne.

 

Though of course, there is always the chance that, as some economists have argued, that the US and China (whose destinies are increasingly interwined by their economic interdependencies) form a bilateral hegemony that exploits everyone else. To this end, the future imagined by C&C Generals of US-China vs. NLA may not be very far off :cool:

[Iranian leader denies Holocaust]

Sure, they flogged the issue too much and by the end of their flogging most people were getting tired of the argument, but you can't deny that the moral dealings of Clinton, which from my point of view was irrelevant to his ability as a president, was a huge deal to the public. Towards the end, of course, it was all about Clinton lying under oath, but that he had to answer the accusation in the first place speaks volumes about what Americans look for in presidents and, consequently, the usefulness of demonizing the President so long as it's not beating a dead horse as it were towards the end of Clinton's term.

 

Of course, since the Republicans dominate the senate and the house at the current junction of time, the possibility of a impeachment campaign against Bush would be nearly impossible unless he drags the country into yet another protracted war in Iran. In this respect, the Democrats have little to gain from demonizing Bush - everyone knows by now that he's a dumbass, so they are in effect beating a dead horse.

 

And, oh, judging others is a two way street. the ME has NO problem judging the West. They do it all the time.

 

Judging others is not a two way street. If you leave someone alone, they'll eventually leave you alone. Consequently, the ME did not give a damn about the US back when the US had no interests in the ME. Problem is, the US has not left the ME alone for the, oh, past fifty years or so, and it's only relatively recently that they've decided to return the favor.

[Iranian leader denies Holocaust]

In the meantime, the Republicans never learned their lesson when they used the same tactics against President Clinton. You can demonize the President. Hell, that's the political process. Just don't make yourself look stupid in the process. It doesn't hurt the president, but it can hurt the cause with which you've associated yourself.

 

I'd agree except that the Republicans captured a majority of the seats since then. Their tactics hardly backfired, and the fervor with which fundamentalist America embraced Bush's conservative values platform attests to the effectiveness of demonizing/praising the President based on moral values.

 

As far as the Israel vs. Iran thing, what makes us think that we can judge either of them? The reason I keep bringing the thread back to the US is because it's simply ridiculous to impose our world views and judgmental values on a conflct many times older than the US and most nations of Europe. It's this exact sense of Western universalism - the idea that Western values *must* represent the values of the entire world - that led to the current conflict after the West imposed Israel upon the Middle-East without any attention to their own feelings. And now we're trying to judge them once again? Haven't we learned our lesson by now?

[Iranian leader denies Holocaust]

You know what? Bush is the most fit person to lead the country. Know why I say that? He was elected to do so, twice. There's no other qualification aside from citizenship and age mentioned in the Constitution, and he met both of those, so knock off the unqualified chatter.

 

Democracy doesn't ensure you get the best man for the job. Democracy ensures you get the man that the people want.

 

Qualified != fit. Fit by my definition requires that he be an effective leader, not merely a popular one as written in the Constitution. This gets to the heart of the matter, which is your definition of democracy. It's an accurate one, and hence problematic, because it's partly the democratic system that I'm criticizing here. After all, if a system of government's purpose is merely to appease the will of the majority, then we get into the whole discourse of whether the will of the majority represents a positive or negative force for the rest of human society. We should remember that Hitler was elected to power, as were numerous dictators in the course of history.

 

The only benefit of the democratic system in the US, then, is its history of peaceful transitions. But that's not a product of the democratic system as much as it was a product of the careful power balances America put in place, since democracy elsehwere had less successful results in power transitions. If checks and balances represent a way of ensuring that American democracy is successful, might we not consider making some checks and balances against the stupidity of elected presidents (or the societies that they represent), then? That, in my view, is what's at stake, since in my estimation nearly all the social progress that occured in the US since its inception came about as additions to the checks and balances of the documents we call the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That Bush now erodes such advances through laws like the Patriot Act is a disgrace.

 

You an American? If so, what exactly have you done to oust Bush? You voted? Please tell me you at least voted. I'm willing to bet you weren't out running a volunteer campaign in either of the last two elections, or even just working for the official Gore/Kerry camp passing out flyers. Apathy will get somebody elected every single time.

 

And why exactly did you assume that Gore/Kerry represented me? I didn't vote for either Bush or Kerry, FYI, because neither of them represented what I wanted. That, in turn, is another problem of the bipartisan system: a lack of good choices.

[Iranian leader denies Holocaust]

The problem with the current Republican party is that the Democrats have no real popular platform to stand on. Liberal progressivism has more or less fizzled out for the American public, so the Democrats are left with the choice of either becoming like the Republicans or playing mouthpiece to the anti-Bush brigade. They've done both as of late, and as such I'm not even sure that the Democrats coming to power would change anything with respect to the political climate of the US.

 

Hence, either way, the Republican party and its platform will dominate politics for the forseeable future. But really it's not even the party that's the problem, it's the voters. Not that John Kerry would've done much better (and that *is* a problem with the bipartisan system - the lack of really good leaders to vote for), but the way all democracies fail is through the blessing of the people.

 

I'm content, at this moment, to say that the ultimate purpose of every government system is to ensure that those most fit to be leaders come into power. Democracy wins over systems like feudalism because if a king and his line sucks, there's not much you can do about it in a feudal society whereas in democracy you could pick a better king. But when the process of picking becomes mired in political campaigns and propaganda, when the likes of Bush can be thought of as the person most fit to be leader, then in truth, how much better is democracy at picking leaders?

[Iranian leader denies Holocaust]

And why can't you get rid of the Republican party?

 

Because it's never been done (nevermind the fact that this particular party hasn't always been called Republican)? Theoretically, they can be removed, but theory has never been a good justification for what can or cannot be done in the real world.

 

Getting rid of Bush is easy: just wait three more years. Getting rid of the political elite who propelled Bush to power? Nigh impossible.

[Iranian leader denies Holocaust]

George W. Bush never had as much support in the US as Hitler did in Germany. It would be impossible for him to impose a law granting him additional terms, especially consideing how crappy his public approval rating has dropped to as of late.

 

But GWB isn't the problem. He certainly isn't a Hitler. Hitler was an oratory genius whose political skills made him indispensable to the Nazis, whereas GWB is the pawn of an ascendant Republican party that can just as soon choose another candidate. The party, in this case, is the one you can't get rid of, not the President.

[Xbox360 Japanese launch]

Sony can go to hell, too

 

Though, to be fair, Sony draws extensively upon the Japanese game development industry which wasn't PC-based to begin with. As such, a PS2/3 exclusive title does not rouse my ire as much as a Xbox-exclusive does. IMO, M$'s entrance into the console industry simply served to divide the game industry even more. Given the fact that competition between consoles means that alot of great games go exclusive, here's one instance where I don't support the mantra that competition is always good for the consumer.

[Gauntlet: Seven Sorrows first Reviews]

Well, at least the story sounds interesting - until the "go forth and kill six advisors" part, at least.

[Xbox360 Japanese launch]

Now if only Xbox360 could have suffered a similar fate in the West ... "

 

Nah, I'm not against consoles, just M$'s "exclusive" marketing scheme.

[Russia Confirms Sale of Missiles to Iran]

Under what circumstance could there be peace and harmony between Israel and the Middle-East? Seriously? This was a long time coming.

[Japan Does It Again]

I don't see what's so surprising about obsession over "underage" girls (a term that must be qualified given the wide varying definition of underage across cultures), given traditional Asian notions of beauty. If anything, the Western fascination with overendowment is more inexplicable, given the unwieldiness of plastic boobs "

[France Upholds Law That Smooths History]

But a system is not merely a tool, it is also the wielder. Think about it: if I create an ideology (such as slavery), it is a both a tool for me and others to deal with, say, the running of society, AND a wielder in the sense that it becomes part of how we and our children see the world, to the point where as long as slavery existed not every one was considered a human being - the slave was only 3/5ths of a human being. The world became a better a place when slavery was abolished - regardless of who wielded slavery. Yes, the worst men in a free world can still commit atrocities. But the best slaver is still systematically limited in how well he can treat his slaves (he can never, for instance, let them vote), whereas the best men in a free world are not.

 

Systems are capable of shaping our decisions and as such must be held responsible for the actions of a society. It is not the *only* factor - the wielder does matter - but it is a *critical* factor that cannot simply be dismissed as a tool that depends only on the wielder. Institutional racism, regardless of who wields it, is a negative force on society. As such, societies with institutional racism must be universally criticized. Militarism, regardless of who wields it, is again a negative force: you can't build a peaceful world when the world is filled with nations that define their "honor" through war.

 

As far as the German reparations go I already pointed out why that's not a reflection of what I desire and how it's a perversion in the sense of being about blaming a people instead of a system. The reparations did little to change the system but heaped terrible ordeals upon a people - that's not what I advocate.

 

As far as George Bush goes I'm perfectly in favor of changing the system IF IT'S FOR A BETTER SYSTEM. In this case, I don't think his proposed system is better, and therefore I don't agree with him. It's that simple.

[France Upholds Law That Smooths History]

Can you have crime without punishment and still call it justice?  Perhaps you can have guilt, so long as there's also a means of discharging the guilt (which you propose to be changing the system that led to the actions that caused the guilt to exist). 

 

There is justice, but it does not come in the form of reparations. In the ideal case, if a system messes up big time (ie WW2) then we, the rest of the world, should go in and change the system - forcibly, if necessary. This is what happened in Germany and Japan after WW2 - we ensured that they implemented institutional changes to their societies. Of course, this is no panacea; the trick is to do so without making said states feel that they are subjects and prisoners. To be honest, that's a two way road: both the victors and the losers need to cooperate. The victors to ensure that they are not exploiting the losers for their own benefits. The losers to feel enough remorse so as to see change as being necessary.

 

Course, the world is less than ideal, and in cases where the mess up is not "big time," I maintain that justice must come from within: from reformers who see the problem, and from outside pressures in the form of diplomatic negotiations.

 

So reparations (the speeding fine) are effective so long as they are not disproportionate or seen as unjust.  In the context of international affairs, unlike with traffic violations, reparations may always be seen as unjust.

 

Perhaps, but that depends on the remorsefulness of the populations in question. Like I said to SP earlier: if we adopt his policy of blaming everything on a few evil men, then it's unlikely that any society will accept any kind of blame for anything that occurs. This is the kind of attitude I want to dispel, because ultimately if we kept on acting like that society will never change for the better because no one will ever step up to the plate and admit that society, and not a few evil men, may have been the problem.

 

So, societies can have guilt, but that does not entail an obligation to make reparations, either in the form of apologies or money.  The only obligation is to reform the society so the 'crimes' of the past are never repeated.  With reparations out of the picture, collective guilt in this form is less likely to cause harm, and more likely to provoke positive reflection.  Perhaps you and ShadowPaladin are edging toward agreement?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

I doubt it. SP holds fast to his ideology of it being ONLY the people, and not the system, that determines the outcome of a society. As long as that fundamental disagreement exists, there can be no agreements between us because everything I argue I argue from the perspective of a system being responsible just as much as the people. If we take out system out of the equation then there is no argument: he's right, I'm wrong, because then why would we ever blame anyone other than those directly and personally resposible? But he's not right, and I'm not wrong, precisely because this is impossible: a system and its associated institutions are instrumental to the operations of a society. Otherwise, all of the political, economic, social, and ideological theories we've developed over the past centuries are worthless and we're back to believing that "bad things happen because God/fate wills it."

 

It is a tool you can have a benevolent dictatorship just as you can have an aggressive elected official.

 

Yes but even in a benevolent dictatorship the dictator can cut off your head without your consent whereas even an aggressive elected official can be impeached so long as he doesn't change the system itself (as Hitler did). I never said that democracy was the cure-all of mankind, and I never implied that systems are not subject to the forces of history. However, when tyranny strikes it is inevitably linked to certain factors that comprise a system that is quite similar across times of crises: a tradition of militarism, a lack of cultural resistance against dictators, ethnocentrism, the lack of a free media, etc. The forces of history simply provide the triggers, such as economic depression, that set in motion what has already been there and waiting.

 

I do not believe in arbitrary chance being the driving force of crises. I don't see the crises of history as being just "conincidences" without cause, without remedy, and without the ability for us to predict. I especially don't believe this when I see consistencies in what occurs in a society that has a certain system. If I am wrong in this, then explain to me why human civilization *has* made progress since the cavemen days - if all our systems are mere tools with no real effects, how is it that we have changed?

[France Upholds Law That Smooths History]

On the question of collective guilt: Link.

 

If a society has guilt, then should it be punished or make reparations?  You could argue that the reparations forced on the Germans at Versailles were both justified and utterly disastrous in their outcomes.  A problem with collective punishment is that even if you accept that there are some guilty members of society, perhaps enough to make the whole system guilty, you cannot impose a punishment without also harming the innocent.  In the case of a murder committed by one of identical twins, without any way of knowing which is the guilty one, both are released, because it's better to let the guilty get away than to risk punishing an innocent party.

 

Who decides whether a country is guilty or not?  Foreign commentators?  Historians?  Perhaps democracy is the key, and only members of a society can judge the innocence and guilt of their own system.  I believe that my country owes a debt to the people of our former colonies, because of the crimes committed by my fellow countrymen a hundred or more years ago.  That's my choice, and I might try to persuade others to share it and take action upon it, but I don't see how a verdict of guilt, or a punishment, could be imposed from an outside source.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Reparation payments are simply irresponsible punishments. We need to make a distinction here between what I'm arguing for, which is the extent of Crime, and what reparation payments are, which is Punishment. Crime and punishment are two facets of a justice system; when combined well, they form justice. When either become misguided, the result is disastrous.

 

Reparation payments fail as a form of punishment because it does not *change* the system, merely makes the system pay for what it's done. When a society *can* pay this reparation, it may learn a lesson about what not to do next time. But when a society *cannot* pay the reparation, as was the case in Germany after American investors pulled out due to the Depression, then bitterness and resentment rises. This is like in real life: if I punish you by making you pay $500 when you speed, you'll think twice before speeding. If I punish you by making you pay three times your life's savings for a crime, then I've basically destroyed your chances at happiness, and as a result you will turn against me and my unfair punishment.

 

Much better than reparation payments are pressures to reform the system, which is what I advocate.

[France Upholds Law That Smooths History]

You said the system is to blame. The system we all live under is a democratic system. What this shows is the system is just that its a tool it's not inherently anything.  Because what your saying is based on how you would like things to work , I've pointed out time and time again and given evidence on why how you want things to be and reality are two very different things.

 

Except even within those catogories there was difference. Just because a society is capitalist you cant know what it will do.

 

First of all, we don't "all live" under a democratic system. Nor did we "all live" under a democratic system during WW2. Hitler's war was a war AGAINST democracies - that was one of the fundamental tenets of Fascism, which rejected democracies as being ineffective and weak.

 

Secondly, democracy describes only one aspect of the system (its political system), but even democracy is not just a tool. It's hardly a matter of how I want things to work. Even the most diehard critic of democracy will tell you that democratic institutions are a safeguard against tyranny. Even the most diehard critics of capitalism will tell you that capitalist societies operate very different from (actually) communist ones. Today, with all these talks about the differences between democracies vs. dictatorships, I can't believe you would claim that it's merely a tool and not inherently anything.

 

Third of all, capitalism again only describes one aspect of the system, which is the reason you can't know what capitalist societies will do because you haven't considered the other aspects such as the political, cultural, ideological, and social principles of a nation. All the aspects combined together is what I call a "system", and in understanding the "system," you also understand the nation.

 

Oh I think you will find that the system the Germans lived under in 1918 was very different to the one of 1945. Therefore it changed the system it just didnt change it for the better. All it did was piss the Germans off to the extent that they would follow a man who promised them he would restore their pride an dignity.

 

Which again shows how little you know about the interim between WW1 and WW2. WW1 changed very little of what Germany was. The Kaiser and his cohorts were kicked out of the government. Other than that, very few things changed: the Army and its old-school martial generals were retained; the big companies were retained; the militarism, the anti-Semitism, the political parties, the country's bureaucracy and philosophy - all unchanged. What ended up happening was that Hitler used these existing staples of German society as the basis of his rise to power. Nazi Germany stood on four pillars: Hitler and his cohorts, the political philosophy of Fascism/Nazism, the Army that for the large part supported him due to his promises of expanded military spending and glory, and the big businesses that had little regards for morality in conduct. Without any one of these, history would've been very different.

 

Consequently, two out of those four pillars are currently in operation in America (big businesses & a military with a long martial tradition), which explains why we like to fight wars so much. Fortunately, neither Hitler nor Fascism are currently in vogue in America, or else we'd be in real trouble.

[France Upholds Law That Smooths History]

Umm so now it's democracy's fault is it ?

 

Point out where I said this. I'm starting to get tired of your strawman arguments. If my page keeps changing, it's only because you refuse to comprehend what I'm saying, which consequently forces me to restate my point again and again from different perspectives so as to hope - but I see now in vain - that you would understand one of them.

 

The system is just that a system If you want to blame that then you may as well blame the gun that a murderer kills someone with while your at it.

 

A system is hardly a gun. I just had an argument with taks not long ago about socialism vs. capitalism. As much as we disagreed on that topic, both of us recognized the *fact* that a system is fundamental to the understanding of why a society does what it does. If all society is is the people that comprise it, then it wouldn't matter whether we are democratic, Communist, socialist, fascist, or feudal. That, of course, is bull****.

 

Yes but your principle of thought is wrong. It's not only wrong it's also counter productive to you proffesed goal. All you end up doing with your mass blame is turing the more moderate members of society into the very thing you are trying to avoid. Your always talking about learning from the past.  Well didnt the treaty of versalises teach you anything?

 

You're still arguing with your straw man. The Treaty of Versailles was about blaming a people through reparation payments and did little, if anything, to change the system. It is far from representative of what I'm arguing for.

[France Upholds Law That Smooths History]

For the last time, it's not "blame everyone" but to blame the system and those who continue to support the system. Ignorance, last time I checked, may exonerate personal guilt but it does not exonerate the guilt of a society that produces such ignorance among the populace. If a system fails then it is the system that must be held accountable not only the people within the system. Like I said, if you don't admit to the existence of a system then we're not on the same page.

 

Ethnocentric nationalism aka Fascism is a core component of the system. In my principle of thought it is as responsible for the Holocaust as Hitler was. Therefore, as a system it must be held accountable for its actions, which means that even fifty years after the facts if we see ethnocentric nationalism still present in German society then the guilt of such a system in terms of the Holocaust must still be imparted. If it no longer exists in German society, as might be the case, then that guilt no longer exists and the society is exonerated. It's that simple.

 

Another example of a system component would be American exceptionalism - the belief that America is always righteous. Such a system remains in American society up to this day and therefore I continue to hold the system America operates under responsible for its past misdeeds because its fault never went away. That's not the same as saying that everyone in America today remains responsible for the Vietnam War. It is, however, saying that the system that was responsible for the Vietnam War remains to this day the American system.