Thursday, December 20, 2012

Empire and Gun Rights

Over on his blog, CIP regretted the excesses of empire, but essentially endorsed their "civilizing" mission.  Only half-tongue-in-cheek, I pointed to the collective insanity that is the United States and its worship of guns, as requiring the civilizing yoke of an empire.  Little did I know how far the insanity has progressed, it appears to be easier for a convicted, mentally disturbed felon to get his gun ownerships reinstated, than to get his voting rights reinstated.  The Republic after all needs more gun-toting, non-voting citizens! so the lunatics that run the asylum believe! Where is the jackboot of an empire when it could do some good  CIP for one, thinks (seems to, at least) that the human cost might be worth it, what was good for India should be good for the USA, no?
Posted by Arun at 11:32 PM

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Guest · 641 weeks ago

I'm counting on beneficent aliens or robots to do the job. What do you think the odds are?
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CIP · 641 weeks ago

Actually, I think you misrepresent my opinion. I'm saying that history is messy, and that all sorts of consequences flow from the encounters of cultures. Nobody likes to be exploited or enslaved, much less murdered, yet it is possible that the victims descendants, should they survive, might get advantages as well as disadvantages from the event.

My ancestors got literacy, civilization, and the language I speak from peoples who conquered them - a bad deal for them perhaps, but not for me.
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Arun · 641 weeks ago

And your ancestors would have gotten literacy and civilization without being conquered. A wonderful thing, the human ability to learn. I don't see any great advantages for the descendants of the victims, there is only a legacy of violence.
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CIP · 641 weeks ago

But I'm more interested in understanding history as it happened, rather than some fantasy version that didn't happen. If the Aztec empire had not been overthrown by the Spanish empire, it would have perished sometime, and perhaps human sacrifice would have ended -- or not. If the Romans had not conquered Europe, then Carthage probably would have, and my contemporaries here would speak a Semitic language -- and possibly still practice human sacrifice.

Yes, we can imagine a world in which war and conquest didn't take place, but it's not the world of our ancestors. It's a world that we can hope to achieve today, but only if we look with clear eyed understanding on the past. That's why I find sentimentalization of colonialism obnoxious.
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Arun · 641 weeks ago

Human sacrifice or Inquisition or forced conversion or what else? This idea that somehow a hundred thousand slaughtered, e.g., as Timur the Lame slaughtered a hundred thousand prisoners at the walls of Delhi to induce it to surrender is somehow less horrendous than human sacrifice, is ridiculous. The relative moral weight your "history as it happened" strangely is always to the victor.
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CIP · 641 weeks ago

I should mention that I empathetically do not endorse civilization by imperialistic conquest, now or in the past. The bad things that flow from conquest are almost always a good deal worse than any good.

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