@Lazarus, I'm just going to focus on a few of the points you've touched upon in your last post to me. I've noticed a tendency in many discussions up here for the topics to expand into a whole galaxy of side issues, and this makes conversation very awkward, IMO, to maintain. If you want to focus on a particular point, please, feel free to bring it up again, here, or start a new topic, and I'll try to reply.
Lazarus writes:
(Parenthetically, I can't help but point out that everybody seems perfectly willing to judge and condemn the US, but entirely unwilling to judge or condemn any third world nation. Curious.)
I think this is because the US has a problem with admitting errors of judgement, which really can look bad when you're the largest kid on the block, living in the biggest house with all the best and newest toys. it really generates resentment. The US has never backed away from its embargos on Iraq, for example, despite the fact that the steps taken to limit Iraqi access to funding has demonstrably hit the Iraqi people much worse than its injured their leader. What began as a reasonable decision after the Gulf War has been mechanically followed through until it's become one of the worst diplomatic errors perpetrated by the US in the last half-century, IMO. It fosters an image of our government as a bunch of iron-fisted bullies ruthlessly picking on The Little Guy, and effectively creates a well of sympathy for a man who was nothing more than a mini-Stalin.
But the amazing thing about the US is that we have this government which is more responsive to the people than most other governments around the world, and we have the ability to CHANGE it when we decide that it is doing things wrong. Take the school segregation issue: it was wrong for people of color to be segregated, we (finally) came around to that point of view, and we changed. Do you think that such change is possible in China?
The history of the matter is that when the US decided racial segregation was wrong in schools, in jobs, and in voting, back in the mid-1860's, a law was based on the federal books requiring freedom and equality for blacks. Within ten years, one of the two main parties at the time, the Democrats, had formed a coalition with Southern regionalists creating a working majority that got these laws removed. This explains why for nearly 100 years, the South was solidly Democrat; why the Republicans couldn't take the Congress; and the use of the expression, "Yellog Dog Democrat" for Southerners, meaning "I'd rather vote in a yellow dog than a Republican."
Racial desegregation did not occur when the will of the people suddenly moved politicians; rather, black spokespersons literally invaded the voting booths, the schoools, and the job lines. Many were beaten, and a few were killed. Mass demonstrations amounting to hundreds of thousands of people marched on Washington DC, and at that point, some forward thinking Democrats decided this wasn't right, and effectively forged new coalitions.
They're political descendants are paying for it. The old Southerners who were Democratic at the time refused to jump party (for the most part) out of party patriotism, and just faded out in time. The new Southerners in Congress were almost Republican to a person.
From this, I arrive at what I think might be the following conclusions:
1) It took nearly 100 years to actually see through initial effects of racial desegregation in the United States.
2) The party that did it was rewarded eventually with the loss of Congress.
I was a bit too young to take national active part in the protests against racism at the time, though I was extremely passionate on the subject in my high school. My views did not sit well with many of my peers or teachers; and this was in the Northeast of the US, traditionally the more accepting of areas to new ideas. I have very vivid memories of the details of the movement, including the day Martin Luther King made his famous I Have a Dream speech; his death; and Bobby Kennedy's remarkable reaction to seeing how blacks were living in an Alabaman ghetto. (He literally changed from what he had been. He tried to answer a reporter's questions, but kept glancing back at the hut he'd visited, then glancing down, then stuttered, then glanced back at the hut...and at that moment, he joined the movement.) And I also remember George Wallace's rant about meeting protesters with guns, and a few black children killed by nameless thugs on the streets.
So no, this is not an example, IMO, of America reacting responsively on the big issues to major problems as outlined by its people. By and large, I think the tendency in the US is to maintain the status quo, and shift a few pieces around to make things look better...which is standard operation procedure for many governments, really.
For my reactions to China, see below.
I don't think I got annoyed. Really. I am trying to be very even in my responses. I guess I do get a bit strident at times, but it is because IDEAS MATTER TO ME! Maybe you and some others here (maybe, I don't know, and I'm not accusing), but maybe you just think this is all mental gymnastics, and no one can ever really be right or wrong or good or bad, but I believe that ideas can change this world, and I fervently wish to see good ideas promoted and bad ideas discussed until they are found out.
I think that a little deeper reading of this forum would show just how many of us who refuse to judge lightly, nevertheless are very passionately committed to a variety of causes. This doesn't mean we necessarily see the world around us in terms of black and white, good and bad, but only that we accept the admirable quality of a given idea, and strive to follow it through, ourselves, in our daily lives.
Thus, I have always been convinced that all people from all racial, ethnic, cultural and religious backgrounds are equal, and that we have much to learn from the disagreement of views. I have followed this idea through quietly throughout my life. My friendships have been diverse, from Christian fundamentalists to Wiccans to Buddhist refugees from China. My more intimate relationships have been similar, and I was engaged for a couple of years to a very fine young black lady down in Dallas, Texas; but her parents objected to her moving (Southern black families in particular are extremely close), and the engagement was broken. As for job discrimination--when I worked as a Program Director for the new public radio station in Gainesville, Florida, at its university, our dean, a very powerful and assertive figure, demanded that we remove all foreign students from on-air positions, since the sound wasn't sufficiently professional, in his opinion. I refused. Fortunately, nothing came of my refusal, since several of the students (notably from Belgium, India, France, and several Scandanavian countries) had powerful families that and backing from the International Club; but the fact remains that I stood up in a quiet way for what I believed.
Mind, I never thought the Dean was evil, or even bad. He was simply expressing certain views according to facets in his personality. He was working for the best of the radio station. I could see this, even though I disagreed with him.
In any case, my roundabout point is that refusing to see things in black and white terms hasn't meant I simply see ideas as intellectual games. It does let me appreciate the flow and intricacy of ideas I don't write off automatically, I think, and gain insights into character. But that's just my personal opinion.
OMG! You can't even bring yourself to say that CHINA has a bad government? Fable, I am begging you, you can't mean this?! This is a government that has no respect for the lives of it's people. Did you not see Tianamen? Have you never heard of Tibet? Please, please, Fable, you must explain what "good" you can find in this way of ruling a people.
On Tianamen, Tibet, the Falun Gong, the forced labor camps for dissidents, etc, I regard these as terrible mistakes, costly in human lives and misery. I remind others of these facts where it's reasonable to do so, and I've made a point over the years of buying products in stores that contribute to Tibetan relief groups in Nepal, rather than pay less in department stores for the same items. I've picketed the UN, and I've written pieces about China's actions.
But though I may condemn both individual actions of China and certain consistent views of the Chinese government, that doesn't mean I condemn that government itself, or regard as somehow morally bad. In fact, compared to its predecessor back in the 1940s and earlier, the Maoists were angels. In their zeal, they labelled everything that preceded themselves as "bad," and in throwing it all out, refused to keep what was good from the degenerate end of a once thriving and multi-layered culture. They did away with a hell out of a lot of corruption at all levels, and they did raise standards of living, education and health care significantly.
As to human rights--remember, this is a relatively recent concept in the world, and owes a lot in its acceptance in the West to economic security and largely stable, homogeneous population bases. It's much easier to support fair wages, for example, when you're one of the top ten producing nations in the world. It's easier, too, to support human rights for all cultures when, like Norway, you don't have to worry about Afghanistan's mixture of six major and nine minor cultural groups, all living in close promixity to one another.
This doesn't mean the notion of human rights is wrong. It only means we need to understand our own backgrounds, and those of others who disagree, sometimes violently, like China. I won't condemn China's government, knowing the pressures it lives with and where it comes from, or its accomplishments. I will work against some of its actions that I deplore, but others may feel differently; and I have to accept that, knowing how limited the perceptions of any single person is, in evaluating so large a place as a teacup, much less a world.
Gods, this stupid reply is *still* too long. And here I thought I was going to get better by focusing.
[ 10-15-2001: Message edited by: fable ]