10 most rightist posters on poly

[Agathon]

I've said it before, but valuing tradition just because it is tradition is about the most bizarre basis for a political position I can think of. Even Libertarianism is more coherent.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Well it isn't just tradition, but the accumulation of history's wisdom. That which worked survived.

[Agathon]

Well it isn't just tradition, but the accumulation of history's wisdom. That which worked survived.

But that just requires us to believe an absurdity. Just because it worked doesn't mean that it's sane or the best way of doing things (e.g. slavery).

The principle needs either more or different content to be anything close to plausible. This is a fave of mine – it just seems that when you boil it down, conservatism has no real principles.

[Imran Siddiqui]

But that just requires us to believe an absurdity.

As opposed to any other political belief system?

(remember slavery didn't survive the tradition in most countries through peaceful governmental legislation)

I have no idea how you can't wrap your head around the principles of conservatism. You are just like Ned with liberalism. Open your mind .

[bipolarbear]

Did anybody say Fez yet?

[Agathon]

As opposed to any other political belief system?

No. When Libertarians say they stand for Liberty they at least have a semi-coherent concept of it, even if it doesn't work in the end. When lefties say that they want equality of condition, it is reasonably clear what they mean.

But applying some sort of reverence to things just because they are traditional is absurd. Surely even they don't revere all traditions, so there must be some other criterion that is doing the actual work.

Saying that things that are traditional are more likely to be right is blatantly false anyway. Some of them may be right, others wrong, but just saying they are traditional is no substitute for investigation.

[notyoueither]

Radical change is not always a good thing.

Conservatism wants to maintain what works, not simply what is traditional.

[Agathon]

Conservatism wants to maintain what works, not simply what is traditional.

The problem with that is that it is a vacuous principle: apart from "destroy the earth" types everyone wants to maintain what works.

Conservatives would do better if they focused on a moral principle like personal autonomy, but the problem is that they don''t have a compelling conception of that.

[Agathon]

Again: "radical change is not always a good thing" – almost everyone agrees with that, even me.

[notyoueither]

Conservatism isn't wed to one ideology or another.

Conservatism is the anchor that stabalises society while others push here and there experimenting with this ism and that.

Conservatism seeks to preserve that which has proved worthwhile from previous revolutions.

[Lawrence of Arabia]

yeah, like the conservatives who wanted to keep slavery, because that 'worked' or the conservatives who wanted to keep segregation, because that 'worked' also

the path treaded by conservatives from the present to way back in time has always been littered with shame and racism. the future will be no different.

[notyoueither]

True, just as revolutionaries have done bad things and led people down some blind alleys, so conservatives have clung to some discredited ideas and institutions.

That does not mean that all revolutions are bad, nor that all institutions that conservatives cling to are bad things.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Lawrence of Arabia
yeah, like the conservatives who wanted to keep slavery, because that 'worked' or the conservatives who wanted to keep segregation, because that 'worked' also

the path treaded by conservatives from the present to way back in time has always been littered with shame and racism. the future will be no different.

The first racists were radicals, as were the first Nazis etc. Just because something is new doesn't make it good. Just because something is old doesn't make it wrong.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned


The case of Japan and China is a bit more problematic as it does appear that Japan was on the "march," aided and abetted by Britain. But the hostility between China and Japan was clearly stoked to a fever pitch by Versailles. (I just saw a movie, made in China, that covers the period from 1928-31. The movie depicted mass demonstrations against Japan in Manchuria and plots to assissinate Japanese officials, which were successful. I wouldn't be surprised at all that the events depicted were accurate.)

Yet again you substitute unsupported assertions for FACTS.


I'm getting tired of dealing with the misrepresentation by you of the conflict and continuing hostility between Japan and China as a nefarious British plot.


Aided and abetted ? The Japanese went to war against the German colonies in China and the Pacific on their own initiative- John Keegan in his book on WWI calls it a 'liberal interpretation' of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty.

On August 15th when Japan committed itself to the Allied cause, it had also to do with racial slurs from German observers during the Russo-Japanese War, but it was about acquiring resources for the growing Japanese empire.

President Yuan Shi-Kai of China:

" Japan is going to take advantage of this war to gain control of China."

Notice how he doesn't blame the British Empire for the coming Sino-Japanese conflict.

Japan also took the opportunity of WWI to impose the infamous Twenty One Demands on China :

" On 18 January 1915 the Japanese government secretly presented to its Chinese counterpart a list of twenty-one grievances of which it required immediate resolution, such resolution to be specified by the Japanese government upon pain of war.

In practical terms Japan was taking advantage of its wartime status as an Allied power to seek to extend its influence in the Pacific, chiefly at China's expense. It relied upon its status as an ally of Britain to reduce the likelihood of intervention from that quarter. Already by the time the Twenty-One Demands were published (click here to read a transcript) Japan had successfully invaded the German base at Tsingtao.

Among other grievances the Twenty-One Demands required that China immediately cease its practice of leasing out territory to foreign powers. Japan also demanded that it be given ascendancy over Manchuria and Shantung and that China accept so-called 'advisors' to assist with many aspects of government policy.

Having prevaricated, and in the wake of a revised set of demands published on 26 April 1915, China finally capitulated to a Japanese ultimatum of 7 May 1915 which threatened war in the absence of Chinese agreement. Thus on 8 May 1915 China reluctantly acquiesced to Japan, although Britain and the U.S. succeeded in removing the requirement for China to accept government advisors. The Chinese legislature did not however ratify the treaties signed between the two countries. "

http://www.firstworldwar.com/atoz/21demands.htm

Now let's see how Japan and China were getting on not long after the United States broke Japan's isolation:

in 1871 sailors from the Ryukyu Islands were murdered by indigenous Formosans/Taiwanese. The Japanese demanded reparation, and when this was not forthcoming, occupied Formosa/Taiwan. The Chinese acquiesced in the Japanese assumption of authority over not only Formosa/Taiwan, but also the Ryukyu Islands, which had previously traditionally sent envoys to pay tribute to the Chinese emperor.

China also had to pay an indemnity of 500 000 taels.

In 1878 the Ryukyu Islands were officially surrendered to Japan.


In 1874, Li Hung-chang commander of the Huai Army, advised the Dowager Empress Tz'u-Hsi:

" Although the various powers are strong, they are still seventy thousand li away from us, whereas Japan is near as in the courtyard, as on the threshold, and is prying into our emptiness and solitude. Undoubtedly she will become China's permanent and great anxiety."

Seems to me there's a Chinese army commander and a Chinese President who know things you don't....


Tz-u-Hsi on the first Sino-Japanese War, over Korea:

" Who would have anticipated that the dwarf men [the Japanese, in case you hadn't guessed] would have dared to force us into hostilities, and that since the beginning of summer they have invaded our tributary states (Korea) and destroyed our fleet ? "

Other pleasant Chinese terms for the Japanese had been 'dwarf barbarians' and 'robber pirates'- but of course that had been when there were powerful Chinese dynasties, and China could afford to act superior.


So happy were the Japanese to reverse the traditional relationship with China, that they actively humiliated China by accusing the first Chinese peace envoys of not havingsufficient importance or dignity- the ensuing Treaty of Shimonoseki was designed to humble China and exalt once despised Japan.


" Apr. 17, 1895, ending the First Sino-Japanese War. It was negotiated and signed by Ito Hirobumi for Japan and Li Hung-chang for China. Harsh terms were imposed on a badly defeated China. The treaty provided for the end of Chinese suzerainty over Korea, giving Korea independence, and for the cession to Japan of Taiwan, the Pescadores islands, and Port Arthur and the Liaodong peninsula. Japan also imposed a large indemnity and forced China to open five new treaty ports. A week after the treaty was signed, however, Russia, France, and Germany together—in the so-called Triple Intervention—demanded that Japan renounce claims to Port Arthur and the Liaodong peninsula. Japan reluctantly agreed (Nov., 1895), but China was forced to pay an additional indemnity. "

http://www.bartleby.com/65/sh/ShimonTr.html

No more 'robber pirate dwarf barbarians' .

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by Ned

No doubt there was inherent friction between German and Pole...

Gosh there's an understatement. Are you perhaps referring to the part the Prussian kingdom played in the Partitions of Poland, or perhaps to the aristocratic Germans and Prussian Junkers who kept vast estates on previously Polish territory, or on lands with majority Slav populations ?



" The Partitions of Poland: 1772 - 1795.

Taking advantage of a now weakened Poland, Prussia, Russia and Austria agreed to annex parts of the country in 1772. The Commonwealth lost 733,000 sq.km (23%) of her former territory and 4,500,000 of her population; Prussia took the smallest, but economically best, area; Austria took the most heavily populated areas, whilst Russia took the largest, but least important. To give the crime some legality the Sejm was forced to ratify the partition in 1773, despite the resistance of some Deputies, led by Tadeusz Rejtan.

[....]

Russian troops crossed the borders and war broke out. The King's nephew, Joseph Poniatowski and Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a veteran of the American War of Independence, put up heroic resistance but all hope faded away when the Prussians joined in, attacking the Polish armies in the rear. Many patriots were forced to flee.

In 1793 Russia and Prussia signed the Second Partition Treaty, seizing more than half the country and about four million more of the population. The last Sejm of the Commonwealth, which met at Grodno, was forced to legalise the partition and abolish most of the reforms of the "Great Sejm".

Eventually, in October, the combined strength of Russia and Prussia defeated Kosciuszko's forces at Maciejowice . "

http://www.kasprzyk.demon.co.uk/www/Decline.html

In WWI, the German Empire was awash with anti-Slav feeling- so much so, that a defeat of Russia was named after the famous victory over the Teutonic Knights by Polish-Lithuanian forces at Tannenberg.

Kaiser Wilhelm II:

" I hate the Slavs. I know it is a sin to do so. We ought not to hate anyone. But I can't help hating them."

& "...with the Slavs the procedure must be divide et impera."


Fear of Pan-Slav political movements and lurid fantasies of Slav hordes and Cossack murderers filled the yellow press and popular imagination in Germany and Austria-Hungary.


Nothing to do with Great Britain.


I've already dealt with Jewish-Arab relations in Ottoman Palestine- you've offered nothing to gainsay what I've mentioned, other than a vague assertion that the two groups got on well and both fought the Turks.


Again, with the Partition of India, you've simply ignored the realities of centuries of minority Muslim rule in northern India and Bengal or modern Bangla Desh.

Your solution seems to be one of simply ignoring the wishes of the substantial Muslim majority in those areas, and leaving them to whatever their fate might be under a majority Hindu dominated state.

Pakistanis of course view Partition rather differently in some respects:

" By the late 1930s, Jinnah, who had become leader of the Muslim League, was convinced that a partition of India along religious lines was the only way to preserve Muslim political power.

In 1940, the Muslim League adopted the 'Lahore Resolution' calling for separate autonomous states in majority-Muslim areas of northeastern and eastern India.

In 1946, violence between Hindus and Muslims broke out after Jinnah called for demonstrations opposing an interim Indian government in which Muslim power would be compromised.

The riots spread. In the first weeks of the uprising, more than 3,000 people were killed and thousands wounded. "

http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/9708/India97/pakistan/nation.builder/

Now, see how far we've travelled from your initial erroneous claim of Great Britain being solely responsible for those ethnic/religious/national conflicts.

Now it's the Treaty of Versailles and the League mandates 'exacerbating' existing conflicts. Oh, and in case you hadn't guessed, the British Empire didn't control the Allied treaty powers at Versailles, nor the League committees.

So, do you have any facts rather than gut feelings, premonitions or assumptions ?

'Cos I'm wearying of your instinctual Madame Arcati approach to history.