Re: THEORY: Languages divided by politics and religion

Jonathan Chang wrote:

>     Despite the optimism of my alternate reality, it is not based on
> idealistic fantasy, but on the historical factors which force both
> individuals & nation-states to make pragmatic (& possibly) progressive
> measures to ensure their self-identity & survival at any cost. "Ruthlessness"
> doesn't necessarily mean violence & reactionary conservativism -
Or violence and revolutionary leftist movements. Governmental regimes
have historically been most intensely violent and abusive when most
intensely idealistic, whether or not they have had a rightist or leftist bent.
(Hitler's Endlösung has been described as primarily driven by his own
personal twisted sense of idealism;  Mao's Cultural Revolution, which
ended even more lives, and his decision to simply ignore environmental
and population pressures 'because the Chinese people can always produce
themselves out of a problem' were similarly idealistic.)

Reading Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens' comments
on the inferiority of blacks or Supreme Court Chief Justice Roger Taney's
(/tAni/) view that 'no black man has rights that a white man is bound to respect'
seems to be rather ideal-driven to me.  (All horrific ideals, of course)

> a nation-state can be just as aggressive in more constructive means (i.e.
> sacrificing so-call "traditions" & "heritage" to match pace with other
> nation-states, or to bind warring factions or tribes within one's nation or
> to "out-do" other nation-states)
Yes, but such Realpolitik was beyond most of the Southern elites at the
time.  They were quite content to remain an economic backwater as
Jefferson's 'noble workers of the soil' while the rest of the world moved
forward.  The South only *began* modernization with the advent of the
Second World War, when the federal government was literally buying up
every product Northern factories could produce.  (To this day, many
areas of rural Mississippi, Alabama or Georgia resemble more closely
parts of Latin America in their level of economic development and
distribution of wealth than a first world country.)

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Tom Wier <artabanos@...>
"Cogito ergo sum, sed credo ergo ero."
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