Comments on: Ron Paul & Dennis Kucinich Way Ahead for Reelection

By: 37767ab0313c

37767ab0313c — Mon, 12 May 2008 20:33:50 +0000

37767ab0313c…

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By: Eugene Costa

Eugene Costa — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 22:30:43 +0000

Once again we disagree. You have “rules of empire”, which indeed may be plausible in some contexts, mostly modern, and indeed where people are already thinking in your terms.

My point is simple–the ultimate model, the Roman imperium, is atypical.

One of these days, for example, we’ll have to go at “boundaries”.

In reqard to “Rome”, there were in fact a number of very distinct and different types.

By: bread&circuses

bread&circuses — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 21:55:03 +0000

Eugene,

You are hung up on a comparison between the U.S. and the Roman Empire, which is to miss the point: groups with a high capacity for concerted collective action arise on metaethnic frontiers, or fault lines between two metaethnic groups. These are places where competition between different ethnic groups is intense.

When imperial boundaries coincide with one of these fault lines, they give rise to empires, defined as a large, multiethnic territorial state. These multiethnic frontiers are an important factor in their development.

The Indian-settler conflict that lasted from 1622 to 1890 in N. America, as Turchin details, was intense. It certainly qualifies as a metaethnic frontier.

I haven’t read the Nash book. I’ll have to put it on the list.

By: brad smith

brad smith — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 16:57:02 +0000

I agree good stuff from Eugene and bread. But don’t worry about John he already knows it all, just ask him he will tell ya (in big $50 words).

By: Dave Libori

Dave Libori — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 16:01:03 +0000

My thanks to Eugene Costa and bread&circuses for the interesting and enlightening dialogue about colonization and the fate of empire.
Maybe even AIPAC frontman John Lowell can learn from this.

By: Eugene Costa

Eugene Costa — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 09:20:29 +0000

Si. (jeje).

By: John Lowell

John Lowell — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 09:04:29 +0000

Ah, yes, Eugene Costa. Thank you for these further elucidations. Be on your guard, however, as some here can’t manage the challenge involved with words of greater than, say, three or four letters and have, in fact, so acknowleged publically. I’m afraid they’d be eclipsed should you go on. :-)

By: Eugene Costa

Eugene Costa — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 07:30:41 +0000

“Smiggen” is hilarious, and nicely pointed. “Smiggin holes” in New south Wales is also pertinent, from the Scottish “smiggin”, which also relates, as you surely know, in the way of a smirk.

Were they perhaps Picts or just sweeps?

Such curious, criminally misspelled surnames–O tempora! O mores!

By: Eugene Costa

Eugene Costa — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 07:14:23 +0000

I am not sure my latest addition is in the right box, bread&circuses, check below if it is not.

By: Eugene Costa

Eugene Costa — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 07:12:31 +0000

Not pertinent as a comparative case save in establishing exactly the distinctions from that of the founding of Rome I have suggested.

Jamestown is irrelevant.

As for Plymouth, it was a much different situation. Most of the Massachusetts native peoples had died from small pox left by a previous excursion by Sir George Fernando Gorges and the area was largely depopulated.

The only real question was whether Gorges’s gift was deliberate germ warfare.

At any rate, the colonists in Massachusetts early assumed the character of just another tribe but with an overseas support system and an orientation toward the colonizer, as the Dutch in New Amsterdam, for example, who allied immediately with the Iroquois.

So also with the French in Canada, and not even to mention the Spanish colonizers who were already in what later became the United States long before that mythic “New England” first Thanksgiving.

The analogy here is not with early Rome, but with some of the early Greek overseas colonies in Italy, Sicily, Spain, Africa, and better yet on the Black Sea.

Have you read Gary B. Nash’s Red, White,and Black: The Peoples of Early North America by the way?

Some very interesting and original observations.

By: brad smith

brad smith — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 04:16:09 +0000

Sounds like John is off his meds again.

By: Fascist Nation

Fascist Nation — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 03:14:51 +0000

I wouldn’t trust good news until the election results come in and are final March 5th. The bad guys count the votes. And clearly they have been under counting Paul in virtually all states. Even when someone screws up as in Alaska, they can respond very quickly and fix the results.