Re: military superiority; moral inferiority

On Wed, 26 Dec 2001 14:03:41 -0500 (EST), wwagar@binghamton.edu 
wrote:
>
>    I don't know about thousands of years, or even
>whether the term "racism" (as understood today)
>applies, but there was the Roman Empire, which
>did not always treat the barbarians of the North
>with kid gloves;

We should be careful not to project the evils of Western Imperialism 
onto societies that operated by other laws entirely. I have seen this 
done repeatedly and in bad faith with respect to indigenous 
Americans, who are painted as "just as bad" as the colonizers. There 
are constant reminders about Incan human sacrifices, Anasazi 
cannibalism, North American Indian bison stampedes over cliffs, ad 
nauseum. All presented in a manner to justify the exterminationist 
policies of the Europeans.

The young man who made the stupid jibe about "Bad Americans" led us 
astray from the point being made. For the past 200 years Western 
Europe and the United States have used technical-military superiority 
to impose regimes of theft and torture on the colonial world. It is 
pointless to dwell on the Huns, et al unless we are interested in a 
kind of Viconian meditation on the human race delivered from Olympian 
heights. We want to disarm the imperialists, not philosophize about 
them.

-- 
Louis Proyect, lnp3@panix.com on 12/26/2001

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