From: matt@smoke.brl.mil (Matthew Rosenblatt)
Newsgroups: misc.legal
Subject: Re: Anti-Arab racism on the net
Summary: Good imperialism and bad imperialism.
Keywords: Act xxi of 1850 [the 'Lex Loci Act']
Date: 30 Sep 92 15:06:08 GMT
Organization: U.S. Army Ballistic Research Lab, APG MD.

In article <1992Sep24.193040.16030@Princeton.EDU> 
egnilges@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (Edward G. Nilges) writes:

>In article <19202@smoke.brl.mil> matt@smoke.brl.mil (Matthew Rosenblatt) 
>writes:

>>Unstated Minor Premise:  One should not be imperialistic.  
. . .
>>Where is Mr. Nilges's justification for this hidden minor premise,
>>according to which he presumes to tell me how to write my articles?
>>[Matt Rosenblatt]

>One set of justifications comes from G. E. Moore's Principia Ethica.
>Certain ethical propositions may be a priori true, either analyticially
>or synthetically; "it's good to be kind to others" may be either a
>rewording of "it's good to be good" (analytically true) or else a
>synthetic a priori analysis of the meaning of the term "good."

>On this account, "imperialism" refers essentially to something nasty,
>just as "racism" refers to bad behavior.  The word "imperialism" was
>devised to encapsulate bad national behavior.  [Ed Nilges]

I see.  Imperialism is bad because the people who coined the word,
"imperialism," intended it to "encapsulate" something bad.  So the
cloud over the origin of the term must cloud it forever.  Isn't that
the "genetic fallacy"?  I daresay the coiners of the term, "heresy,"
intended it to encapsulate something bad as well; does that mean that
heresy is essentially bad?

>Matt's trying a similar revisionist,
>language police type of game; he's trying to rehabilitate "imperialism."
>[Ed Nilges]

I agree with Mr. Nilges's assessment here.  I am saying that imperialism 
is not necessarily good, but it's not necessarily bad, either.

>>Consider that 
>>
>>   "the British Empire in India . . . governs, not indeed on
>>    the principle that no religion is true, but distinctly 
>>    on the principle that no native religion is true.  The
>>
>>[Matt Rosenblatt, quoting Sir James Fitzjames Stephen]

>This is indeed imperialism.  It is also simple-minded.  It rests on an
>overly black-and-white, fundamentalist and mechanistic vision of
>religions as falling into the "true" bin and the "false" bin.  [Ed Nilges]

Where a religion makes a factual claim, that claim is either true
or it is false.  The Moghuls governed India on the principle that
the claims of Islam are true -- all of them -- and the claims of
Hinduism, where they conflict with the claims of Islam, are false.
Here's Sir James again:

   "The Brahmins, it is said, being impressed with the importance
  of cattle to agriculture, taught people to regard the bull as a
  holy beast. . . ."
       -- Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, _Liberty, Equality, Fraternity_
          (Chicago: U. of Chicago Press, 1991; org. pub. by Smith,
          Elder, & Co., London, 1874), p. 142

Now, Sir James says that the Brahminee bull is regarded as holy
because the Brahmins were "impressed with the importance of cattle
to agriculture."  Is that true, or is it rather true that some god 
or other commanded the people to regard the bull as holy?  It makes
a difference:

 ". . . He must never be thwarted, even if he put his nose
  into a shop and ate the shopkeeper's grain.  He must never be
  killed, even in mercy to himself.  If he slips over a cliff 
  and breaks his bones and the vultures are picking out his eyes
  and boring holes between his ribs, he must be left to die.  In
  several Indian towns the British government has sent half the
  holy bulls to Mahommedan butchers, and the other half to draw
  commissariat wagons.  Many matters go better in consequence of
  this arrangement, and agriculture in particular goes no worse."  
  [_ibid._]

Would the British have done this if they had really believed that
a god declared the bull to be holy?  They governed according to 
what *they* believed, just as Antiochus Epiphanes governed the
Seleucid Empire, including Jerusalem, according to what *he* believed,
and just as Pontius Pilate -- whom Sir James praises as a good Roman
officer who did his duty when he had to -- governed Judea according
to what he believed.  That is imperialism.  The very same British
who brought Civilization to the Indian subcontinent with good
imperialism also brought tyranny and oppression to Zululand 
and Ireland with bad imperialism.  When imperialism stamps out
evil practices, it is good imperialism.  When imperialism substitutes
the imperialists' own evil practices for good native practices, it
is bad imperialism.

Good and evil exist independently of what men say and think.  "Nor
are they one thing among Men and another among Elves," as Tolkien
puts it.

>>     "(4) Whenever religious practices violate European ideas
>>    of public morality up to a certain point, they have, as
>>    in the cases of Suttee and human sacrifices, been punished
>>    as crimes.   [Matt Rosenblatt, quoting Sir James Fitzjames Stephen]

>...as opposed to the right and proper human sacrifice of Tommy Atkins in
>the Crimea, in the Sudan, in South Africa and on the Somme.  As opposed
>to the Victorian suttee of enforced inactivity and subordination which
>destroyed countless women including the first programmer, Countess Ada
>Lovelace.  [Ed Nilges]

This is hyperbole.  Suttee consisted in burning women alive.  If Mr. 
Nilges had compared Suttee to the European practice of burning "witches" 
alive, he would have been on target.  But it has always been human
nature to organize its societies in such a way as to subordinate women
to men, a practice in no way comparable to burning women alive.

>The English government was in India to shore up profits of
>British manufacturers and as the inheritor of the East India Company,
>and as part of the "great game" between England and Czarist Russia.
>[Ed Nilges]

Well, sure they were!  The very name, "British East India Company,"
gives the game away.  "Companies" exist to make a profit, and profit 
was what the whole project was about.  

>>*This*, my dear readers, is imperialism.  The real thing -- not
>>the mere politically incorrect bandying of words which a Herbert
>>Marcuse or a Stanley Fish would label "imperialism."  . . .
>>  Does anti-imperialism justify 
>>tolerating the tyranny of the Brahminee caste system?  How about 
>>Suttee -- the burning alive of a widow on her late husband's 
>>funeral pyre?   [Matt Rosenblatt]

>You badly need multicultural instruction, sonny boy.  [Ed Nilges]

There goes Mr. Nilges again, with the same condescending ageism
he displays toward Mr. Seth Breidbart.  Would Mr. Nilges like it 
if I were to call *him*, "sonny boy"?  

>It would teach you
>that you look at such customs as suttee and Thuggee through an
>ethnocentric lens.  [Ed Nilges]

No one needs to teach Matt Rosenblatt that he looks at the world
"through an ethnocentric lens."  Of course, I do!  And I make 
no attempt to hide it, either:  The word, "YIDDISHKEIT," appears
in capital letters in my signature.  The residents of India are
descendants of the same Noah whom the one and only Creator of the
World commanded, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his
blood be shed, for in the image of G-d made He man."  The prohibition
against murder is as valid on the Indian subcontinent as it is in the
heart of Rome or Baghdad or London; Indian men and women are made in 
the same image of G-d as Romans and Moghuls and Englishmen; and Suttee
and Thuggee desecrate that image.  What did the British imperialists
find when they took over India from the Moghul imperialists?

    "They found, as every one who has to do with legislation
   must find, that laws must be based on principles, and that
   it is impossible to lay down any principles of legislation
   at all unless you are prepared to say, I am right, and you
   are wrong, and your view shall give way to mine, quietly,
   gradually, and peaceable; but one of us two must rule and
   the other must obey, and I mean to rule."
       -- Stephen, _op. cit._, p. 90.

The British governed India on the principle that _sati_ ("Suttee") --
burning widows -- and _t.hagi:_ ("Thuggee") -- robbery and killing by 
Thugs -- are murder, pure and simple.  The British were right, and the
widow-burners and Thugs were wrong, and the view of the widow-burners
and Thugs gave way to the British view.  Is Mr. Nilges prepared to
argue that the British were wrong, and that the widow-burners and Thugs 
were right?  (Hint:  _t.hag_ is Hindi for "thief.")  Or is he prepared 
to argue that the British were right, but that they still, in the name
of anti-imperialism, were obligated to let these practices continue?
The Bible commands, "neither shalt thou stand idly by the blood of thy
neighbour."  Leviticus 19:16b.  It would have been unconscionable of
the British to tolerate Suttee and Thuggee.

>criticized by native Indians and Hindu scholars (and the greatest Hindu
>of them all, Ghandi, roundly condemned both suttee and the caste
>system.)    [Ed Nilges]

"Ghandi," huh?  Does Mr. Nilges's "multiculturalism" extend so far
as opening to the *first page* of Whitney's _Sanskrit Grammar_, where
it shows the different Devanagari characters for "g" and "gh," for
"d" and "dh"?

					-- Matt Rosenblatt
                                        (matt@amsaa.brl.mil)

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