Posted on 02/05/2005 5:37:04 PM PST by NMC EXP
In February 1899, British novelist and poet Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem entitled The White Mans Burden: The United States and The Philippine Islands. In this poem, Kipling urged the U.S. to take up the burden of empire, as had Britain and other European nations. Published in the February, 1899 issue of McClures Magazine, the poem coincided with the beginning of the Philippine-American War and U.S. Senate ratification of the treaty that placed Puerto Rico, Guam, Cuba, and the Philippines under American control.
Theodore Roosevelt, soon to become vice-president and then president, copied the poem and sent it to his friend, Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, commenting that it was rather poor poetry, but good sense from the expansion point of view. Not everyone was as favorably impressed as Roosevelt. The racialized notion of the White Mans burden became a euphemism for imperialism, and many anti-imperialists couched their opposition in reaction to the phrase.
Take up the White Mans burden
Send forth the best ye breed
Go send your sons to exile
To serve your captives' need
To wait in heavy harness
On fluttered folk and wild
Your new-caught, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child
Take up the White Mans burden
In patience to abide
To veil the threat of terror
And check the show of pride;
By open speech and simple
An hundred times made plain
To seek anothers profit
And work anothers gain
Take up the White Mans burden
And reap his old reward:
The blame of those ye better
The hate of those ye guard
The cry of hosts ye humour
(Ah slowly) to the light:
"Why brought ye us from bondage,
Our loved Egyptian night?
Take up the White Mans burden-
Have done with childish days-
The lightly proffered laurel,
The easy, ungrudged praise.
Comes now, to search your manhood
Through all the thankless years,
Cold-edged with dear-bought wisdom,
The judgment of your peers!
Source: Rudyard Kipling, The White Mans Burden: The United States & The Philippine Islands, 1899. Rudyard Kiplings Verse: Definitive Edition (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, 1929).
Watch the one invented by Milo Farnsworth, in Idaho.
How will you get to other places without our planes?
Kitty Hawk is in America. How will your gliders cross the channel without power?
How will you beat infection without penicillen?
Sulfas and other antibiotics. Incidentally, penicillin was not "invented" by Fleming. It was discovered by fortunate accident.
How will you have any appreciation of language without Shakespeare?
Shakespeare predates America, just as Aristotle predates Britain. How will you have any appreciation of music without jazz, blues, country and rock?
How will you have electricity that hasn't been invented?
Electricity wasn't invented, however, Ben Franklin did much to advance the early knowledge. And what good will electricity do Britain, without Edison's inventions?
How will you eat a hamburger, pizza or french fries without us?
Potatoes are American, and it is likely that pizza was invented in NYC. Ground beef on bread? I bet someone here would have thought of it, eventually.
Correction: Philo Farnsworth, not Milo.
Thanks Mom!
Meanwhile, the Commonists (formerly known as Communists) have desperately tried to make a moral equation of our efforts to stop their totalitarianism in Korea and Vietnam with the old world colonial empire building and imperialism. But America is the EXCEPTION to the rule!!!
Saddam was a student of Stalin, not for Communism, but for dictatorial totalitarianism through terrorism. He's isolated now, but his cohorts are fighting their coming isolation. The poem reminds me of the ingrates that the imperialists were dealing with incorrectly with their loss of life and limb are not too different from the mentally challenged/deranged terrorists in Iraq and around the globe.
It also reminds me of the mentally challenged/deranged Demoncrats/Liberals in Massachewsetts and Cauleeforneeah who seditiously demoralize and undermine our magnificent liberating military by calling them "occupiers!" There is but one force on this planet doing good, abeit imperfectly!!!
American exceptionalism is a truly valid doctrine and this poem helps point that out, if not quite prove it...
John Logie Baird also invented TV. Farnsworth invented it separately and in parallel.
You are being hysterically funny with the penicillen and electricity. That is like saying the lightbulb wasn't invented because god made light.
No, my point is that both were naturally occurring, not inventions. You may as well claim that Newton invented gravity. The lightbulb was a physical invention, not a discovery of a natural phenomenon.
Regardless, none of these artifacts are the substance of any civilizations. They are merely the products of them. A civilization, in the terms of this thread and Kipling's "white man", is the shared values of a large community that forms the framework of its behaviors.
Technically wrong and morally insulting to the dead European soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Agreed. While there is more opposition to the actions found in Europe, we have plenty of homegrown obstructionists (like Teddy Kennedy), while Europeans have their share of Tony Blairs fighting the good fight.
No! You are wrong, Sir!! If not for US, they would never have followed us there to fight and die!!!
Well get over it! It's absolutely true and you are just in a bad mood do the attitude of Americans who are sick and tired of the "old europe" attitude and forget to distinguish your nation as being the mother of the most exceptional nation on earth!! You and your nation and your forebearers got us started on the right track. Especially people like John Locke!!! (If you are in fact from the U.K.)
It's all because you lot don't know how to spell "civilized". ;^)
America shares the moral high ground with very few other nations, yours being one of the major exceptions and of which you should be intensely grateful and proud!!! Your nation tried it's best to abort our nation's birth but we both survived the attempt. Both our nations have abandoned many of our lesser acceptable ways, but we are certainly NOT your lesser successor!!!
So stop looking for reasons to be offended because we love our kindred bretheren in the U.K. but we're not the least bit ashamed of the truth, ol boy! Not in the least!!!
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