Posted on 07/02/2004 3:57:55 AM PDT by kattracks
The idea that America and the West grew rich through oppression and exploitation is strongly held among many intellectuals and activists. In the West, the exploitation thesis is invoked, by Jesse Jackson and others, to demand the payment of hundreds of billions of dollars in reparations for slavery and colonialism to African Americans and natives of the Third World. Islamic extremists like Bin Laden insist that the Muslim world is poor because the West is rich, and they use Western oppression as their pretext for unleashing violence, in the form of terrorism, against American civilians.
Dinesh DSouza, the Rishwain Scholar at the Hoover Institution, is the author of Whats So Great About America. Email: thedsouzas@aol.com
Dinesh....daring to go where most men fear to tread....
Speaking of James Burke,his "Connections" series is awesome.
Champ, what did you think of Africa? Ali replied, Thank God my grand-daddy got on that boat! Alis point was that although the institution of slavery was oppressive for the slaves, paradoxically it benefited their descendants because slavery was the transmission belt that brought African Americans into the orbit of Western freedom.
I believe that it was Dinesh who also observed that almost all the successful countries /civilizations were all located north of the equator?
Guess everything south of the equator is backwards?
Yikes! Good read!
bump for later
Speaking of James Burke,his "Connections" series is awesome.
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Ditto! Do those shows ever get replayed? I rarely leave FNS! LOL!
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This is one quote that should be taught when important quotes are being taught.
We can ALL say the same, because if our forebears were among the "haves" wherever they lived, they most likely would have stayed there. (Yes, I know that Africans did not volunteer to come, but, some Africans are slaves to other Africans even today.)
The northern hemisphere benifits from the massive east-west axis stretching from Japan though China, India, the Middle East, and into Europe, where is was fairly easy for food plants & domestic animals to be relocated(ie you can grow the same food plants almost anywhere in this area), and where the climate is the best for large scale human habitation. You'll notice that most of the worlds major civilizations started in this area. The second largest horizontal axis on earth is in the United States & Southern Canada.
fascinating look here too:
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0%2C1284%2C52594%2C00.html
"Knowledge Web" is the pet project of James Burke, an Oxford-educated historian whose fascination with technology resulted in Connections, a television series that explored the strange links between technological breakthroughs and historical events.
Knowledge Web (K-Web) is intended to be the visual and virtual extension of almost three decades of Burke's attempts to show how all knowledge is somehow connected to all other knowledge.
The not-for-profit site is being built by about 100 volunteers from around the world, but more helping hands are needed.
K-Web project manager Patrick McKercher said K-Web currently could really use programmers who can work with Java, XSLT and XML. Experienced researchers and writers are also wanted. Volunteers can sign up here.
I have a few episodes of Connections I taped off TLC a few years ago. Wish I had the whole series on dvd.
Guess everything south of the equator is backwards?
I think that Dr. Walter Williams stated a more likely reason in a recent article. He believes the reason for the success of the West is due to the combination of liberty, freedom and captitalism.
This makes quite a bit of sense. Liberty and freedom grant a person the opportunity to succeed or fail. Add property rights to the mix, and a person has incentive to succeed. Lots of people succeeding and producing brings prosperity to the society. On the other hand, when you have a collective society, which may be required for survival, for a short time and for small groups, you will invariably wind up with people who have no incentive to produce, and will wind up with more and more people who either do nothing, or produce the bare minimum. At the beginning of a collective society, there may be incentive in that if they don't produce, the people will die, which seems to be a pretty good incentive. The problem with collectivism is that it stagnates society. The key to the "success" of a collective society is that it can only exist for a short time before it collapses. And the greater the population, the shorter the period it will exist, without needing force to keep the society running.
And that's the key... When you look at most African nations, they're actually quite rich in natural resources. However the societies that are running those nations are killing the people.
Mark
hmmmm........I think there's a bit more to it. Like gov't and culture.
Reminds me of Sam Kinison talking about sending aid to people living in the African deserts. We don't need to send food, we need to send u-hauls so they can move to where the food is!
I agree with that culture & government is also very important - for example, the Middle East got a good head start on civilization, but they squandered that lead due to overcontrolling theocratic governments. Just pointing out that climate & geography in certain areas are just better suited for human habitation, and spread of civilzation.
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