America isn't old enough to be in Civ3

[Dauphin]

DP

[Dauphin]

German: Regierung; Beispiel; Stadt; Hauptstadt; Kaiser

Kaiser is a Latin word.

It derives from Caesar.

So does the Russian Tsar/Csar/Czar.

[Ecthy]

in my book, Basque is listed as a completely independant language... Esperanto... well...

BTW, I find it interesting how French and English use the Latin word imperator for that position while German and Russian use caesar... strange...

[mactbone]

Wheee, I'm taking a linguistics course and I get to use what I've learned!

I. Proto-Indo-European

A. Germanic

1. German
2. English
3. Dutch
4. Danish
5. Swedish
6. Norwegian
7. etc.

B. Celtic

1. Gaelic
2. Irish
3. Welsh
4. etc.

C. Italic (Latin)

1. Italian
2. Spanish
3. French
4. Portugese
5. Romanion
6. etc.

D. Hellenic (Ancient Greek)

1. Greek (They're silly aren't they )

E. Balto-Slavic

1. Baltic

a. Latvian
b. Lithunanian

2. Slavic

a. Russian
b. Polish
c. Czech
d. Bulgarian
e. etc.

F. Indo-Iranian

1. Indic (Sanskrit)

a. Hindi
b. Bengali

2. Iranian

a. Persian

There you go, we should have these 6 civs plus a Chinese, South American tribe and North American tribe civ and we're done
Lot's o' fun!

I think the problem we're having is that right now we don't classify divisions with civilization, we use the term country. That's where everyone's stumbling. We have in our mind that a civ must be old, very old. That's not always the case. From now on I will use the word civ instead of country because it will help you understand.
The American civ is the most widely diverse civ ever, in fact it's diversity is the REASON it can be considered a civ. Consider that the American civ has incorporated the ideas and languages of multiple civs, added a few unique elements then called it their own. Much like the English, Romans, and any other Empire that traded heavily with various lands or had multiple peoples call it home.

BTW, I have my posts per page at 100, so there is no page seven for me, but if you look at page one or so, I posted there

[Fresno]

Oriel99: Your last post made me clear were you stand politically. You seem to be a right-wing conservative with nasty nationalist ideas. Your view on European history is highly colored by these ideas. The way you describe the inhabitants of this "Anglosphere" compared with other Europeans sounds very much alike the übermensch-untermensch-thesis (not the way Nietzsche thought about it, more the way it was interpreted by the Germans in the 1930's). The way you argue that this 'One Nation' party isn't extremist shows you don't really know what right-wing extremist parties normally do. They ALWAYS use populist opinions like the ones you mentioned, and they always focus on immigration, which they always say to be far to high. You say you don't support them, which is good for you. However, some of the things you say about us are simply racist. I hope you are just a teenager with radical ideas, so you will grow wiser in a few years. For now, however, I already know how your reaction is going to be: just like your former posts, that is, arrogant and patronizing. How I know that? It is exactly the way the most prominent right-wing extremist in my country reacts to all criticism.

Big Crunch: you are absolutely right with your language scheme. However, you made one mistake earlier on; you confused 'German' and 'germanic.' English hasn't got any German words as far as I know. It has Germanic words, of course, since it is a Germanic language. I only mentioned the French, English and German words to show how much English was influenced by the Normans. Because I speak all the three languages and also a little Latin (although Dutch is of course my first language), I know really numerous English words are from French origin. And about the Kaiser: the fact that Kaiser comes from the Latin Caesar doesn't mean it isn't a German word.

Sun Zi 36:

Actually, Napoleon by his conquests have exported many of the ideals of freedom, etc to Germany and Italy. That's why his campaigns were most successful there. He ended the revolution but didn't end its ideals (eg the Napoleonic Code). His conquests were very important in generating forces of unification in Italy and Germany in the mid 19th century

Napoleon didn't export the ideals of the revolution. As a Dutchman I know Napoleon ended the ideals of the Revolution. After he became emperor he closed independent liberal newspapers, which supported the three ideals of the revolution - Freedom, Equality and Brotherhood. He turned my country, till then a republic, into a kingdom, with his brother Louis-Napoleon as new king. In his own France he became a dictator. The ideals of the Enlightenment were already present among intellectuals everywhere in western Europe, long before the revolution and long before Napoleon conquered Germany. So he hasn't brought these ideals to Europe, in the contrary, he tried to stop them.

Actually Germany did have a colonial empire only much smaller.

I know very well Germany has had colonies, but that doesn't make it a colonial empire. With colonial empires I mean European countries who have large possessions in other continents. England had whole India, the American east-coast, and large parts of Africa. France had whole Indochina, Louisiana, parts of Canada and also large parts of Africa. Other colonial empires were the Netherlands in Indonesia, the Portuguese in Brazil and Indonesia (before the Dutch), and of course the Spanish in South-America. The German colonial possessions were too small to make Germany a colonial empire.

If u talk about wars, i think u could find England and France fought much more wars against each other than against Germany or Prussia.

Throughout its history France has fought against various little German countries. In total, there were many more French-German wars as French-English. Concerning only Prussia, the French and the Prussians have fought against each other in I think six or seven wars.

[Arent]

Oriel94:

Comparing Australia/Usa and European countries:
Communism and nationalism came up in industrial age (no - even earlier!) - at the end of the imperialistic era the european countries stood armed to the teeth - WW1 and WW2 followed. Usa and australia are young nations, people had to get there and settle and develop - this took a long time (WW1 is perhaps a good point to draw the line)
If I take 1 million people now and found a new state in antarctica - sure I have never fought a war, sure there has never been a totalitarian regime. The dangerous thing is that you *want* to believe everything is white in australia and black in the rest of the world.

Left wing/Liberalism:
I don't particulary love "lefties", too - but they have their opinions and you have to respect this. This is actually the idea of liberalism, the liberalism in australia you seem so fond of: We do not know for sure what the right/best thing is thus we allow everyone as much freedom as possible. You are not a good example of a liberalist.

EU:
...is not set in stones. So I wonder how much you know about its constitution. You perhaps don't even know who "fischer" is, not speaking about his suggestions.
There are many *serious* problems and I love to discuss them but you didn't waste a thought about them. You basically write "EU is evil" - you can't say why but it fits into your simple world view. Australia is for sure a nice country, but people there have no inborn "instinctive rejection of extremism"
even if you want to belive this.

Arent

[D4everman]

I thought this crap was argued about months ago.

Aw, shoot. Well, look at it this way Fresno...you wouldn't be playing Civ3 if an AMERICAN country didn't make it.

[Drake Tungsten]

Originally posted by Fresno
Oriel99: Your last post made me clear were you stand politically. You seem to be a right-wing conservative with nasty nationalist ideas. Your view on European history is highly colored by these ideas. The way you describe the inhabitants of this "Anglosphere" compared with other Europeans sounds very much alike the übermensch-untermensch-thesis (not the way Nietzsche thought about it, more the way it was interpreted by the Germans in the 1930's).

Now this is just uneccessary. Oriel brought up some good points that you can't seem to counter, so you decide to call him a Nazi. Unbelievable.

Why don't you try actually refuting Oriel's comments instead of just resorting to name-calling. Using the specter of Nazi horror to put down those who disagree with you is not only stupid, it's also offensive to those who suffered under the Nazis.

[oriel94]

Fresno/Arent

Ummm ... where to begin?

1. Perhaps you should just read my post again, but a bit more slowly.

2. Europe's political centre of gravity is markedly to the left of the Anglosphere’s. This is actually one of the things which makes Europe culturally and civilizationally different from it. To many Europeans, Reagan and Thatcher were political extremists, whereas they were well within the Anglosphere's conservative tradition. Even Tony Blair's Labour government and the US Democrats are further to the right than just about all of continental Europe's Christian Democratic or conservative parties. Again, this just serves to emphasise the differences which the English Channel symbolises (the Atlantic ocean is, in cultural terms, much narrower than the English Channel). Indeed, it is this more leftward orientation in Europe which largely explains the relative success of totalitarianism in Europe, and its complete absence anywhere in the Anglosphere (see points 3 and 4).

3. I have actively campaigned against Mrs Hanson's party in Australia. Although I don't like her policies, I think it's rather insulting to the victims of the countless European totalitarians and genuine political extemists to compare her in any way to Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Franco, Horvath, the Greek colonels, Salazar, Honecker, Ceacescu, Tito, Quisling, Petain, Zhivkov, Metaxis, etc, etc, etc. It's also a bit hysterical to do so. It’s even a little amusing that I should be so compared.

4. The United States is an older country than many modern European states. So is the UK. The Americans also inherited many centuries of English history. American, Canadian and Australian histories all begin with the Roman invasion of Britain. The settlers didn’t arrive as blank sheets of paper. The relative ages of the civilizations is not the reason why the continental/s have appeared more prone to the temptations of totalitarianism and political extremism. And even if I am wrong, in making such an argument you seek merely to rationalise the difference, and in so doing acknowledge it.

5. I don’t really think I was patronizing to you. I apologise if I was. I merely tried to point out a few fairly obvious differences between the civilizations of continental Europe and the Anglosphere. Surely you don’t deny there are differences. In an earlier post, I already indicated that some of the differences are favourable to the continentals. There’s really no need to be so thin-skinned.

6. I've actually written two books about the EU. One of them was published in the Netherlands (I mention this only because there is a suggestion that I might be a naiive teenager in my skepticism about the European Union; gee, talk about ‘patronizing’. Of course, the views I expressed in my earlier posts must stand or fall on their own merits). A federal Europe won't be democratic and a democratic Europe won't be federal.

[Arent]

Oriel94:

1)4)You got my point.
Point 3 and 5 don't apply to my posts, I don't even know Mrs. Hanson.

2)I already said you will find more differences between any single european country (just consider russia, france and sweden). And I already said that your ideas perhaps apply in 50 or 100 years.
You simply can't draw a line.

I would be careful with your judgements.
"the political center of gravity...". You can't possibly mean Germany and/or France!?

6)Me I'm studying international physics in Leipzig. Am I now more intelligent than you? You writing a political book? No, two?? Everyone please read his previous posts (page 7)

Arent

[oriel94]

Arent

Nice to see you so quick off the mark.

Yes, I do include France and Germany. The British Labour Party and the US Democrats are quite obviously further to the right than the German Christian Democrats or the Gaullists. This confirms, together with much else, the major cultural/civilizational gap between the Anglosphere and the European continent.

If you have a crystal ball, you are certainly welcome to tell us all about what happens in 50-100 years from now.

I mentioned my work on the EU only to rebut a very limited point which I spelled out in point 6 of my last post. Arent, I'm sure you're really very intelligent, and I'm prepared to accept that my meagre works might be total baloney. It might also be that I'm totally wrong about everything. It's just that I'm *not* a naiive teenager who is likely to grow out of some anti-EU phase, that's all. Nothing more.

The EU is a perfect vehicle for world-power status if your democratic traditions are comparatively shallow. Different strokes for different folks. But the Brits will never be happy occupying a room in that house; sooner or later they will either leave or bring down the house. President Bush's National Security Advisor, before the 2000 US election, publicly floated the idea of the UK leaving the EU and entering into some arrangement with NAFTA. What an interesting idea.

[Fresno]

Drake Tungsten:

Now this is just uneccessary. Oriel brought up some good points that you can't seem to counter, so you decide to call him a Nazi. Unbelievable.

Why don't you try actually refuting Oriel's comments instead of just resorting to name-calling. Using the specter of Nazi horror to put down those who disagree with you is not only stupid, it's also offensive to those who suffered under the Nazis.

Next time, read my post more carefully, before getting angry. I didn't say or even imply Oriel would cause a holocaust such as the Germans did. There is still a difference between thinking you are of a superior race (übermensch-untermensch) and killing people. Some of Oriel's remarks are racist, but that doesn't make him a Nazi.
About offending the victims: I am member of a Jewish family myself, so I know very well, probably better as you, what suffering was caused in WW2. Knowing this, I would NEVER use the holocaust in the way you mentioned.

About Oriel just bringing an opinion; I am really quite liberal towards other opinions, but when someone starts with this kind of offending generalization, I think everyone just HAS to let him know what he is doing.

Oriel94: All I was saying was, that you seem to think we Europeans are a group of peoples who keep choosing fascist and communist dictators and keep going at war with each other. You even said it was inborn for Anglosphere-people that they haven't got this tendency. I can't help seeing this as racism. How can you be so arrogant to think you can just disqualify a whole continent as being politically backward? THAT is what I call patronizing. And about your book: I am sorry to see you aren't a radical teenager, but a radical adult. However, writing a book about the EU doesn't mean your ideas are better.

Arent:

Originally posted by Arent
Left wing/Liberalism:
I don't particulary love "lefties", too - but they have their opinions and you have to respect this. This is actually the idea of liberalism, the liberalism in australia you seem so fond of: We do not know for sure what the right/best thing is thus we allow everyone as much freedom as possible. You are not a good example of a liberalist.

I agree with you, Arent. But how do you think about leftist liberals?

[KaiserIsak]

Does of you that think USA then Poland dont know your history lesson.
They might be, but are´nt yet.
The Poland-Lithunian commonwealth was a great country who have shaped the form of eustern europe. And since both the world wars have started there, i think they´ve had great influence.

[Sun Zi 36]

Alright, I m deciding that i m not going to participate in the discussion about EU or continental Europe vs "Anglosphere" only bcos it is really going off topic and not really informative. I only went into it b4 to discuss the validity of dividing the "Anglosphere" as a civilisation. I still believe that:

"Anglosphere" is valid if u take a finer division...the reason why i think Anglosphere should be a separate civ is that u can define its culture with not a very narrow division [of world cultures] yet Anglosphere is very important in influencing world history."

But no-one has responded to me on this.

MacTBone:

"I think the problem we're having is that right now we don't classify divisions with civilization, we use the term country... From now on I will use the word civ instead of country because it will help you understand.

OMG. I think YOU are the only one having the problem here. YOU were the only one to have used the word "country". You even forgot that i criticised you about this a few days ago.

"The American civ is the most widely diverse civ ever, in fact it's diversity is the REASON it can be considered a civ. Consider that the American civ has incorporated the ideas and languages of multiple civs, added a few unique elements then called it their own...."

Seems to me that, all u changed is replaced the word "country" with "civ". U still failed to appreciate the difference between the MEANING of each word. Your confusion is shown by the fact that u have conrtradicted yourself. If aspects of culture ("ideas and languages" as u said) makeup and define a civ, how can a distinct civ be made up of diverse or multiple types of cultures? Wouldn't diverse and different cultures mean there exist diverse and different civs? As i said b4 (in case u haven't read):

"if u use culture to define civs, u can narrow down to quite a lot of civs. And even then, USA as a whole can't qualify as a civ bcos there are too many different cultures within it. You'll probably single out the minority cultures within the USA b4 u can go even further to separate the majority USA from "Anglosphere"."

D4everman:

"I thought this crap was argued about months ago.

Aw, shoot. Well, look at it this way Fresno...you wouldn't be playing Civ3 if an AMERICAN country didn't make it."

Again, one of those posts that comes up once in a while. Whether an American country made it has got nothing to do with whether America SHOULD be included as a civ. We are talking about civilisations, not nations.

[mactbone]

Well, considering I never used the word culture in there I doubt I contradicted myself. I said "languages and ideas". Languages and ideas does not a culture make.

You pointedly disregarded everything you could not explain away and expect me to infer that language + idea = culture. I'll put it this way, if I take flour, eggs, and bread and combine them, do I get bread? No, I get something else. The American culture is significantly different than that of Britain, Canada, or any other English speaking culture.