I don't know if nations choose to become empires. Maybe so, all of a sudden I wanted my Thucydides because I think Athens chose empire and Sparta chose hegemony. Consciously, and Sparta tried to follow and promote what passed for int'l law around them parts and Athens said:The law c'est moi.
And I don't know that America chose its early empire, the westward expansion. Maybe so, Jefferson buying Louisiana; Polk, Lincoln: Seward and the TC railroad. Hard to imagine America remaining within the 1776 borders.
I am pretty certain no empire gives up its status by choice.
America went after Ohio, Kentucky, Western Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama just as soon as GB was out of our way. Daniel Boone was our first superstar. Were those Native Americans doomed? Was it inevitable?
Nations do what they can, what they can get away with. This is might over Right, and I suspect the very genesis of Empire is in indifference to prior property rights and violations of treaties and laws.
Every square foot of land has been claimed before stolen.
And that is what America is. Empire.
While we're yacking about Kipling's relevance to the modern world:
"At the end of the fight,
stood the tombstone white,
to mark the grave of the dear deceased.
And the epitath drear,
a fool lies here,
who tried to hustle the [Middle] East."
So this one definitely wins the inadvertant hilarity award. The idea, as I take it, is that the Victorians were more concerned about due process in dealings with their subject peoples than is the United States today with respect to Iraqis and Afghanis.
Really? That's the claim? I don't even know where to begin. Maybe just consulting the wikipedia entry on "Sepoy Mutiny" would help. Massive, completely extra-legal slaughter of mutineers, deserters, and sympatheic civilians. And while I can't put my hand to definitive historical information, I'm willing to bet no British soldiers were ever sent up on charges for humiliating Indian prisoners.
Is the claim that "lawless" Gunatanemo Bay is a greater departure from civilize norms than Victorian treatment of their POWs? Heck, Guantanemo bay probably compares pretty favorably to British treatment of the Mau Mau in the 1950s. Maybe the British got more racist and illiberal in the 50 years since 1901? Hard to imagine it, really.
My advice: Just argue that Bush is bad, that Guantanamo is bad, that torture is bad. Heaven knows, you've got plenty of ammunition on that score.
Thanks for the advice, baa, I know you wish us all the best. But um, Kipling /= British Policy, and none of what you proposed is the claim that's being made.
Baa, wanna come help us mock the trolls in the other thread?
Hey does anyone know a Kipling poem that's on point regarding the estate tax?
Maybe you can help me out Mitch, what exactly is the claim? That Kipling would have taken one look at Guantanemo bay and said "I renounce this colonial endeavor"? That the Bush administration's competnace and care with respect to Iraqis is so much lower than that of the British colonial enterprise (which Kipling supported) in regards to their subjects? Both these seem like batty claims to me.
Other than the absurd implied historical parallels, the one thing I got out of this is that the guy over at altercation thinks Kipling is a great hook on which to hang his grievances against Bush, and also claims, bizarrely, that we had the good colonialists back with Clinton/Gore. Whatever floats your boat, I guess.
Bphd, I would mock trolls, but as Nick Smith says, self-hatred is unhealthy
The claim is that this administration isn't even bothering with the ideals that Kipling used to try to pretty up British imperialism. But then perhaps not wanting to put lipstick on a pig is admirable, shows courage of convictions, I dunno.
The Clinton/Gore reference is to the fact that those guys actually worked hard at governance. Not too hard to figure out, really.
And the primary purpose of the guy at altercation is to point out what a tremendously wankerous buffoon Niall Ferguson is. Also not hard to figure out.
I had a history textbook, no doubt produced by the forces of evil, that had a chapter called 'The American Empire', and it described the mad expansion after the Civil War. It always struck me as a weird title for a chapter, but what makes an empire?
On the Kipling point: I was discussing something -- maybe Viking weregeld, maybe Roman war techniques, something about Long Ago -- and a friend commented that 'we're better at respecting human life these days.' I raised an eyebrow (metaphorically); he revised 'Well, at least we think more about it than the Romans did.'
I think that's right, though I'm less certain as to whether it's a great improvement.
Now, now, Baa, you're not a troll. You know how to spell. And punctuate!
You know, I don't think resting on the laurels of "we're better than the Romans/Victorians/whatever" is particularly praiseworthy. Yes, we absolutely have greater respect for human rights and due process than them folks. That's great. Are we at the stopping point yet though? Hells no.
And most importantly, we didn't get to our superior moral status by people just sitting back and waiting for history to straighten things out or progress or something, it took lots and lots of people willing to be a pain in the ass to the powers that were about these issues for any progress to be made. That progress is pretty damn recent, and also quite fragile, and being complacent about it is an open invitation to see it be lost.
For heathen heart that puts her trust
In reeking tube […]
Thy Mercy on Thy People, Lord!
"Mercy" s/b "penicillin"
Mitch,
Right, so it *is* the claim that US imperialism/colonialism is less idealistic than UK imperialism/colonialism as understood by and advocated for by Kipling. That is -- just to emphasize one more time -- a really, really, hard to support claim if "idealism" is measured by a) attention to due process, b) attempts to minimize civilian casualties, or c) attempts to endow client states with self-sustaining governments on a western model.
Cala, I think it really is a big improvement. It's just much less acceptable in the West to indiscriminately slaughter foreigners. That's a huge win.
>, I don't think resting on the laurels of "we're better >than the Romans/Victorians/whatever" is particularly >praiseworthy.
Yes! That's why I thought the whole Kipling thing was weird and self-inflicted. Like the idiotic Guantanamo = gulag deal. Obviously, Guananemo isn't analogous to the Soviet gulag. It is, however, a really bad thing.
And is Niall Ferguson really so bad? Never read him, but his op-eds seem amiable enough....
[And isn't that a kicking poem?]
baa, theoretically, I'll agree. But cynically, it's sort of like patting yourself on the back for thinking about the rule of law before you ignore it.
The claim seems to be that idealism as measured by rhetoric (e.g. Kipling's poems) is less evident with this administration. I don't actually think that's true, but the claim most certainly doesn't seem to be "the Victorians were nicer chaps than us to the natives, back in the good old days."
As for a, b and c in 17, we're most definitely better on those accounts than in the Victorian era, but only because of the hard work of lots of peace and human rights advocates. Maybe you believe that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfield, etc. would care the same amount about these issues without that history of activism and advocacy and the current level of concern about them, but I think that's a pretty naive point of view.
And yes, Niall Ferguson is a wankerous buffoon, and that poem does indeed kick.
18: Found a fan-blog for Robert Kaplan. I was attracted to the name:"The Coming Anarchy" Haven't read much, but looks like he might not be liked here. I read Thomas Barnett.
I think even if limited to the 50 states the US should be called an Empire, due to the history and size of expansion. I can think of very few nations of our size formed this way, recently. Soviet Union, Canada, China? Brazil? You could say the France and Britain etc were formed by forceful acquisition, but it was a long time ago, and the appropriated nations retained a cultural identity that is gone in America. Naples and Sicily and the Piedmont retain an identity, and not thru immigrants.
We aren't ruling native populations, but that is cause we killed them.
17:is right, I think, on slaughtering others. But only maybe 100 years right.
Naples and Sicily and the Piedmont retain an identity, and not thru immigrants.
You left out Texas, stranger.
Soviet Union, Canada, China? Brazil?
All of them. Also Argentina, Chile, Australia and New Zealand. They're smaller, but there really aren't that many nations "of our size."
Actually, we are ruling native populations. See, e.g., the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Don't get him started on Indians, B.
We aren't ruling native populations, but that is cause we killed them.
Out here, mostly we fucked them, literally as well as figuratively. Nothing too genocidal, but not too many 100% Hawaiians running around anymore, either.
I tell you, between the exploding scrotums and sardonic waffles, poor Kipling just can't compete.
No love for the reeking tube.
The claim seems to be that idealism as measured by rhetoric (e.g. Kipling's poems) is less evident with this administration.
I think the claim is that Kipling paid at least lip service to the rule of law in particular, and that in among all the talk about freedom and what racists their opponents are, Bush can't be bothered even to pay lip service to that. And that without this there's absolutely no chance of an empire having benign effects.
In fact there might be an argument that Kipling is better in practice than GWB on this, since AFAIK Kipling did not trample the rule of law in his home country.