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So I'm just a TV Junky who has never read firsthand the accounts of the massacres and justifications of both the assailant and the assaulted?
Sorry but I've done my share of writing with my History Degree. I'm not some spectator you choose to paint us as, only blindly accepting what is told to us by people who wish only to draw attention and conclude within the hour timeline. If you read what I wrote I agreed you have a very valid point concerning our economic "colonialism" which we use to indirectly control most of the world. My statements concerning the past events is attempting to draw you out to a point where you can show a past which was somehow more perfect, somehow more improved over our current situation.
We currently live in a Capatalist system which paralells, if not mirrors, the economic system which led countries to colonize much of the known world. So once again, you have a very valid point. However every economic system has always had a colonial-esque outcome, no matter what the origional philosophy was. Socialism/Communism engulfed much of Asia and Eastern Europe in a system much stricter and more controlling than European Colonialism. Feudalism merged military and church together to conquor and engulf neighboring territories.
All of these systems worked to expand and procreate their own systems. The only form of government/economics which would inherantly not spread itself would be complete Pacifism, however in order to survive that system would have a measure of control or influence over it's neighbors powerful enough to survive military measures and therefore have a muscle capable of defeating an invader (which contradicts itself).
If you want to discuss the means, ideologies, etc. which would cause a nation to conquor/colonize/etc than that is a completely different argument. You fail to realize I'm not simply saying, "it's all in the past, it has no relevance to the now." If I thought that, I would never have been able to justify an interest in studying History let alone major in it. What I'm saying is it IS in the past, and it DOES affect the present. However, feeling guilt for something we have never done, regardless of the situation we inherit, is pointless. All we can do from here on out is attempt to do right in the present.
It's that "what is right?" question that divides us and procreates the problems which we are discussing. It's never ending and who we think is right doesn't always win.
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"Smite the rocks with the rod of knowledge, and fountains of unstinted wealth will gush forth." - Ashbel Smith as he laid the first cornerstone of the University of Texas
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