We are developing the social individualist meta-context for the future. From the very serious to the extremely frivolous... lets see what is on the mind of the Samizdata people.
Samizdata, derived from Samizdat /n. - a system of clandestine publication of banned literature in the USSR [Russ.,= self-publishing house]
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A lesson learned? It is fair to say that I do not always agree with what I read over at the Lew Rockwell blog, considering its position on foreign policy to be sometimes naive to the point of downright obtuse. (That should get the comments fired up nicely, ed). That said, this article drives home very effectively what might be one of the few silver linings of the terrible effects of Hurricane Katrina: it may undermine respect for the wonders of Big Government and underscore the importance of local initiative in times of great danger.
And this article by David Kopel certainly adds to disquiet about what certain state officials are up to.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
We are also a varied group made up of social individualists, classical liberals, whigs, libertarians, extropians, futurists, ‘Porcupines’, Karl Popper fetishists, recovering neo-conservatives, crazed Ayn Rand worshipers, over-caffeinated Virginia Postrel devotees, witty Frédéric Bastiat wannabes, cypherpunks, minarchists, kritarchists and wild-eyed anarcho-capitalists from Britain, North America, Australia and Europe.
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This is almost off topic, but not quite. These people are doing good charity work (including but not limited to Katrina relief) of an interesting and unusual type. They focus on preempting and preventing poverty. Quite nifty, very libertarian in design, though no overt political axe to grind. I gave them money. (Source: The Agitator blog)
If you see fit to call the foreign policy viewpoints on Lew Rockwell “naive to the point of downright obtuse”, you owe it to your readers to explain yourself a bit so the people who care can respond. Otherwise, don’t say anything.
That kind of hit and run slam only lowers the tone of this blog.
I’m interested by an article in Free Republic laying out the scope for the prosecution of P. Edwin Compass, he of the “No one is allowed to be armed. We’re going to take all the guns.” statement.
I can see that Louisiana’s attorneys are going to be gainfully employed for a very long time to come now.
By the way Mr Pearce, you’re supposed to be relaxing on holiday – not sitting in front of a computer posting on Samizdata.
It came as no surprise to me, and probably not to most people here on Samizdata, that big government, bureaucracy, and corruption resulted in muddled cock-up. I wouldn’t expect much better if the same catastrophe happened in the UK either.
What did come as a very big surprise was that those citizens who tried to exercise self reliance were treated so cavalierly by the authorities. Legal firearms were confiscated, freedom of movement was stopped, and those citizens who had made provision to ride out a disaster were forcibly moved. I would expect all this and more in a nanny state like the UK, but not in the land of the free.
Yes, JE but it could be argued that despite the B.E.’s reputation it is not all a free state. They have oppressive taxes, crushing bureaucracy and government that is ridden with curruption.
Just shows one that when the excrement strikes the oscilatting ventilation device big goverment is not there to help.
Julian Taylor wrote:
I can’t speak for Jonathan, but for many of us, posting to Samizdata is relaxing. 🙂
What I meant was that surely being on a sun-drenched beach with your beautiful fiancée beats the hell out of sitting inside in front of a computer screen … unless one is watching the Ashes of course?
I read a letter in one of the dailies in the UK today where the author asks, “does being taken on holiday by my wife, just as the deciding Ashes Test begins, constitute sufficient grounds for divorce?”
Well, Fiona, if you’d read some of the anti-war stuff on Lew Rockwell you’d find paranoid raving about “imperialist America” that would be the equal of any moonbat, without any constructive suggestions about what America should be doing foreign-policy-wise beyond vague handwaving in the “international consensus” direction. Naive enough for ya?
LRC certainly doesn’t believe in “international consensus”! They’re non-interventionists and anarcho-capitalists. They’ve got no more use for the UN than the USA.
It is interesting that you would make this comment – the talking heads on the major U.S. television networks were making precisely the opposite point. In fact, they were asserting that the poor response to the hurricane was all the fault of the (alledged) Republican distain for big government.
Naturally, the facts show otherwise on all counts – Republicans LOVE big intrusive government, and the inadequate immediate response was because of the (almost exclusively) Democrat state and local governments failing to act on their plans.
Don’t expect there to be any recognition that “Big Government” is a problem in this situation. Expect the opposite. $100B+ in spending in the Gulf coast area will fuel lots of “embiggening”.
Fiona, that was a bit unfair. LR blog takes isolationist foreign policy to absurd extremes, and I think Stephen above has answered the point. The best way to validate my point is simply to look at the site’s posts about foreign affairs, such as Israel, Iraq and so forth. I do, however, agree with quite a lot of that blog’s other views.
Julian, trust me mate, my suntan is miles better than yours’!!!! Lots of swimming and relaxing on the beach.
Jonathan,
I think you are being a bit unfair.
Please give examples of “absurd extremes” and explain why they are absurd. The site typically explains in detail the reasoning–economic, moral, and practical–for their views. All are based on the central tenets of anarcho-capitalism: pro-free markets, anti-state intervention, and pro-peace. E.g., Intervention–foreign or domestic, for good reasons or no–enlarges the state, diverts resources from private sector, and erodes individual liberty. Intervention causes many unwanted unintended consequences, aka “blowback”.
This is also historically in tune with intended US foreign policy, since the founding fathers took isolationist policy to “absurd extremes” as well, avoiding entangling alliances etc.
“We’re From the Government and We’re Here to Help”
http://www.theagitator.com/archives/025475.php#025475
Stephen–
As long as we’re entering into high school-style debating, I think you’d need to be a moonbat to consider that the US is not imperial. Similarly, its not paranoia if they’re really out to get you. I’d refer you to the number of US military bases in foreign countries–if that’s not imperial, I’m not sure what is.
In all seriousness, your assertions would carry more weight if you backed them up with niceties such as, say examples and rebutals, rather than ad hominems.
one last point stephen
the whole point of LRC is that the US should have a strictly hands-off foreign policy. nowhere have i seen anything on “international consensus”. i would humbly submit that you dont read the site on a regular basis. while occassionally LRC may LINK to something that mentions “international consensus”, they could care less what the international consensus thinks. They link to many diverse viewpoints around central themes.
sd:
How about using those stationed troops to collect tribute from the subjugated country? How about forced conscription?
Are you really so interested in making an argument that you would conflate forward positioning of troops and material with an imperial exercise in power?
It doesn’t take many hyperbolic comments like that to destroy your credibility. Moonbatism, indeed.
I think when the dust settles, it will be pretty clear that the Federal Government in the U.S. may have been a little sluggish at the start, but hit all the critical benchmarks for a major relief effort, on a scale unsurpassed in history.
The feds’ plans are premised on providing only token federal assistance for the first 72 – 96 hours, after which a deluge of relief services and supplies will materialize. The reasons are twofold. First, there’s no way to pre-position sufficient supplies, in a safe place, to be prepared for every potential catastrophic attack or natural disaster. It’s a big country, too many cities for a theoretically limited government to look after. Instead, the plan is to rely on the locals helping themselves at the outset, and transitioning over to the Fed within 3-4 days of the disaster.
When the history of the relief effort is written, the scale will be mind boggling, a logistical effort rivalling D-Day.
Until that day, you will just have to put up with Gov. Blanco’s confused ramblings and finger pointing, and Mayor Nagin’s apparently sketchy commentary about mass transit and law enforcement.
There are 1.2 million displaced persons. After a rough first 3-4 days, everybody is housed to minimal standards, being fed and receiving medical treatment where necessary. Over $700 million in private relief funds have already been donated. Churches are housing and feeding tens of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, along with the Red Cross and Salvation Army and a host of lesser known charities. Corporate America is stepping up with jobs and resettlement offers. It is stunning.
Maybe the failure to provide womb-to-tomb coverage is a failure of the federal government, but negative political screeching aside, the relief effort generally is a triumph of civil society.
JS in AZ:
“forward positioning of troops and material”
Imperialist is a loaded term, usually reserved for the British or the Russians, but the phrase you use above is a euphemism for foreign occupation by American soldiers (in 130 countries around the world, no less), and yes, that looks like a form of imperialism to most people. Imagine the reaction in the US if Pakistan set up a permanent military base outside Washington DC, for example.
There are good arguments that can be made in favor of an imperialist policy, but the heavy use of euphemisms to deny it exists, and saying “you’re a moonbat” to people who disagree indicates a weak position.
JS,
It’s better to remain silent and let people think you a fool than to open your mouth and prove it
Imperialism: the policy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas
You’ll note that neither tribute nor forced conscription are included in the definition of imperialism, as per M-W.com.
You will also note that, even if you were to use your definition, you’d still be wrong. The US collects vast tributes from its own subjugated citizens in the form of taxes and inflation (and from yet-to-be-born citizens via debt), and forces conscription of its own subjugated citizens.
This imperialism became increasingly prevalent after the North subjugated the southern secessionists and consolidated power in an imperial central government, and has only grown over the years.
(Note that I am not a southern neo-confederate, but rather a Yankee)
The US collects tributes from other countries in a more devious fashion than the past. I.e., by inflation, since the US$ is the reserve currency.
The US also has a major role in shaping policy in subjugated countries behind the scenes via the IMF/Worldbank, who can dictate terms to “problem” countries. And, if worse comes to worse, the US can turn to outright force: invade or bomb into oblivion any country, even pre-emptively.
Fiona: I did not say “you’re a moonbat”. I said that the weight of enough comments of the sort that defines foreign military presence as tantamount to occupation and subjugation, erodes credibility. I quite deliberately used the euphamism “forward positioning”, and you rightly identified it as such. However, calling this subjugation is, at least, an overstatement. Or perhaps that it because I think of the Japanese empire, or the Germany empire, or the Soviet empire, or the Briitish empire, when I think of the subjugation of occupied nations. Maybe the basic nature of the thing is the same, but there is a coefficent with many positive powers of ten that defines the difference.
sd: yes – enormous amounts of money are taken by force from the citizens of the USA. And some not insignificant portion of those monies are given to the very countries which you define as “subjugated”. Seems to me the tribute is flowing in the wrong direction for this to be considered subjugation of other nations. As for the subjugated peoples of the USA – it is touching that you are concerned.
And I cannot let this pass, sd: if conquering and destroying the evil system that was the old south’s “peculiar institution”, and forcing those defeated successionist states into the federal system is “subjugation”, then that was subjugation of the very best sort.
The very nadir of libertarian solipsism is to somehow think that sucession of the slave states was a matter of free will. Altruism is a slippery slope, as is all too evident in Iraq, but do not suggest for a moment that the evil slave-holding nation should have been let live. It was intrinsically unfit to exist, and was necessarily destroyed. If you mourn for it, then that says much about your character. Find a different example of self determination that was squashed by the USA, if you must; that war was an awful, necessary surgery to excise a malignancy.
So why was USS Bataan, trailing Hurricane Katrina from Florida and loaded with emergency supplies, boats and 4000 Marines, not permitted to land and commence carrying out rescue operations? Jurisdiction issues again?
The US ‘occupies’ 130 countries? Sorry, but right there you have an example of the world view that makes Lew Rockwell.com and its supporters deserve the not to be taken seriously. There are US forces based in Britain. Does that means the US ‘occupies’ Britain?
US (and other) forces are indeed ‘occupying’ Iraq and after WWII they also ‘occupied’ German and Japan, but are you seriously going to argue that there is no difference between have a base for forces in a country with the concent of the independent local government and ‘occupying’ a country after a war with it?
Are you really under the impression that in 2005, the presence of US forces in Britain, Italy, Germany, Spain, Japan etc. means those countries actually under US ‘occupation’? I just ask this to gauge the reality level of this discussion.
As the semantic debate over ‘Imperialism’ is starting to take on a bizarre Chomsky flavour, I will try to resist getting into that one.
Let me just point out that the anarcho-capitalist position is there shouldn’t even be a foreign policy, mainly because there shouldn’t be a government to have one in the first place. I think Lew Rockwell is probably of the minarchist persuasion, which isn’t quite the same, but there you go.
Also, I think the critics here of LRC aren’t actually taking in what the columnists are saying. To call them naive is to miss the point entirely. Perhaps it’s because Rockwell and friends unravel the present problems so far back, that they aren’t “realistic” or “practical”. At least they realise you can’t have a gigantic military with bases in 130 countries and expect to have limited government at home…
Yes, it all comes down to the consequences of the Imperialist Athenian aggression against isolationist Melos.
If a set of views bear little relationship to reality then maybe looking for alternative theories might be a good idea. Still, the thing I like about Lew Rockwell.com is that they make me seem like a paragon of moderation when it comes to almost anything except economics (on which I usually agree with them).
JS–
You’re backtracking a bit, even if you are clearly flipping through the thesauraus to disguise the fact that your logic is falling apart.
You’re NOW effectively saying that yes, the US is an empire. Just so we’re clear. Now what you’re saying is that such imperialism was JUSTIFIED because slavery was such an evil institution. (BTW, your smear of anyone who opposes the war of northern aggression as pro slavery and therefore evil is laughable).
I would refer you to the LRC literature on “the real lincoln” and their defense of the right to secession. I would just note that even if you could argue that Lincoln destroyed the evil iinstitution of southern slavery (a big if, since slavery collapsed peacefully in many other countries, again, see LRC), he in turn transformed ALL citizens of the country into serfs.
p.s. not that touching–i’m a US citizen, so it directly affects me
p.p.s. most of the US money does not flow to citizens of foreign countries, but rather their corrupt governments.
This thread seems to be moving into the definition of whether the U.S. is an empire or not. It is a strange sort of empire by the usual terms: I don’t see the U.S. forcing countries to submit to its will – such as France or Germany or Turkey. The latter country prevented the U.S. from launching its attack on Iraq from Turkish territory. Now a Ceasar, Bonaparte or for that matter a Palmerston would not have demurred at invading from wherever they wanted.
SD claims that slavery collapsed “peacefully” in many other countries. Care to provide some examples? I have just been reading a wonderful history of South America and the wars of liberation under the likes of Bolivar. Slavery was huge in the Latin American continent and the chances of it disappearing peacefully were slim. Slavery also continues to be a serious problem in parts of Africa and the ME. Not much chance of “peaceful” change there.
As for the tribute issue, it seems that countries like Britain and former west Germany benefitted enormously from the protective umbrella of U.S. military power. Indeed, some like Mark Steyn have argued that this was bad in the long run since it created a sort of welfare mentality in much of “old Europe” on the issue of defence.
All this reminds me of the old Monty Python line of “What did the Romans ever do for us?” in the Life of Brian.
sd:
No, I did not say the US is an empire.
What I did say that is that there are many orders of magnitude of diifference between what the USA does with it’s stationed troops verses the actions of historical examples of empires.
Regarding slavery – I think you have made my point for me: If you mourn for it, then that says much about your character. You feel “smeared” by that?
The southern part of the USA decided that is was important for them to profit from the enslavement of millions, and then secede from the Union in order to maintain that vile institution. Seems like a law enforcement problem that was solved with a lot of blood, as opposed to being an act of imperial aggression.
Is there any other awful artifact of history that you would like to excuse on the basis of quashed self-determination?
The Lord preserve and protect us fom Marxists and anarcho-capitalists.
“I would refer you to the LRC literature on “the real lincoln” ”
Why? Its crap. LRC’s view on Lincoln is so laughably absurd as to be almost unworthy of a response.
The South did not have the right to simply secede and it did not have the right to destroy the Union. The South was not the innocent victim of the North. The Southern states were agressively promoting slavery in the new West in order to try and preserve it in the South. It was this agressive promotion of slavery that led to the war, and Lincoln was right both to defend the Union against the Souths pro-slavery warmongering.
And presumably the American colonies did not have the ‘right’ to simply secede from The Crown either then? Sure, slavery was a dire things but the US Civil War was only incidentally about slavery (the war was about sovereignty, slavery was just the issue which was the spark), or Lincoln would not have waited as long as he did to make the Emancipation Proclamation nor hedged it is such terms.
It seems bizarre that Americans should oppose secession seeing as how the USA itself came about.
Quote:”Lincoln was right both to defend the Union against the Souths pro-slavery warmongering.”
Then why did Lincoln initially teld the southern states they could keep slavery, as long as they came back into the Union.
Also , Lincoln’s opposition to the spread of slavery was to keep blacks out of the developing midwest. He wanted a “whites only” policy.
Perry, this is why Altruism is either a slippery slope, or the root of all evil. I happen to know that several of my ancestors joined the “German Brigades” (from southern Ohio) to fight against the south specifically because they were abolitionist. Or at least, that is what they wrote about why they volunteered to fight.
You can either choose to view the American civil war as 1) naked imperial aggression against the rightful self determination of the southern states, 2) an exercise in law enforcement in ending the unlawful rebellion of those states (this would be the analog of the British viewpoint during the revolution, I suppose), or 3) an altruistic war to end the enslavement of millions. I suppose there is also a dialectic that could be had about competeing economic systems.
If you care to compare the rebellion of the American colonies against the British empire, with the succession of the slave-holding south states as an exercise in self-determination, feel free. I will go no further in arguing that issue. There is plenty of that kind of discussion at the LR site.
JS–
Smearing anyone who comes out against the war by equating them pro-slavery folks is neither original nor mature nor logically consistent.
Work on your reaidng comprehension, and your logic as well while you’re at it.
Being against the war is not the same as being pro-slavery. Nowhere did i say i was pro slavery, because im not–that would violate the principle of self-ownership that is the basis of libertarianism.
Shawn–dismissing something out of hand as “crap” without actually rebutting it is considered extremely bad form when debating or discussing an issue.
My position is entirely consistent. You seem incapable of dealing with criticism. You feel that the south should have been allowed to secede from the Union as a matter of self-determination, and that the preservation of the Union was an act of imperialism. I say that the very system that the old south represented was atrocious and barbaric, and was rightfully destroyed.
I didn’t say you were pro-slavery. I did say that nostalgia for the antibellum south speaks to a person’s character. You took that as an insult. Whatever. If it fits, wear it.
Perhaps a better indication of your character is the nature of your comments when logic and reason have failed to support your basic, loopy position regarding imperialism.
JS
Again, you are deflecting the main issue by somehow involving southern slave ownership.
To recap: You asserted that the US is not imperial and anyone who thinks so is a moonbat. I responded that the US is imperial. You said it’s not imperial because it doesnt exact tribute or force conscription.
I simply said that, by your definition, the US IS in fact imperial. It exacts massive tribute in the form of taxes and inflation. It also forces conscription by selective service. This is the least of it, but hey–it was your definition.
Whether or not the South was morally correct in holding slaves is entirely irrelevent–they were clearly not morally correct. Whether or not the North was morally correct in exacting tribute and forced conscription, is, again irrelevent. The fact is, they did (and do) exact tribute and force conscription.
That, by your definition, using your words, is imperial. You are attempting to distract from the key issue by throwing out slavery as a red herring (and a particularly emotional one, at that). Again–so I don’t lose you here–what we were debating is the assertion that anyone who thinks the US is imperial is a moonbat.
And, as an aside, you sound like an utter fool when you say that i’m nostalgic for antibellum south.
Jonathan:
Sorry, I missed your post before. Saying that the US doesnt force France to submit to its will, and therefore isn’t an empire, is akin to saying that the Roman Empire didn’t make Nova Scotia submit to its will. So what? The US is currently making Iraq and Afghanistan submit to its will. It has made numerous other countries or states–including its own states and citizens!–submit to its willl.
As for slavery: i’d refer you to LRC: (The Real Significance of the ‘Civil War’ by Thomas E. Woods, Jr.). See the article, particularly about Cuba and Brazil
sd: How is anything that occurs within the border of the USA the actions of empire?
I never made this assertion. Saying that I did is your mistake (among many, many). I merely agreed that your examples (conscription, taxes, perhaps even the civil war) might be forms of subjugation.
If you choose to be rude, at least get the details right.
SD, you are missing the point. If the U.S. was an empire in any meaningful sense, then why has it left independent nation states like Japan/west Germany to flourish under democratic control rather than just attach it to itself? My point about Turkey, for instance, bears this out. The U.S. was obliged to respect the territorial integrity of Turkey, even though the country is a NATO member and one could reasonably expect Turkey to help a nation that had been attacked.
You say the U.S. wishes to subjugate Iraq and Afghanistan. It certainly wants to crush the head-hacking jihadis, dead-end Baathists and sundry thugs in those nations, but last time I checked, the U.S. also intended both those nations to become self-governing democracies. Now that objective may be naive or over-optimistic (I won’t get into that her), but not quite what one associates with an empire.
Of course, what this all demonstrates is that unless one defines empire precisely, you end up with this kind of debate.
The book you mention on slavery does not really answer my point, namely, that many forms of slavery have persisted for centuries and are unlikely to disappear without force of some kind.
Johnathan, it is true that sd missed the point regarding the external qualities of empire, and persists in calling the USA “imperial” despite best efforts to show him the difference between real empires, and huge blundering nations with clumsy foreign policy.
As sd said, the real topic of this thread is (and originally was, as it related the the LR website) whether someone who asserts that the USA is imperial is defacto a moonbat:
I would argue that anyone who seriously takes the position that any presence of troops from the USA stationed on foreign soil was defacto “imperial” has met the moonbat litmus test. Lest we forget, this was sd’s assertion:
The appropriate rejoinder to that comment was “we can tell”. All further conversation was unecessary to show this fundamental point.
Jonathan–
The Roman Empire was entirely altruistic in its missions as well–bringing its culture and civilization to the barbarians.
Empires need not physically attach such countries. They can sway power behind the scenes and be just as effective. I will grant you that Turkey didn’t follow suit, but was it that big a deal to the US? Not really, it was merely an inconvenience. The US has plotted against many countries who were more than simple inconvenience, and did their best to remove the pesky governments.
Turkey also had a fair point. The US was attacked by a group of terrorists. Those terrorists were dead. Invading Afghanistan had nothing to do with the people who comitted 9/11. The evidence produced to justify the war was a total joke. Now of course, our reason for being there is “bringing democracy” to these countries (similar to the Romans enlightening the barbarians) despite the fact that the US is NOT a democracy, but rather a constitutionally limited republic, and the fact that you cannot impose democracy by force. It would be like France overthrowing the British and then writing a constitution for the US. The Iraqi constitution is a socialist democratic joke, and the government itself is a US puppet.
As for slavery–Lincoln did NOT fight the war to defeat slavery, but a positive side effect was the elimination of southern slavery. Instead, however, we exchanged slavery in the South for hundreds of thousands dead in the war, a centralized despotic government that shredded the constitution, and the Road to Serfdom that unsued effectively made ALL of us slaves (or at least serfs).
JS
A huge blundering country with clumsy foreign policy pretty much describes every empire in history.
sd: it is quite possible that the north, Lincoln included, was absolutely filled to the brim with evil intent toward the south. The LR site seems well-stocked with documentation that is intended to prove just that case (for whatever reason).
But what is undeniably true (yet somehow ignored by you and many others at LR) is that the south only seceded because of slavery. If not for that one issue, there would have been no sucession by the south.
Johnathan, the analog to sd’s position (wherein the sucession of the south should have been left as matter of self-determination), is not unlike that of a renter living on your property who is engaged in serial murder.
Now, the murder likes his practice, and does not wish to stop despite you, the landlord, having told him that his murdering behavior is not permitted on your property. He does not like that, and so a devil’s bargain is reached wherein he can only murder in his own room.
You have also informed him that you are negotiating to purchase the unowned adjacent property, and that once purchased he will not be able to practice his craft there, either.
Since the murderer does not care to have his chosen lifestyle infringed-upon, he boards-up the door to his apartment, claiming that this area is now his property, and continues to murder as he sees fit.
At this juncture, one could claim that the landlord should have every right to kick down the door and reclaim the criminally seized property.
One could also claim that the landlord has an altruistic, moral requirement to do whatever is necessary to stop the murderer from practicing his craft.
We could even posit, strictly for the sake of argument, that the landlord was filled with malice toward that tenent, even before noting his murderous ways (as if that should make any difference…)
In response, it seems that sd would claim:
1) the murderer is exercising his right of self determination, and that
2) to reclaim that property is a bad act, since it requires spoiling the murderers plans for self-determination, and that
3) whether or not murders were regularly taking place was irrelevant to whether the landlord should reclaim his property, and that
4) in any case, all sorts of bad things happened after you reclaimed your property, and thus must have been caused by your actions (you bad landlord you):
This is sophistry of a particularly hateful nature, and I’m sure that sd will reply with something to the effect of:
And yet he feels slighted when considered to be a moonbat. That is called denial.
I take that is a joke. Either that or you have some very strange notion of what ‘altruism’ actually means. You don’t think that maybe the economic benefits to the Roman ruling class might have had just a teensy bit to do with motivating Rome’s Imperial expansion?
Except the British Empire of course. We had a pretty good foreign policy in the years between Pitt and Harold Wilson, namely the Pax Britannia, aka ‘now stop those nasty strange, foreign habits and behave … or else’.
SD writes: “Invading Afghanistan had nothing to do with the people who carried out 9/11”.
Huh? The Taliban provided Bin Laden and his ilk training facilities, offered him shelter, failed to hand over OBL and his cohorts to the U.S., and behaved in such a way as to make it clear that the Taliban were clearly in cahoots with the organisation responsible for the terror attacks on the U.S. The U.S. decision to crush the Taliban was as just an action as one can think of, comparable to the Americans’ routing of the Barbary Pirates in the early 19th Century, for example.
You acknowledge my point about Turkey but also brush that aside, saying that empires can also be operated without direct coercion. Sorry, no dice. You use the term “imperialism” in such a vague and all-encompassing way that it loses coherent meaning. Governments try to influence those in other countries all the time. That is hardly imperialistic.
Imperialism: the policy of extending the power and dominion of a nation especially by direct territorial acquisitions or by gaining indirect control over the political or economic life of other areas
…which is a description that applies to pretty much every government at some point, and is therefore either redundant, or not useful in distinguishing between an imperial government and a non-imperial government. Try again.
[…]
You will also note that, even if you were to use your definition, you’d still be wrong. The US collects vast tributes from its own subjugated citizens in the form of taxes and inflation (and from yet-to-be-born citizens via debt), and forces conscription of its own subjugated citizens.
…of course, sd is a bit too dim to have noticed that every government collects taxes, most have an inflationary monetary policy, and quite a lot of them still practice conscription…. meaning these criteria are also useless in distinguishing between an imperial government and a non-imperial government.
Apparently we’re all empires these days.