Yes, I do. I don’t acknowledge ancestral guilt, it’s a foolish and destructive notion. Nor do I think anyone deserves credit for anything an ancestor did.
If they were, they were.
No, I just don’t care. And if the truth is insulting, too bad; you shouldn’t make that kind of emotional investment in the moral stature of people you have no influence over.
The vast, vast majority of them weren’t, though.
How in the world do you know that about my ancestors? I don’t know that about them.
Come on now. This is a pretty weak argument.
It didn’t exist as a sovereign political entity for about 800 years because the hated English had their foot firmly pressed against their neck. Regardless of its political status, the entire island of Ireland shared a common, indigenous culture and language prior to and during that time, such that it was perfectly reasonable to speak of it as a single nation, if not a nation-state.
Sovereign poltical status is hardly the only, or even the most, important chracteristic that defines a nation. If that were not so, then how, for example, do you explain the resiliency of both the Greek and Bulgarian nations, which had no sovereign status for approximately 600 and 500 years?
Right. Got it. 19th century European imperialists were the meanest and badest sons of bitches ever to have graced the face of the Earth. So perhaps it was the golden age after all. Perhaps in a thousand years people will talk about Queen Victoria with awe and amazement like people today speak of Alexander the Great, Cesar, Attila the Hun or Djengis Khan and people in England will fondly remember their illustrious forefathers like Scandinavians today like to remember their Viking forebears. And when you consider it, then it is a marvelous accomplishment that such a little area of the globe could rise to such superiority over the rest, as to be able to overpower hundred times their own numbers with such ease.
No; they just aren’t morally superior like their defenders are claiming.
Is the triumph of evil a golden age? The death of millions and the destruction of whole cultures?
No doubt; the veneration of monstrous ancestors is common. That makes them no less monstrous. I rather doubt that the descendants of their victims will agree.
Better weapons and organization will do that. And resources, once they got the ball rolling. Was it a “marvelous accomplishment” that the Nazis did so much damage when outnumbered? And if what the Nazis did wasn’t worthy of admiration, then in what way are the atrocities of the European empires worthy of admiration? If killing entire populations of American Indians, exterminating all of the Tasmanians and enslaving millions of blacks is “marvelous”, then do you think killing millions of Jews in concentration camps is marvelous too?
All this talk of morals and ethics make me dizzy.
Sucks for them. However I’m a cold and callous man and can’t really agitate myself on behalf of the 40,000 Spanish virgins carried away to Damascus by Arab imperialist or the thousands of captive Bulgarians blinded by Roman soldiers, the millions of people slaughtered by Djengish Kahn and other Mongolian imperialists, the hundreds of thousands of Russians captured by Tartar slave-raiders and sent to Turkish brothels or chained to the oars of Turkish galleys until tossed overboard or any of the other billions of people killed by various imperialists, or even to my own grand-grand-grand…mother carried away to miserable slavery on North Atlantic islands by Viking marauders, and whose presence I can see every day in the mirror in my reddish beard. Of course bloody murder is common to all men and all cultures. What Europeans brought to the table in the form of artistic and scientific accomplishments is not.
The military accomplishments of the Wehrmacht and the courage of the individual soldiers were indeed stunning. I’m sure the Germans given time will come to value this and feel proud for it.
Well, too bad. Such things are an important part of the question.
And all the people who did those things were monsters. And nothing else they ever did could make up for that.
You do demonstrate that the only way to admire the “glories” of those empires and conquerors is to simply ignore the cruelty and death and misery they were built on. Which makes that admiration worthless, not to mention sociopathic.
Not on such a scale. And at any rate, “everybody does it” is the kind of lame excuse a child makes.
So what? An interest in science doesn’t make up for their atrocities; are you going to try to excuse Mengele next? And considering the effort the imperial era Europeans went to to destroy other cultures, their cultural contribution is a net negative.
I hope not. They fought for an evil cause, and should never be regarded with anything but loathing.
Not here, they didn’t. It was a straight-up land grab to build a resupply station for the India run. The locals were just an obstacle to the Dutch. Sure, they passed them some pretty beads for sheep, but that was completely incidental.
I’ve previously dealt with the other neocolonialist crap you spew in the Pit, at length.
The ancients are dead. They only live on in memory to serve the interests of the living. Mainly to make good stories. The 19th century European imperialists and colonizers were good for a number of such stories.
Only for the lack of ability. You loathe everybody then.
All your attention to the Nazis speaks of a certain fascination. However I make excuses for no one. I do however find great merit in for example Aristotle, Plato, Socrates, Thuycydides, Pericles, etc. and the culture that produced them despite the fact that the Athenians were a rather vicious lot and quite unapologetic imperialistic, and colonizers too. I am also perfectly able to admire the courage of Spartan soldiers despite their vicious generational suppression of the Helots. They sure knew how to kick Persian ass. I also find much to admire in audacity and sheer arrogance of Spanish conquistadors sailing away in small boats, a few hundred people, to conquer whole empires. The British by comparison were much less interesting, but they did give us industrialization and modern society.
Most soldiers everywhere, fight merely for their comrades in arms.
Nonsense. Some cultures are far less violent, and some are far less interested in expansionism than others. By your bizarre logic present day Germany is just as brutal as Nazi Germany. In order to defend the indefensible, you are denying that there are any differences, any standards of judgment, not to mention history.
The Nazis are a useful meterstick. I notice that you carefully ignored my comparison of the extermination of the Jews to the various campaigns of genocide by the old time imperialists; don’t want to admit that you are defending the same kind of behavior? And yes, you are making excuses for these people.
Are you suggesting that the borders of modern-day Greece and Bulgaria are the same as their borders were 800 years ago?
Well they need to adopt the Euro and I’d be fine with that, once safe guards remain in place that stop things becoming a repeat of '20s-'70s. I’m not an unreasonable guy. 
Well, that’s the rub, isn’t it? Safeguards like that are hard to design.
Riiiiight. Once again, you’re displaying the nuanced debating skills for which you are well-renowned, DT.
No difference at all in the level of moral culpability between, for example, a pilot flying to prevent civilians from being crushed to death and incinerated alive and a probable clinical psychopath who personally raped, tortured, and murdered his way across Eastern Europe. Whatever you say.:rolleyes:
Irrelevant. Are you suggesting that the Irish nation is not more well-defined than either of those examples?
Present day Germany is an extension of the Germany that existed in the 30s and 40s, but if it is a different people and culture than the previous Nazi one, then it is a pitiful few decades old. Give it a few centuries and then we’ll see if they won’t come up with a few bloody incidents. Besides the majority of Europe wasn’t involved in the colonization and the majority of the people of the colonizing nations weren’t involved either. Denmark only ever had two miserable small islands in the Caribbean and Greenland, which we’re still stuck with and all in all has turned out to be a very bad financial investment. I expect Germans and people in general in a few hundred years will look back on the Nazis with a morbid fascination, and – for Germans - not without a certain pride too, like Romanians today do about Vlad the Impaler, or Crassus’ crucifixion of the remains of Spartacus’ army. And make Nazi adventures like we have the Dracula story. It’s human nature. Except, the thing about the Nazis, is that what they did was too impersonal. It’s hard to find a single person to identify with. Why don’t you suggest yourself a great and admirable nation in history, then we’ll see how it stands?
The Nazis are not a very good meterstick (is that a word you just made up? I’ve only heard yardstick) because it is too close and because you use it as a mythological stand in for Satan. How about we use the imperialistic Umayyad Empire as a comparison instead? Would you say, a piece of shit culture whose scientific and artistic productions is made irrelevant by its imperialistic behavior, its many wars and the widespread slavery, and best compared to the Nazi extermination of the Jews?
Well the British government subsidised the Northern Irish state even when it was clear of the inequality inherent in it, so tying human rights to the cheques they sign is probably enough. Anyway, with the Good Friday Agreement etc. I doubt things would ever get as bad as they were.
Certainly I am. Were you under the impression that Ireland was one big political entity prior to English occupation?
:smack: Of course, not. That’s why I differentiated between nation and nation-state.