From: hallam@zeus02.desy.de (Phill Hallam-Baker)
Subject: Re: Americans! *smile*
Reply-To: Hallam@zeus02.desy.de
Organization: Deutsches Elektronen Synchrotron, Experiment ZEUS bei HERA
Date: Fri, 2 Oct 1992 19:52:52 GMT

In article <1992Oct2.014002.23661@morrow.stanford.edu>,
silva@pangea.Stanford.EDU (Holly Silva) writes:

|>Hallam@zeus02.desy.de writes:

|>>Fact is that Le Penn in France is considered by the vast majority of French
|>>people to be an evil bigot. To judge France by Le Penn would be as monstrous
|>as
|>>judging the USA by David Duke or Perot.
|>>
|>	This comment is priceless. It beautifully illustrates the 
|>ignorance-masquerading-as-erudition that characterizes too many 
|>educated Europeans (and other first worlders) views of America, and
|>the American political scene. Little jug-ears Perot is quite a martinet,
|>but he's hardly comparable with former Grand Wizard, David Duke.

One is a fascist and the other a crook like his friend Nixon. Both are rather
fond of wrapping themselves in the flag.

|>	That you choose to group them together with French 
|>xenophobe Le Pen, without any distinction between them, suggests you've
|>been reading too many euro-socialist political tracts lately, in lieu 
|>of a balanced diet of both mainstream and off-center media. 

To quote the baird, there is no point in settling the precedence between a louse
and a flea.


|>
|>>|>	2) live in societies which only quite recently eschewed this
|>>|>	form of behavior: (Germany, Britain, Japan)
|>>
|>>The case of GB is quite different to what you claim. Fact is that GB gave up
|>on
|>>the out and out capitalist stuff in the 1850s and began pretending that it
|>was
|>>recreating the Roman Empire on a global scale. This is why I had to spend
|>four
|>>years learning Latin and Greek. By the 1930s this wasn't fooling anybody,
|>not
|>>even the British and the question was no longer "how can the empire be
|>>preserved" but "how can it be dismantled safely".
|>>
|>>
|>	There was a great deal of patriotic jingoism in Britain's 
|>quest for Empire well after the 1850's. The real blow to jingoism
|>didn't come until the First World War killed off nearly an entire
|>(male) generation of Britain's gentry class. Patriotism, in forms 
|>which would be considered embarrassingly gauche today, continued
|>to play a part in British politics well into the early 1960's. 

You are missing the point. I was not refering to patriotism per se but the
pretense that the administration of an empire was entirely altruistic.


|>	Patriotism, and honor were certainly _invoked_ by the 
|>British leadership during the Boer War, fifty years after the date
|>you cite above. It seems strange indeed that an anglo-South 
|>African like yourself would manage to forget this. Strange or
|>convienient.

I am not a South African, Nor were my ancestors.

|>	Do you consider South Africa to be a part of the modern
|>US neo-colonial empire, on the grounds that we helped your parents'
|>generation set up Apartheid in the '50's, or a part of the British
|>Empire, on the grounds that anglo-South Africans still benefit
|>greatly from the socio-political systems installed under Britain's
|>rule?

Yet again you seem to have this competitive attitude. As if somehow by finding
something that the country I was born in did which you can disapprove of you
invalidate my observations on US society. As it happens you chose the wrong
country. The only ancestors of mine that are known were either Scottish or
English from the 1070s onwards and before that Norman. Bad lot them Normans you
know.

--

Phill Hallam-Baker