Re: military superiority; moral inferiority

Louis and all,

        I never said one word in defense of Western imperialism.  I was
just responding to Jane's observation that people of northern European 
origins had never been underdogs.  But the minute we abolish history and
philosophy to subordinate all thought to the just struggle against Western
imperialism and the Pax Americana and the predations of capitalism is the
minute that we allow ourselves to become as false and inhumane as the
imperialists and the capitalists.  I do not read the reflections on
history of Marx and Engels as an apologia for the past conduct of
"civilized" Homo sapiens, and neither should you.  "Civilization" has
been, for all its finer achievements, a moral disaster from the get-go.
Demonizing this or that particular race or faith or culture does not help.    

        Warren


On Wed, 26 Dec 2001, Louis Proyect wrote:

> 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.
> 
>