CCCToad on 6/7/2011 at 09:47
Quote Posted by Ulukai
Hope y'all enjoyed your day off :)
It wasn't. I got to spend the day overseeing an Afghan police checkpoint as part of the effort to track down that brit.
Briareos H on 6/7/2011 at 10:05
Quote Posted by demagogue
I bet people spend Polish independence day there in Prague pretending Ronald Reagan didn't tear down your wall with his own bare hands and send Ceaușescu packing.
I'm not a native english speaker so while I easily get the tongue-in-cheek tone about mocking the holy status of national independence by Americans, is the mixing of Czech Republic, Romania and Poland also a jab at the famed lack of education of American people? Sorry for being so candid.
dexterward on 6/7/2011 at 10:40
I had a similar thought, but then it`s hard to tell on the interwebs...
demagogue on 6/7/2011 at 14:13
Chalk it up to meta-humor I guess. On the one hand the US Constitution & the decision of a bunch of privileged white guys to hand governing power over to the masses including other religions and races was unheard of before, and I read an essay recently making the point it was the most powerful idea of modern times & he went through every other nation & race through so many periods of history not willing to make that leap and many like in the developing world still not willing to make it. So there's something legitimately special about the American revolution and it's something people everywhere can appreciate (and FTR every country deserves democracy & independence as if that even needs defending).
But then I read another article yesterday about the unveiling of Reagan statues in London... And yeah he had his part in the Cold War ending but if you had to pick the actual people responsible for ending it, groups like Solidarity and Gorbachev in particular had the central roles, and it's kind of delusional not to see that, hence a parody of a typical American indignant response that doesn't seem to know what actually happened on the ground.
It's not like you have to take sides either. People should appreciate what's special about the US Revolution & its system and what it's done not take too seriously over-enthusiastic claims that go beyond what it's done.
Zooey on 6/7/2011 at 15:01
Quote Posted by demagogue
On the one hand the US Constitution & the decision of a bunch of privileged white guys to hand governing power over to the masses including other religions and races was unheard of before,
America invented democracy? Can we chalk that one up to meta humour as well?
dexterward on 6/7/2011 at 15:09
Quote Posted by demagogue
But then I read another article yesterday about the unveiling of Regan statues in London...
I`m 69 years old AND WHAT IS THIS?
demagogue on 6/7/2011 at 15:15
Quote Posted by Zooey
America invented democracy? Can we chalk that one up to meta humour as well?
I was talking about an article I read, and no the claim wasn't that it's inventing democracy, it was inventing the idea that people of other religions, classes, and races would rule over you, that particular flavor of democracy, the modern flavor of democracy that was influential, and that the "ancient" & "medieval" flavors were very flawed visions of democracy, esp the part about not applying to everyone (even the US took a long time to make good on its claim in the Decl of Indep that "all men are created equal", but it was the first national polity to articulate that right in that way, and it set the stage). I'm not a historian so I couldn't say, but the article made a good case for it.
But anyway, FGS it's not like a huge debate that both the American & French Revolutions were very influential to the modern world and deserve some recognition. Ideas are born out of contexts and I don't think it's healthy, if you're going to value some ideas, for people to lose touch with that context.
Quote:
I`m 69 years old AND WHAT IS THIS?
*Reagan, *statue
(Actually it talked about a number of statues all over Europe, but I wasn't sure if all of them were unveiled on the 4th or just the London one, so I took out "and other cities" but forgot to drop the plural "s" on statues. I didn't mention the plaque giving credit to Reagan for ending the Cold War and the debate in the article about how fair it is to say that.)
MorbusG on 6/7/2011 at 15:20
Quote Posted by demagogue
people of other religions and races
Races?
demagogue on 6/7/2011 at 15:37
Yeah that was the quantum leap, and you could read American history as swallowing that pill ... Scandinavians, Germans, Jews, Irish, Italians, Latin Americans, Asians and finally blacks. At one time all of these (minus the first two maybe, which were outsiders for other reasons) were considered non-white, but gradually got folded into the "white" tribe as American & "one of us", until even the "white" part lost its meaning as it got on the farther end of the scale and it was just "American". That idea of nationality separate from nation was the revolution, a universal democracy.
Edit: Not like it happened in a vacuum either. French & English enlightenment writers had been setting the foundation for the previous 150 years; they inherited the British legal system practically wholesale; they got inspiration from things like the post-Reformation, the Swiss Federal system & multinationalism, Greek democracy & Roman Republicanism... I wouldn't argue the US Revolution was like the most important or original event in history. It's just one special event along with a lot of others that have brought our modern worldview where it is today.
Sg3 on 6/7/2011 at 16:44
Quote Posted by Briareos H
is the mixing of Czech Republic, Romania and Poland also a jab at the famed lack of education of American people?
Isn't there Germany in there somewhere also?
