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To: LexBaird
Isolationist Japan stagnated in the middle ages for four hundred years. Then, Japan went from a feudal backwater to defeating the Russian navy in fifty years.

That's just what I mean: my greedy Western forebears just had to make a few dollars by giving primatives modern technology with which to make trouble.

But whether it was the Americans or the Victorian Brits who opened Japan, they were far overdue to break out. Now suppose there had been no British, Russian, or French colonial interests in the Pacific, following a defeat by the Central powers. Would you have preferred an unopposed expansionist military superpower exploding across the whole Pacific rim?

With spears, bows and arrows, and rowboats--they would have been welcome to conquer what they can.

And now, with just about the entire world turned-on to modern Western technology, Americans will begin to lose one freedom after another as world population skyrockets from modern medical care, and as competition for resources reaches a fever pitch.

We are losing our freedoms because of this and before the end of this century, I firmly believe nation states will no longer exist, and every aspect of our lives will be regulated to the nth degree.

50 posted on 05/15/2006 10:32:16 AM PDT by Age of Reason
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To: Age of Reason
That's just what I mean: my greedy Western forebears just had to make a few dollars by giving primatives modern technology with which to make trouble.

With spears, bows and arrows, and rowboats--they would have been welcome to conquer what they can.

What condescending arrogance. The Japanese were hardly "primitives". The only reason they were mired in the feudal age was because a military dictatorship dynasty had forced it on them through isolationism on pain of death. If it had not been for your "greedy western forebearers", you would be squatting in a peat bog with your children dying of diphtheria.

And now, with just about the entire world turned-on to modern Western technology, Americans will begin to lose one freedom after another as world population skyrockets from modern medical care, and as competition for resources reaches a fever pitch.

What you really seem to mean is that, having climbed to a technological height on the backs of your greedy ancestors, you want to pull up the ladder lest you have to compete with the hoi palloi.

We are losing our freedoms because of this and before the end of this century, I firmly believe nation states will no longer exist, and every aspect of our lives will be regulated to the nth degree.

If you want to see regulation to the nth degree, look at rabidly isolationist states like North Korea. Free markets do not function under totalitarianism.

51 posted on 05/15/2006 12:15:17 PM PDT by LexBaird (Tyrannosaurus Lex, unapologetic carnivore)
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