Healthcare Reform Thread II

[Drake Tungsten]

How is Nelson rationalizing this vote to the Nebraska press

Poorly.

[Drake Tungsten]

You know, I can't help but feel a sense of morbid fascination as I watch the death knell of American supremacy begin to toll. Sure, it's going to suck living through the aftermath of this, but it's somewhat amazing to watch a great power commit suicide. This must be what it felt like to be British a century ago.

[KrazyHorse]

The Brits didn't commit suicide.

[Drake Tungsten]

Of course they did. They spent decades overextending the empire and then embroiled themselves in World War I, maybe the best historical example of a civilization committing suicide.

[KrazyHorse]

With the exception of Ireland their empire didn't really start falling apart until the Japs hit them in 1941.

They picked up huge new areas to administer after WWI and even had legitimacy via the League of Nations.

The national independence movements that eventually sank the Empire were in no way attributable to WWI...

[Drake Tungsten]

England had already lost its place as the preeminent world power even before WWI, which hastened the decline and ended Britain's run as a first-rate power. The fact that the Empire managed to hold the wogs down for a few more decades doesn't change that fact.

[KrazyHorse]

Drake, the rise of the US relative to the Brits didn't mess with the Empire. The US was happy to have them play colonial lords, especially when this prevented Communist uprisings.

WWII and the rise of the Soviet Union as a world power was much more a proximate cause of the death of the Empire than is WWI and the general waning of Euro power relative to the US. I suppose you can make the case that the Bolshies wouldn't have come to power without WWI, but this is a bit stretched.

[KrazyHorse]

Seriously, I just don't see this at all.

WWI removed Germany as a serious colonial competitor, and weakened the French more than it did the Brits (in addition to cementing the Anglo-French alliance).

The US was still quite isolationist until WWII, and after WWII saw the importance of the Brits as a stopgap against the Communists toppling dominoes.

It's not the general weakening of the Brits from WWI that eventually caused them to lose their Empire. That came about due to external forces; the general rise of national consciousness throughout the third world, the rise of the Soviets, the growing moral discomfort in Britain itself with colonialism.

[Drake Tungsten]

Why are you so concerned with the Empire? I'm bemoaning American errors that are undermining our position as the dominant world power. Britain made comparable errors and fell from their dominant position long before the Empire actually collapsed. You seem to be confusing imperial reach with national power...

[KrazyHorse]

The British had no choice when it came to losing their preeminent place. WWI doesn't factor into it at all. An island with a quarter the population of the US (and declining) wasn't going to continue to be the global hyperpower.

[KrazyHorse]

Imagine if China had a comparable (or higher) GDP per person as the US, yet exerted no more influence relative to the US than it does currently. Is that a sustainable situation? Does the change coming to such a world's global order have anything to do with the US going to war in Iraq or passing health reform?

[Drake Tungsten]

The British had no choice when it came to losing their preeminent place.

Maybe not, but they could have delayed the inevitable if they hadn't been so concerned with the counter-productive expansion of their empire.

Imagine if China had a comparable (or higher) GDP per person as the US, yet exerted no more influence relative to the US than it does currently.

You should think about why the US and Germany surpassed Britain in terms of national wealth and industrial innovation and productivity. It wasn't solely due to the differences in population.

[KrazyHorse]

I really don't think so. The brits became hostages to global changes born of the growth of national consciousness, the rise of the US and the USSR and the ensuing ideological polarization, and the general spread of military knowledge and technology.

And, as I said, the growing sense that stomping around the globe was perhaps not right.

[Drake Tungsten]

I'll give you a hint...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Industrial_Revolution

[KrazyHorse]

Drake, I have no idea what you're trying to prove here. The rise of Germany and the US as industrial powers in the half century prior to WWI was somehow caused by WWI?