WHile I disagree with you, this was an excellent freaking post, IMO...God, that this could be the standard of debate, rather than " You just hate America! ", etc... A) Re. motivations for the Revolution; while economic issues were certainly among them, the general complaints were so varied that it would be unfair to characterize the motivations with the broad sweep that you did. While it was among the foremost, if not the single foremost of complaints the Colonists had, there were several others, and an examination of the Intolerable Acts shows that there were other concerns, such as billeting British troops among Colonial communities, restriction from emigration Westward, etc. Additionally, it is also important to note that at the time of the Revolution, the colonialists were pretty evenly split on the issue of Rebellion; 1/3 for Rebellion, 1/3 for support of the Crown, and 1/3 neutral, and it is in that last 1/3rd that you find the majority of the mercantile class, as usual, opting for the status quo over anything which threatened to interrupt business. But aside from all of the disparate issues, the only commonality that held them together was that the only recourse which could address all of the complaints, short of Royal recognition of the validity of same, which was not forthcoming, was self-determination, or at least representation. As such, the words of men like Henry were a little more than just grandiose rationalizations for looking after the pocketbooks. B) Your second point, re: Jefferson's wind quotation, is IMO, your strongest by far. I do not just say this because it is a point I have made when arguing against his position... But, irrespective of the gray area about what is termed sovereignty, a people's land, etc., which I acknowledge, the point is that he acknowledges two things; that when deciding between Them and Us, Us has authority in Us's land...ie, Iraqis, like Americans of 1776, have greater precedence over the legitimate say in their land than do American or British foreign powers, and secondly, that it is impossible to seperate self-determination from Freedom, and that we cannot pretend to be giving Iraqis their Freedom if we do not also allow them the right to determine their own subsequent course, irrespective of whether or not it is the course we see as best. I sort of dealt with your third paragraph with my last statement, but I will reiterate...It does not matter if we equate theocracy with good government, or indeed if we equate it with Freedom. WHat matters is that if they are free, they are free to make their own choices...we cannot have it noth ways, or else we stand as hypocritical as those Feminist groups who condemn women who choose to be housewives...Freedom= your choice, not what others see as the right choice. And, no, there have been several forms of government who managed to have " been successful in allowing disparate peoples to live together under one government in peace with relative freedom." while not separating church and state. Examples; the Ottomans, the Romans, the Persians, etc. It should be noted that seperation of Church and state is a Western ideal, and not nbecessarily 'right' for other cultures, many of whom prioritize adherence to religious tenets over other things we would deem more important. But, as I pointed out in my original post, just as it was wrong, but understandable, for the British to assume that their system was the best, and only viable system available when they forced it on much of the rest of the world, it is wrong for us to do likewise. Their reasons for making that kind of assumption were at least as good as ours, if not better, but still wrong.
Ummm.it's either/or, in that you're translating from Classical Greek, there is no exact translation, just accepted forms, of which both of these are.
Understood, I just had only ever seen it spelled Sisyphus, shrugs! I knew what you were refering too orginally, I just, for whatever reason, decided to be Pan
A) Quartering Act = economic, The Quebec Act = economic, Sugar Act = economic, Stamp Act = economic, Massachusetts Bay Regulating Act = economic Impartial Administration of Justice Act = noneconomic. So, basically the American Revolution was economic rather than governmental. As usual , the fatcats let the idealist steer the people in the direction that made them the most money. In this particular case, that was a alliance I can live with because the idealist were promoting individual freedom. B) Again, which "us" has the local imperative? Shiite, Sunni, or Kurd. The task of replacing Saddam with a local government would have been much simpler if we had arranged for a seperate Sunnistan, Shiitestan and Kurdistan rather than trying to maintain the arbitrary boundries set by the conquering empires of WW1 (watched the Lawrence of Arabia special on PBS). Even at that there needs to be enough freedom that Iraqi Jews, Coptics, Agnostics etc. can live free. It is true than in the past, Islamic governments, mostly monarchies, have allowed peaceful co-existence with many other religions, But the emergence of radical fundemental theocracies does not boe well for the individual. Even if the majority of people choose these theocracies they should not be able to stone to death the individual who chooses not to adhere to their religious doctrine. In other words, we should not let one dictator replace the dictator we have sacrificed to overthrow, even if the people choose to let him. I for one, really don't think people have the capacity to choose freely if they have been brainwashed and have have no notion of what choices might be available. That is what the idealist orators and pamphleteers are for. For all the skill the US has on Madison avenue, it is a shame how poorly the US seems to do at spreading the propaganda of freedom. The first thing I would have done if I were president would be to drop millions of wind-up radio's all over Iraq and broadcast the message of freedom and liberation 24 hours a day. Then I would have fired up a constant train of C130's bringing in enough Satellite TV's to sell ice cream to Eskimo's. I would hired every Iraqi I could find to work on reconstruction and pay them in American dollars, lots of them. You can call the upcoming world war fundementalism vs. consumerism or theocracy vs. free choice, it's just a matter of semantics. But to me, the tuth is self-evident, all men are created equal, they are endowed with certain unalienable rights, and that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
