Originality Rating for this thread: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast) |
Interest Rating for this thread: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast) |
Scholarship/Prose Rating for this thread: 0.0/5 (0 votes cast) |
Mephistopheles
Filthy Animal
Post #54735
Joined: 09 Aug 2005
Posts: 1
Total Words: 455
Average words per post: 455
PoliMatch: n/a
  
    
|
Posted: Mon 2008-04-07 02:39
|
 |
| Politics: Oligarchical Collectivist |
Country: United States |
|
| Never Forget |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
|
|
Being the Star Trek fan I am, I was watching a Voyager episode where a memorial tower made people relive a massacre centuries past in the endeavor to never forget, and never repeat. The need to remember necessitates solemn vigilance against the dark forces of our nature.
I'm going to write up a post in the next week or so about the Holocaust. I will try to write it in a legalistic style, taking the prime points of each side, analyzing objectively both sides, and coming to a conclusion.
The Holocaust is not the only major genocide, as some people sometimes forget. Over the course of almost 200 years, American policy makers exterminated, brutalized, and forcibly exiled millions of Native Americans. It's that era of death many Americans are only barely aware of.
If you can think of events throughout history which resonate within you and make you want to honor the dead by encouraging us to remember, feel free to post within this topic.
_________________
Yippykiaye motherfucker. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
Comrade Aleks
Committee Leader
Post #54740
Joined: 22 Apr 2007
Posts: 635
Total Words: 75,423
Average words per post: 118.78
PoliMatch: n/a
    
|
|
Posted: Mon 2008-04-07 12:09
|
|
| Politics: Democratic Socialist |
Country: British Empire |
|
| |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
|
|
Firstly, that is a brilliant episode of Voyager among my favourites from the show.
But now to this dreadful buisness.
The Amritsar Massacre, perpetrated by us British in the months after World War One. A truly dark era of British Imperialism.
The Cambodian killing fileds, what they did there was utterly evil.
Rwanda. I do not think I need say more.
GDGB
Aleks
_________________
Vi Veri Vniversum Vivus Vici
| Sindark Nave wrote: |
I am extremely, awfully, dreadfully, eminently, exceedingly, exceptionally, extra, greatly, highly, most, notably, very strange, peculiar, odd, queer, outlandish, and eccentric. Salutations.
|
Economic Left/Right: -6.38
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.23
"To such devices have we descended"
A Handmaids Tale, by Margaret Atwood |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Ygeon
Committee Member
Post #54744
Joined: 10 Jul 2007
Posts: 421
Total Words: 39,238
Average words per post: 93.2
PoliMatch: n/a
|
|
Posted: Mon 2008-04-07 13:27
|
|
| Politics: Progressive |
Country: Netherlands |
|
| |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
|
|
| And then there's Darfur... and the great famine in the Ukraine when Stalin confiscated an entire year's harvest for export purposes. And the Cultural Revolution, and the Great Leap Forwards. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Tristan
Committee Leader
Post #54748
Joined: 14 Feb 2006
Posts: 553
Total Words: 124,320
Average words per post: 224.81
PoliMatch: n/a
|
|
Posted: Mon 2008-04-07 15:52
|
|
| Politics: Republican (U.S. Conservative) |
|
|
| |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
|
|
The moral quandary of the Native Americans is irreconcilable, because even though the beneficiaries and victims are alive, the perpetrators are dead.
- American Indians - Greatly harmed by past events, and deserve reparations.
- Modern Americans - Not at fault for past events, and do not deserve punishment.
There's no way around this, Meph. I wish we could do something, but we can't. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JD-sama
Minister of Truth
Post #54749
Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 2116
Total Words: 631,092
Average words per post: 298.25
PoliMatch: n/a
  
 
|
|
Posted: Mon 2008-04-07 16:34
|
|
| Politics: Communist |
Country: United Kingdom |
|
| |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
|
|
| Tristan wrote: |
The moral quandary of the Native Americans is irreconcilable, because even though the beneficiaries and victims are alive, the perpetrators are dead.
- American Indians - Greatly harmed by past events, and deserve reparations.
- Modern Americans - Not at fault for past events, and do not deserve punishment.
There's no way around this, Meph. I wish we could do something, but we can't. |
I'm not sure if we can really simplify the issue of reparations to this extent. The counter argument to yours is obviously that neither inheritence nor sale justify theft. When stolen goods or profits of crime are sold or inherited they are still regularly seized and returned in contemporary law enforcement.
The fact that we are detached from the crime by generations does not mean we have not profited from it through inheritence. Whilst we should certainly not be punished vicariously, the argument can be made that we have no claim to the profits of the crime and that reparations are simply the process of returning stolen goods to their original owner, or the inheritors thereof.
Now one can argue that the number of transactions the stolen property has been passed through and the important role it plays in numerous innocent lives makes any attempt at redistribution a form of punishment. This argument, however, seems a little weak in the light of gradual heavily distributed reparation programs where the additional tax burden would be easily manageable.
Of course, on the other hand one cannot simply go through history doling out reparations for every violation of property rights. Even though it is arguably the manifold property violations by nations of old which most markedly shape modern property distribution. All in all, treating property as a timeless right to be preserved sucks, but that's a contentious issue.
The hardline on either side of this debate seems a little hard to hold to me. After all it seems jolly convenient to simply have the winners define the start of justified law and resist any retroactive action; akin, perhaps, to stealing all one would have and then declaring that stealing is not acceptable. I suspect we have to take the case of reparations within capitalism on a case by case system, and the native americans strike me as having a rather strong case given the current wealth disparity.
_________________
"I wanted to know the world that was outside of the well.
So I tried hard to get out from the bottom of the well.
I wanted to know the world that was outside of the well.
So I climbed up numerous of times despite falling down over and over again.
But then I realized it.
The higher and higher I climb, the pain increases when I fall down again.
When my interest in the world outside of the well began to equal the amount of pain,
That was when I finally realized the meaning of the story to Der Froschkönig."
-Frederica Bernkastel |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
Azazel
Committee Leader
Post #54753
Joined: 23 Mar 2006
Posts: 588
Total Words: 151,590
Average words per post: 257.81
PoliMatch: n/a
|
|
Posted: Mon 2008-04-07 21:38
|
|
| Politics: Democratic Socialist |
Country: United States |
|
| |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
|
|
why "within capitalism", how would this not apply to other economic systems.
and who would get the reparations, if I'm 8% Indian do I get them? if I'm the, or if I'm just a kid who runs around and considers himself an Indian? I don't think you can do this just based on ethnic groups, its almost a certainty that some American Indians profited materially from "the white man" just as some Jews profited from the holocaust, any reparations would have to be issued on a case by case basis, which isn't really completely realistic or worthwhile.
_________________
"that doesn't make it right, just makes a whole lot of people wrong"-BSG
"Freedom is the freedom to say that 2+2 = 4 if that is granted, all else follows"-Orwell
Right and wrong are not concrete, rather they are relative to one's nature and nurture and fluctuate between each person.
"If you let him... he will broke your arm"-coach borris.
"We hold these truths to be self evident, to be sacred and undeniable, that all men are created equal." -older draft of constitution
I believe in reality..... if you believe in reality please put this in your signature |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JD-sama
Minister of Truth
Post #54757
Joined: 16 Jun 2004
Posts: 2116
Total Words: 631,092
Average words per post: 298.25
PoliMatch: n/a
|
|
Posted: Tue 2008-04-08 07:02
|
|
| Politics: Communist |
Country: United Kingdom |
|
| |
Post Rating: 0.0/4 (0 votes cast) |
|
|
| Azazel wrote: |
why "within capitalism", how would this not apply to other economic systems.
|
Reparations are obviously less appropriate in economic systems without an absolutist concept of property rights.
| Quote: |
and who would get the reparations, if I'm 8% Indian do I get them? if I'm the, or if I'm just a kid who runs around and considers himself an Indian? I don't think you can do this just based on ethnic groups, its almost a certainty that some American Indians profited materially from "the white man" just as some Jews profited from the holocaust, any reparations would have to be issued on a case by case basis, which isn't really completely realistic or worthwhile. |
This is the kind of consideration I was refering to when I spoke of taking reparation claims on a case by case basis. I would suggest that it isn't important to reimburse individuals who have succeeded in spite of an economic disadvantage, whilst this doesn't gel with strict property rights neither do I; as I said I find the hardline on this issue untenable.
Reparations should be issued on the basis of communities rather than individuals. Where an ethnic community can be shown to be suffering from poverty I don't think it is such a leap to tie relatively recent historical events to this state in many cases. We don't need to send a cheque to every vaguely native american person for reparations, there is however a good argument for funelling money into native american ghetto towns in reparation.
I consider this less a problem of shuffling the chips around to the right piles and more one of actually rectifying contemporary suffering and disadvantage caused by historical prejudice.
_________________
"I wanted to know the world that was outside of the well.
So I tried hard to get out from the bottom of the well.
I wanted to know the world that was outside of the well.
So I climbed up numerous of times despite falling down over and over again.
But then I realized it.
The higher and higher I climb, the pain increases when I fall down again.
When my interest in the world outside of the well began to equal the amount of pain,
That was when I finally realized the meaning of the story to Der Froschkönig."
-Frederica Bernkastel |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
You cannot post new topics in this forum
You cannot reply to topics in this forum
You cannot edit your posts in this forum
You cannot delete your posts in this forum
You cannot vote in polls in this forum
|
|
Search
Log in
FAQ
Usergroups
Memberlist
World War V
Medals
PoliMatch
Stats
