450 posts IS a worse crime than wanting to kill us .
POSTED BY: AURaptor
UPDATED: Friday, May 22, 2009 14:59
VIEWED: 29463
PAGE 36 of 46
Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:Quote:
Rome and the US have conquered territory and then absorbed them , while Britain conquered territory and administered it.
Yeah, that's exactly what's happened. Only, it's not remotely true.
Wow. Just wow.
Do you ever get tired of being so wrong for so long, Rappy?
Mike
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:
You'd be better off looking at the Roman empire, which indeed the US government and structure was partly based on. The Roman empire expanded to a great extent, then it's borders became stable, and Roman influence was propagated outside of it's borders largely via client states. I think the Roman Empire with it's Senatorial and Imperial provinces and client states, is a closer historical match to the US, with it's States, territories and satellite states, than Britain that was a colonial trading empire. Rome and the US have conquered territory and then absorbed them, while Britain conquered territory and administered it.
I think there are similar and dissimilar elements. I did try to make an analogy with Rome, but no one commented on the oblique Monty Python reference.
I think US empire has a number of components. The annexing of terrorities in the 19th Cent, to a time of isolationism, then into economic expansion to new territories but without a direct administrative control, other than as you have rightly pointed out, installing the odd tinpot dictator that supports US interests. Likewise, Britain's empire was initially based on its privately owned trading companies, and/or landholders that needed military back up when the natives got restless.
For those posters who dismiss the meaning of the military bases, I can tell you as one who lives on foreign soil where there have been such bases, it doesn't actually give you a great sense of self determination (particularly when you've been used as a nuclear testing ground}. Perhaps you might imagined how it might feel if China had military bases on US soil.
In addition, think of the incredible power of the US President. Why do you think foreigners take an interest in US affairs, like who is elected. It's not because we think you're all swell, it's because US policies, even internal ones will have an incredible impact on world affairs.
It's Empire, just a different kind.
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Quote:
It's not because we think you're all swell...
Dang. And all this time I thought it was because everybody just loved us...
I'm a little crestfallen. Honestly, there may be tears.
Mike
Build a man a fire and he'll be warm for a day...
Set a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
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Quote:
Originally posted by citizen:Quote:
Originally posted by AURaptor:
Yeah, that's exactly what's happened. Only, it's not remotely true.
Except it's completely true, your willfull self delusion not withstanding.
Your lack of knowledge of your own history is truly astounding.
April 25, 1846 to February 2, 1848, the Mexican-American war, added California, Nevada, Utah, Arizona, parts of Colorado and Wyoming, New Mexico and Texas to the US, through military conquest of Mexico. That's ignoring the various wars against the Indian nations that saw America expand westward. I could also mention the war of 1812, that saw America attempt to annex Canada, luckily the Canadians with very limited help from Britain (since it was fighting Napoleon at the time) out fought the US troops. I suppose since you had your collective arses handed to you by Canadians, a people you are generally so derisive of, I can understand why you'd wish to ignore that part of your history. There's also the Spanish-American war of 1898, that saw the annexation of Puerto Rico, the Philippines and Guam, that remain territories and protectorates of the US to this day.
Much of the current US, it's States and it's territories, were incorporated through conflict with Mexico and the American Natives. Your attempt to claim that isn't so simply by ignoring reality is weak, delusional and simply not true.
Hawaii is also an excellent example of this,
But, also in more recent years, it is more of economic control by proxy.
Say Egypt, the government there has done some horrendous things in the last twenty five years. But the US gov gets what it asks for from that gov, so they get military aid, intel support etc against anyone who might what to change the gov in Egypt.
That seems to have made anyone opposed to the gov in Egypt, a enemy of the US. But still, you all are shocked when they attack Americans and their interests.
" They don't hate America, they hate Americans " Homer Simpson
Lets party like its 1939
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Quote:
Originally posted by Kwicko:Quote:
It's not because we think you're all swell...
Dang. And all this time I thought it was because everybody just loved us...
I'm a little crestfallen. Honestly, there may be tears.
Mike
Well you are pretty swell, just don't let it go to your head.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Geezer:
Well, I did try and get people here interested in the mis-management of Zimbabwe by the Mugabe government, but interest - judging by responses - was pretty low. Have also noted the starvation in North Korea. Again, no interest.
It pretty much seems that if you can't blame it on the U.S., no one here is very interested in any disaster or crisis.
Or you could say, if it doesn't involve the US, people aren't very interested. The US is quite renowned for being self involved as a nation.
Nevertheless, perhaps part of it is discussing what can be changed. Some of the terrible things that happen in the world are difficult to stop (unless you plan to invade Zimbabwe in the near future.) However, US policies regarding matters such as torture are something that US citizens have some power over. Hence the discussion.
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Originally posted by GinoBiffaroni:
Hawaii is also an excellent example of this,
I'm not sure about Hawaii, the annexation to a territory was made by vote rather than conflict wasn't it? I believe the legality is questioned, because the vote only took place in the US Government, so it could just be the case that the US voted to annex Hawaii, then when they turned up in Hawaii to tell the natives they just shrugged their shoulders and said whatever.
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In the past 150 yrs, exactly how many 'new lands' has the US conquered, taken over and incorporated into the nation?
Anyone from GB has no room to talk about what the U.S. had done in the way of being an 'Empire'. It's absurd to even bring up the topic.
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kwickie,
I'm not wrong, not even in the tiniest bit. Why isn't Canada, Mexico or even simply Cuba a part of the U.S. if we're such an 'Imperial' nation? It's a complete load of anti-American bull shit that gets repeated so many damn times, that mouth breathers like you( and sadly, too many on this board ) simply accept it as fact. But because someone dares interject anything different than the " everyone thinks it, so it must be true " mentality of this place, your first reaction is to jump on that person an start the insults. If that's the sort of B.S. you feel you need to get you through your pathetic excuse of a life, then have at it. It's clear you and your sort aren't capable of dealing in facts.
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Quote:
Originally posted by Magonsdaughter:
I think there are similar and dissimilar elements. I did try to make an analogy with Rome, but no one commented on the oblique Monty Python reference.
I think US empire has a number of components. The annexing of terrorities in the 19th Cent, to a time of isolationism, then into economic expansion to new territories but without a direct administrative control, other than as you have rightly pointed out, installing the odd tinpot dictator that supports US interests. Likewise, Britain's empire was initially based on its privately owned trading companies, and/or landholders that needed military back up when the natives got restless.
I think a colonial empire is such a different type of empire to a contiguous land empire of the type in Rome and the US, that analogies between the British Empire and the US would seem to be almost useless. The British Empire, along with those of most of the European nations, were a product first of Mercantilism, then of National Prestige, in a time when the word Empire hadn't been discredited yet. Mercantalism saw a nations wealth as literally dependent on how much precious metals it had in reserve, and it also saw trade as Zero sum. The result is that if you trade with someone else, one of you is a winner, and one a loser. The obvious result of this is that the European Mercantile powers had to either accept losing out on trade, and grow poorer by shipping precious metals over seas if they wanted exotic goods from places like India or the Americas, or they had to incorporate them so they were only trading with themselves. This can be seen most clearly in the British Annexation of Hong Kong. The readers digest version is that Britain wanted to trade Opium from its colonies, for Chinese goods (Tea, Silk ect), while the Chinese made Opium illegal and demanded precious metals (specifically silver) in trade. The Opium Wars grew out of this and British smuggling of Opium to pay for the goods it required without spending silver it neither had nor could afford to lose. The Opium wars ended with the annexation of Hong Kong, and various one sided trade agreements that ensured that China was the looser in the Mercantalist Zero-sum trade game. India shows a similar dynamic, Britain required the raw resources of the sub-continent, and since Mercantilism discouraged the trade of raw resources between nations...
Of course there's more too it than that, but Mercantilism, and gaining control of exotic goods and resources from the new and old world, was a major component of European Colonial expansion. The United States, however, was never much of an adherent to Mercantilism (Mercantilism, and the fact that the American colonies were forced to trade only with Britain, was an underlying cause for the war of independence in fact). The American colonies preferred a much more open market, as it better served their interests, which slotted in nicely with Capitalism when it later became the dominant economic system. But at it's heart, while the European nations were expanding their colonies not to gain territory so much, as to gain control of trade and resources, the USA had no such need because of it's more open trading policies. So the expansion westward wasn't about gain control of resources as much as it was about gaining territory.
Which is why I think European colonialism, British in particular, is a bad analogy for the United States. Britain never incorporated its colonies, it never particularly Anglicised them either. If you walked into a city in India during the British Raj, then it would be an Indian city. If you walked into a Roman or American controlled city, invariably they are/were uniquely of that culture. The reasons and methods of European colonialism are entirely different to those of the US. Now, sure there's a whiff of colonialism to current US actions, but it's still rather different, and more like the controls Rome employed after first century AD.
As an aside perhaps Empire being discredited, shows why describing Americ
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