From: dk0a@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (DIMITRIOS KOUVATSOS)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.british
Subject: Re: Rule Britannia
Date: 6 Nov 92 03:46:54 GMT
Organization: Lehigh University

That is my last response on this thread for Mr. Patience and Mr. Cooke.

>> I'm surprised to hear that "everyone" complains that the UK is not a
>> democratic country! Did Major roll over the tanks to Number 10 last April,
>> or what? I'd suggest that, for whatever reasons, the Tories won the popular
>> vote. Simple arithmetic.
>
>You clearly know nothing of the British electoral system. The "whatever
>reasons" are that the result of the election does not represent the
>popular vote.

Simple Question: Did the Tories get more votes than Labour? Simple Answer:
Yes, therefore they have the right to govern. If you dispute the "yes", post
your numbers - if I am wrong, I would be interested to know. I am not going
to lose more time proving the obvious. The same goes for Mr. Cooke, too, who
says...

>No they didn't.  Simple arithmetic.

Case closed.

>Simon.
>
>--
>  Simon Patience
>
>  Open Software Foundation                      Phone: +33-76-63-48-72
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.................................
>   It appears that you have no understanding whatsoever of how the capitalist
>   system works. The UK, as well as the USA and the whole Britannic world,
>   swept to prosperity in the 18th and 19th century because it _created_ vast
>   new wealth that had never existed before - not because it stole it from
>   the underdeveloped societies of the Third World, which until recently had
>   never developed the cultural mindset necessary for prosperity - the spirit
>   of trade, maritime dominance, individualism.
>
>Say that to someone from India, Africa, or any of the other places we looted,
>and I'm sure you'll get a rather different view.  Britain made vast fortunes
>out of the slave trade, for instance.  And "maritime dominance"?  Do you
>*really* want a return to the time when we could bully nations by threatening
>them with gunboats?  When we could, and did, ruthlessly overthrow governments
>all over the world, purely for our own convenience?  Really!

I'd say that it's been almost half a century now since the British left India,
and they still sometimes burn widows at the stake - still have the notorious
"caste" system that makes the worst racist in the West appear humanitarian -
still they are underdeveloped there. And whatever enlightened and progressive
elements they have, such as being at least nominally a democracy and paying lip
service to the rule of law, can be traced to the influence of the British Raj.
Why do you think that China, which was not under Western rule, is actually
worse, a totalitarian state? Why is Japan modernized while China is not?
Because of its "opening" to the world by the Americans of admiral Perry in 1858
(Meiji restoration). Actually, Anglo-American influence has been civilizing. As
for slavery, Britain was the first state to abolish it in 1807 - but it is
still technically practiced in parts of the third world.

You also misunderstand the term "maritime dominance" - I meant it in the
commercial, entrepreneurial sense, not as an advocacy of gunboat diplomacy!
It would be really preposterous to accuse me, a non-British, of wanting to
re-establish British imperial rule... This hatred of the Victorians reminds
me of today's anti-Americanism - of poor souls accusing the US of every
conceivable problem they themselves brought on their heads. To sum up, my
point is clear - that the maritime, trading, individualistic spirit unleashed
man's creativity and ushered in the recognition of individual rights and the
rule of law and in prosperity of the English-speaking world first, later of
western Europe as a whole and even later of the Pacific Rim. This spirit was
first unleashed in ancient Athens, the first commercial-democratic-maritime
empire - and after the Renaissance it was first reborn in Britain. And _that_
is something the British ought to be proud of, not deride. The fact that they
do deride not their weaknesses and failings but what has been good in them is
but a manifestation of their historic decline.

That was all I had to say in the matter. Thank you.

>--
>        -- Chris.       cc@dcs.ed.ac.uk   (on Janet, cc@uk.ac.ed.dcs)

Dimitris Kouvatsos
-- 
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