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Oh, Canada ...
Apr. 1st, 2003 04:41 pm
Canadian.
You're Not Even Good Enough to be Euro-trash.
You're Wanna-be Eurotrash. You can't even
speak English Correctly! What's all that
aboot?
what type of eurotrash are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Apr. 1st, 2003
Canadian.
You're Not Even Good Enough to be Euro-trash.
You're Wanna-be Eurotrash. You can't even
speak English Correctly! What's all that
aboot?
what type of eurotrash are you?
brought to you by Quizilla
Aimez-vous les français et la France??
Apr. 1st, 2003 10:01 pmVia Ikram Saeed's blog
A graphical measurement of Francophobia at Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit (in French, as it happens):
http://www.carion.org/blogger/archives/2003/03/310049.html
A graphical measurement of Francophobia at Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit (in French, as it happens):
http://www.carion.org/blogger/archives/2003/03/310049.html
Elsewhere in this livejournal, there has been some discussion as to whether or not the United States is an evil country.
I don't buy that. Quite apart from the fact that it's only possible to identity an entire state as evil when it's possessed by an ideological particularly inimical to what most people would call a minimally decent life (Soviet Union, Nazi Greater Germany, China at the height of the Cultural Revolution), spectacular moral pitfalls beset you when you define the entire subject population of any one of those regimes as evil. You can, for example, decide that the mass rapes of eastern German women by Soviet troops in 1944 and 1945 were justifiable punishment; or, that residents of the Soviet successor states deserve their current immiseration; or, that Afghanistan should be left to rot.
The whole question becomes ridiculous when you're referring to large societies with populations in the hundreds of millions which have already demontrated their independence of opinion and are still visibly divided among themselves; they might be acting on the basis of incorrect information, but that just means that they're mistaken. Even when a particular regime makes a horrible mistake (like the Dubya regime in Iraq and God knows where else), that doesn't imply that the people bears any responsibility, or that the entire state--that which endures, the underlying structure of the regime that develops and persists independently of whoever's in power--is illegitimate, much less immoral and evil. Saying that the United States is evil simply because Dubya wants a little war to cap off (or begin?) his War against Terror is entirely wrong-headed. (That, or you've judged the vast majority of states in the world to be evil. We've all got our secret shames.)
There is one instance of an evil United States that i'm familiar with. It's the United States from an alternate history I wrote and hope to finish this year, Tripartite Alliance Earth.
( Want a synopsis? Sure you do! )
My point, briefly put, is this: Granted that the Dubya regime has more than its fair share of faults, and granted that it has a tendency to launch ill-thought military adventures and God only knows if it will stop before it does something really stupid like attack Iran or North Korea. The fact remains that the United States shares very few if any characteristics in common with the above dystopia. Leaders of ethnoracial minorities and members of the political opposition are not being disappeared; the United States isn't invading or otherwise threatening its leaders at random; the American military, all things considered, is taking great care (in the early stage of the war, granted) to avoid civilian casualties and would likely disobey an order to nuke Baghdad; the United States remains a vibrant and openly conflicted democracy with only a few things on the not-so-near horizon (the Patriot Acts, for instance) to even begin to suggest that the time will come when people will fear the knock on their doors.
The United States isn't evil. I don't even think that Dubya et al are evil, just tragically misled and confused. The whole thing would resemble a Greek tragedy if only it was less stupid.
If you want to oppose the war in Iraq, fine; that probably will be a good thing to do. If you do so, use the appropriate language, please, since accuracy--and honesty--is always important.
I don't buy that. Quite apart from the fact that it's only possible to identity an entire state as evil when it's possessed by an ideological particularly inimical to what most people would call a minimally decent life (Soviet Union, Nazi Greater Germany, China at the height of the Cultural Revolution), spectacular moral pitfalls beset you when you define the entire subject population of any one of those regimes as evil. You can, for example, decide that the mass rapes of eastern German women by Soviet troops in 1944 and 1945 were justifiable punishment; or, that residents of the Soviet successor states deserve their current immiseration; or, that Afghanistan should be left to rot.
The whole question becomes ridiculous when you're referring to large societies with populations in the hundreds of millions which have already demontrated their independence of opinion and are still visibly divided among themselves; they might be acting on the basis of incorrect information, but that just means that they're mistaken. Even when a particular regime makes a horrible mistake (like the Dubya regime in Iraq and God knows where else), that doesn't imply that the people bears any responsibility, or that the entire state--that which endures, the underlying structure of the regime that develops and persists independently of whoever's in power--is illegitimate, much less immoral and evil. Saying that the United States is evil simply because Dubya wants a little war to cap off (or begin?) his War against Terror is entirely wrong-headed. (That, or you've judged the vast majority of states in the world to be evil. We've all got our secret shames.)
There is one instance of an evil United States that i'm familiar with. It's the United States from an alternate history I wrote and hope to finish this year, Tripartite Alliance Earth.
( Want a synopsis? Sure you do! )
My point, briefly put, is this: Granted that the Dubya regime has more than its fair share of faults, and granted that it has a tendency to launch ill-thought military adventures and God only knows if it will stop before it does something really stupid like attack Iran or North Korea. The fact remains that the United States shares very few if any characteristics in common with the above dystopia. Leaders of ethnoracial minorities and members of the political opposition are not being disappeared; the United States isn't invading or otherwise threatening its leaders at random; the American military, all things considered, is taking great care (in the early stage of the war, granted) to avoid civilian casualties and would likely disobey an order to nuke Baghdad; the United States remains a vibrant and openly conflicted democracy with only a few things on the not-so-near horizon (the Patriot Acts, for instance) to even begin to suggest that the time will come when people will fear the knock on their doors.
The United States isn't evil. I don't even think that Dubya et al are evil, just tragically misled and confused. The whole thing would resemble a Greek tragedy if only it was less stupid.
If you want to oppose the war in Iraq, fine; that probably will be a good thing to do. If you do so, use the appropriate language, please, since accuracy--and honesty--is always important.
