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The Bastiat Collection · FREE PDF · FREE EPUB · PAPER Frédéric Bastiat (1801-1850)
- "When law and morality are in contradiction to each other, the citizen finds himself in the cruel alternative of either losing his moral sense, or of losing his respect for the law."
-- The Law (p. 54)- "Government is that great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else."
-- Government (p. 99)- "[W]ar is always begun in the interest of the few, and at the expense of the many."
-- Economic Sophisms - Second Series (p. 312)- "There are two principles that can never be reconciled - Liberty and Constraint."
-- Harmonies of Political Economy - Book One (p. 447)· tu ne cede malis sed contra audentior ito ·
Let me help you with comprehension.......
You claiming to speak for for hardworking white men and women pisses me off.
That is not "self hate" it's despising a mouthy young punk who has the audacity to try and speak for others.
Listen carefully..........You do not speak for me or anyone in my family........Got it?
Emm... who invented gunpowder and has that invention made much of a difference in history?
Is there a creation other than welfare that they are so proud of ?
Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.
Ron Paul 2004
Registered Ron Paul supporter # 2202
It's all about Freedom
中国人!"I'd ask you to go back through history and figure out, where are these contributions that have been made by these other categories of people that you're talking about..."
Stop believing stupid things
Hey ROL, I think you are making a logical error. You are confusing circumstances with genetic ability. Consider this:
Thucydides writes of ancient Greece: "...Lacedameon; for this city, though after the settlement of the Dorians, its present inhabitants, it suffered from factions for an unparalleled length of time, sitll at a very early period obtained good laws, and enjoyed a frreedom from tyrants which was unbroken; it has possessed the same for of government for more than four hundred years... and had thus been in a position to arrange the affairs of the other states."
What in the $#@! does Thucydides have to do with Steve King? I will tell you. First, Steve mentions "western civilisation" directly-- and where is one place that had a disproportionate influence on that civlization? Ancient Greece. Particularly Athens, of a certain period, beginning with Plato and diminishing after Aristotle(please correct me if I am wrong here). Plato writes of Socrates, who fought in what we refer to as the Peloponnese war. The history of which was written by Thucydides, and from that history is the above quote taken.
Anyone who claims that the Greece of antiquity has had little influence on western civilization ignores the hard fact that the Roman state religion was designed with repurposed Greek deities, who had themselves altered the Anatolian versions. Which, themselves, came mostly from the fertile crescent and even older Egypt. If you do not deny Ancient Romes influence on Western Civilization, then you cannot deny Greek influence. If you do not deny Greek influence, then you cannot deny Anatolian etc.
Now, more to the point and to address the quotation directly. What does Thucydides say? He says, in essence, that the strongest city state of ancient Greece became that way because, "from a very early period (it) obtained good laws..." My point about your mistake being political circumstances can repress or enhance the relative strength of a people. A place that has been restrained to brutal political circumstances for hundreds of years will be more stifled than a place that has not been so subjected. Depending on the nature of those circumstances that place will become culturally inferior. That isn't an indictment of the people, rather of their rulers.
So you may ask how many thousands of years... but you forget to consider that those millennia have been tainted by bad laws. Please don't forget that those laws can change.
Since the picture is of the Taj Mahal- India is a place that has languished under bad laws for a really long time. Castes? Untouchables? They exist in every society, but not so drastically as there.
Last edited by BV2; 07-23-2016 at 10:16 AM.
First, it's beyond question that the West has, to date, contributed more to civilization than any other culture.
But this is only a recent phenomenon; the West has only been most advanced in the last ~500 years. For most of history, the Middle Eastern, Indian and Chinese civilizations were more advanced. That, coupled with the enormous variation within Europe (some states being very sophisticated and others very primitive), makes nonsense of the racialist explanation you're implying. Race may have some effect, but it is clearly not the most important factor.
The behavior of the state is the most important factor. The more liberal the state, the more rapid the civilizing process. As Adam Smith said: "'Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism, but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice; all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things." This is universally true, no matter the racial composition of the population. Europe took the lead 500 years ago because its governments were relatively more liberal than governments elsewhere. This, in turn, was in large part the result of an historical accident: the collapse of the Roman Empire and its failure to be replaced with anything. Europe enjoyed more than a thousand years of extreme political fragmentation, which stimulates stronger economic competition among states and thus encourages liberal behavior.
The distribution of natural resources was also a major factor, prior to the emergence of large-scale global trade anyway. There's a very simple explanation for the extreme backwardness of aboriginal American civilizations compared to those of the Old World: the lack of good draft animals. No matter how brilliant or motivated the Aztecs were, there were no horses or oxen on their continent, which means dramatically lower economic output. Why civilization initially emerged where it did (Mesopotamia, the Indus River Valley, the Yellow River Valley, etc) can also largely be explained in these terms; those were areas with the best combinations of domesticable plants and animals.
Last edited by r3volution 3.0; 07-23-2016 at 11:35 AM.
There are plenty of Asians who have made contributions.
The thrust of what Steve King said might be unpalatable, but it isn't untrue. If you look at Nobel Prize winners in sciences Asians and whites dominate. Muslims and blacks have won almost zero. Almost all innovation comes from whites and Asians. That is a factually true statement.
The classical liberal thinkers whose ideas created modern civilization were almost exclusively white. Classical liberalism is what took humanity out of the Dark Ages.
Even someone like Martin Luther King , who indisputably made a contribution to civilization , fundamentally hated freedom and progress. It doesn't mean that all cultures don't contribute. Anyone working raises the standard of living for everyone else. It does, however, mean that the big picture philosophy and the major drivers of progress would not exist without whites. An easy thought experiment is pretend that all the countries with predominantly white populations do not exist? You of course are left exclusively with failing cultures. You would have Singapore, Hong Kong, and well.... that's it.
Last edited by Krugminator2; 07-23-2016 at 12:34 PM.
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