Lieberman offers clear assessment on Iraq

[Detroitdad]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

You must believe that the current suffering in sub-Saharan Africa is all becuase of former colonial overlords.

And to what do you attribute it? Cultural inferiority?

[BlueK]

Originally Posted by il Padrino Ute

What you say is true; perhaps it's because there are enough people volunteering for the military even today. Still, I still believe that we need to allow the military to make all the decisions in this war and for the politicians in DC to support those decisions.

A very good friend of mine is in the National Guard here in Utah and has been deployed and returned safely both times. His biggest complaint about what is happening over there is that the troops are not allowed to kill the enemy if the enemy shoots at them from a mosque, as school, a house or any place where collateral damage may occur. He has had friends injured of killed by snipers who shoot at them from mosques and unless that sniper comes out of the mosque under his own free will, they can't return fire. This is the result of politicians getting in the way.

The military wants more trained and committed soldiers. What they don't want is thousands of uncommitted untrained soldiers, which is what a draft would deliver to them. That's why they don't like the idea.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Detroitdad

And to what do you attribute it? Cultural inferiority?

I would not necessarily frame the question that way. But the lion's share of the explanation does lie with their culture. This inane question illustrates the primary thing I'm talking about. Thank you.

[creekster]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

You are inferring an overly simplistic viewpoint from what I wrote, and in doing so evincing the radical PC viewpoint of culteral and moral relativism that has come to infect our schools, and is one of the primary reasons for their decline. You must believe that the current suffering in sub-Saharan Africa is all becuase of former colonial overlords.

You should know me better than this. I am far from being radically PC about this topic. OTOH, I find your position offensive, as I think I have made clear. Do you think NONE of the suffering in sub-Saharan Africa results from Colonial influences? What does this have to do with your original ill-advised comment? Your primary defense, so far, has been to attempt to paint me as a radical PC freak. (I defy you to find direct evidence to support this position.) Otherwise, you fall back on the "life is so much better for these people now" position. That is poppycock, and so is your belief that aboriginal cultural values were intrinsically inferior, as Diamond's book showed.

[Detroitdad]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

I would not necessarily frame the question that way. But the lion's share of the explanation does lie with their culture. This inane question illustrates the primary thing I'm talking about. Thank you.

I like this style of thought. It casts aside any kind of empiricism for a value judgment on the one thing that can never be quantified: culture. It is a very convenient way to find logical consistency. And it is counterfactual. It can never be proven wrong or right. Nice.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by Detroitdad

I like this style of thought. It casts aside any kind of empiricism for a value judgment on the one thing that can never be quantified: culture. It is a very convenient way to find logical consistency. And it is counterfactual. It can never be proven wrong or right. Nice.

This is like hearing an incantation--you're repeating relativistic nonsense you heard someplace. It's dogma. Culture is not immune from empiricism, critique or value judgments just because radical-PC nuts say so. The reductio ad absurdum of your point is that you can't make a critical analysis of and value the relative benefits to their constituents of, say, a system of land barons and serfs vs. capitalism.

[SeattleUte]

Originally Posted by creekster

You should know me better than this. I am far from being radically PC about this topic. OTOH, I find your position offensive, as I think I have made clear. Do you think NONE of the suffering in sub-Saharan Africa results from Colonial influences? What does this have to do with your original ill-advised comment? Your primary defense, so far, has been to attempt to paint me as a radical PC freak. (I defy you to find direct evidence to support this position.) Otherwise, you fall back on the "life is so much better for these people now" position. That is poppycock, and so is your belief that aboriginal cultural values were intrinsically inferior, as Diamond's book showed.

This is actually a pretty good exchange despite your emotion. I don't think life is so much better for them. This is the insoluble dilemma I identified that caused you to take a swipe at me as attacking religion. I do believe most emphaticaly the world is better off in the macro because of the events I identified. As for Diamond, as you know, I'm a Diamond fan, but I don't agree he went as far as you claim. His hypothesis is that environment, not race or genes, is what gave rise to the great, wealthy civilizations. I don't disagree. I agree with him. But the nations with higher standards of living, less infant mortality, etc., are what they are largely because of culture, albeit culture that has been helped along and shaped decisively by environmental factors. We are to some extent arguing about semantics, but it's important to recognize that our culture has deliberately made taboo any use of of the word "culture" as short hand for the values and practices that indubitably shaped the course of history and distribution of wealth, health, etc.

[SeattleUte]

Moreover, I never said colonialism didn't do damage. It did. But to deomonstrate the overly-simplistic trap of laying everything at colonialism's feet as the utlimate bogeyman consider India. India is today ascendant as a world power, and a lot because of the language, legal system, political system, and education system, etc., that Great Britain left behind. These are defining aspects of British culture.

[SeattleUte]

I nominate this book for the next group read:

http://www.amazon.com/Dangerous-Know.../dp/158567835X

[Detroitdad]

Originally Posted by SeattleUte

This is like hearing an incantation--you're repeating relativistic nonsense you heard someplace. It's dogma. Culture is not immune from critique or value judgments just because radical-PC nuts say so. The reductio ad absurdum of your point is that you can't make a critical analysis of and value the relative benefits to their constituents of, say, a system of land barons and serfs vs. capitalism.

Which culture is best the Asante, Akan, Igbo, Baule, or Yoruba? I think that the Baule is 13% better than the others, because the per capita income of the group is %7 percent higher, and they have %3 percent better music, and there dancing is worth %2, and there fashion sense is %1 better.

Your example is more related to economics than culture, and in that case it makes a good explanatory variable. If you are serious about finding an answer to something you can look for it by doing sound analysis of economics, geography, history, and even sometimes as a last resort culture. But as a fallback variable it is pretty weak, especially in the instance of large scale problems. Africa presents an enormous problem for a cultural explanation, because it has not got anything like a monolithic culture, but has hundreds of ethnic groups. However, Africans did have a near universal experience in colonization. Which affected them in much the same way, was removed at the same time, etc. Certainly it would seem more logical to look at these events to try and find a root cause and a solution to the problems that plague the continent.