Except for, maybe, the Romans in Judea, Stalin with his own people, and the Japanese in Manchuria, agreed.
1) Romans--killed dissidents, established tribute, installed provincial governors, and otherwise allowed the people to continue as they were. They offered citizenship as a rule after a certain period of assimilation.
2) Stalin--no argument there, but he was hardly
conquering territory that was already under his rule.
3) Japanese in Manchuria--they were bitter cruel, as I am aware. But consider their actions in Nanking--they randomly selected people from the populace and used them for bayonet practice, often (especially with the women) in some particularly insidious ways. This doesn't come anywhere close to what the Mongols, Assyrians, and Germans did:
4) Mongols--killed every last living thing when they took a city--all the human beings of any age whatsoever, the cats, dogs, rats, mice, sheep, cattle, birds, and anything else they could find. They razed the structures to the ground. They plundered everything of value. They salted the fields so they would no longer be fertile. They poisoned the water. They cut down or burned the forrests. They clogged the streams and rivers. When the Mongols were done, any place they conquered was a poisoned wasteland, incapable of supporting life for a century or two.
No one in history has ever gone quite that far.
5) Assyrians--did almost as much as the Mongols, but selected the fittest members of a populace as slaves, rather than kill them. They typically left agriculture intact.
6) Germans--systematically killed everyone of any race they considered to be inferior.
The thing these three have in common that no one else in history I'm aware of did is that they systematically and without remorse destroyed the people they conquered. It wasn't just that there was a brief period of barbarity from which you could hide if you were smart. When they conquered, they intentionally wiped out either everyone, or a given segment of a population.
Hitler addressed this point when he stated that the nations like the US and Britain show to much mercy, and that instead they must focus their energy. If the US and Britain had, Vietnam and India would still be colonies.
There were quite a number of other reasons that Britain lost India--and Vietnam was never an American colony. The legitimacy of either being there to begin with could easily be questioned.
I was saying the same thing for Lao Tzu and Shakespeare. Shakespeare will be celebrated for a long time after Lao is forgoten.
I seriously doubt that. Lao's work is probably known by a greater portion of mankind that is Shakespeare's. Any decent survey of world literature will include segments of both men's work. If you're relying on the chronology of the men in question to support you, note it simply doesn't work. More people have heard of Sophocles than of Arthur Machen, even though Arthur Machen was quite popular less than a century ago, whereas Homer was writing nearly 24 centuries ago.
This was in the same line of thought when you were talking about how great Lao was. Personally, I'll agree that many of his simplest, "purest" poems if you will, rival many of Shakespeares sonnets.
Not really the same at all. Take any emperor, king, or politician throughout history--their reputations fade as time goes by. It's not the same thing for those who contribute to the arts or to science. The only thing that diminishes or destroys their renown is a catastrophe (like a nuclear holocaust) or some other such event. Look at my handle and tell me honestly if, off the top of your head, you could tell me who Ashurbanipal was. He was a great man in his day, worthy of rememberance. But few today know of his exploits.
On the other hand, I would imagine you could tell me who Homer and Confucius were.
How many people know who Mozart was, but don't know who Joseph II was? How many could give a brief account of Geoffrey Chaucer and not of any of the Plantagenet kings? How many know a little of Beowulf, but nothing of king Hengst?
That's like saying if a 40 year old who hasn't excersized for 10 years tries to rob a 17 year old, and gets himself killed, it's the 17 year olds fault the old mans kids will suffer.
How is that, exactly? The fall of Rome was finally accomplished by the Germanic peoples. They then established a new political system and culture throughout Europe that was several centuries less advanced than what Rome had done. I say that argues against their absolute superiority (not that the Romans were necessarily superior either--they did lose). I don't see any connection to your analogy, but feel free to help me understand.
I apologize for any confusion. I was trying to point out that minorities, like blacks, have few avenues to money other than entertaining Aryans via Athletics, Music, or Drugs.
Well, I think experience has shown that given the opportunity, they do as well as white people at everything from Medicine to Engineering to Poetry.
Outnumbering them 10 to 1 and taking 4 years to beat them is not efficient.
We landed on Normandy in June of 1944 and Germany surrendered in May of 1945. So I don't know where the 4 years bit comes in. But there was a vast amount of territory involved, and physical limits to how fast an army could move over that terrain. So even though your defense is palid to begin with, it holds even less water than might appear.
So you admit the Jews were a seperate, richer group from the rest of the Germans? So you admit they never assimilated, but remained a inclusive group among themselves? The reason I say this is evident in one Hitler quote:"When I saw him, I asked myself, is this a person? My next question immediately was, is this a German?" The answer should be evident.
First--you get the quote from Hitler wrong. He asked first if this was a German, and then asked if this was a human being.
Second--I assume you're talking to GySgt?
Third--There's quite a lot of evidence that Jews were well integrated into European communities prior to Krystalnacht.
Agreed. And it is also a widely known theory that the American Empires control might have crested when this assimilation took place. We won in WWII. We have 55,000 names on a wall from Vietnam.
1) I don't see any plausible causal chain here. America was quite open comparatively, except to African Americans in the Old South, well before World War II. It was one of the few countries in the world where Catholics and Protestants and Jews could get along. Since history shows that diversity and tolerance do not inspire weakness, whereas Xenophobia has its attendant dangers, I just don't see your point.
2) You seem, from the rest of your post, to be down on Israel for their treatment of the Palestinians. I happen to agree that they've gone way too far, and that there is justification for the Palestinians to fight back in whatever way they can. But you're making the mistake of confusing Jews on the whole and Israeli politicians. Quite a few Jews do not countenance what is being done to the Palestinians, and I think quite a few more would not if they knew the truth. Similarly, it's hardly an indictment of me as an American that the infamous Nigerian Yellowcake documents were forged. That's an indictment of the people who knew it and went to war anyway, and those who know it now but continue to support the war.
I believe you mean it the other way around. Rome didn't really assimilate anyone unless they had first destroyed you Empire, Leveled your city, and taken the young as slaves. Then, maybe your right.
There's a very long list of cities throughout Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East that the Romans conquered but did not destroy. There's a much longer list of cities the Romans built or improved in the conquered territories. There's also a fairly long list (at least if Monty Python is to be believed) of improvements they weren't stingy with--Aquaducts, Medicine, Roads, closed sewers, education, etc.
You're going to have to explain this, what are you refering to?
