A disgusting vat of filth that no self-respecting intelligent person would wade into.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Hank Chinaski
*it was fucked up for Ty to dismiss my "do you feel disenfranchised by the 2000 results" question. He is free to dismiss whatever he chooses to, but among the fellow travellers I am afraid he carries strong persuasive weight.

That was the point of that question? I responded to it but missed that.

S_A_M

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Spanky --

Riddle me this. If the key decision-makers with regard to Iraq really had and have all the information they need to do the rigth thing, how did it get so fucked up? What does that say about the performance of Bush and his senior staff, under your theory?

S_A_M

There have been continuing complaints from the folks on the ground that they weren't being listened to - the facts may well be there, smoldering in a file marked "I don't hear you".

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
We agree that having a shared language and ethnic background makes it more likely that people will conceive of themselves as a community. But what I'm saying is that this is not necessary or sufficient.

But why do they go to such drastic ends to form such communities. And why do they want their brethern over the border to be part of such communities?

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop After its time in the Twelve-Year Reich, Austria went back to being a separate country from Germany.

Austria was conquered and forcibly separated. Its separation was done at gun point.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
As we've said, Switzerland has been a nation for a long, long time with four languages. To some extent, the reasons will be specific to each country.

It is the exception not the rule. And Europe a very small exception. For every Swizerland there are ten Portugals.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop When borders change, sometimes it has to do with deals made between governments, but sometimes it reflects facts on the ground. Or both.

But every time the borders change they reflect ethnolinquistic lines more and more.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop I don't disagree that there are good reasons for political borders to mirror the distribution of ethnic groups and languages, but it's not inevitable.

It seemed that way in Europe. Over the years the map kept changing and time it changed it reflected ethnolinguistic borders more an more.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Nations arose in Europe. Where people see themselves as belonging to a national community, it's hard for other kinds of states to persist.

But why did this happen in Europe and not elsewhere?

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop In Asia and Africa, other conceptions of states persist. Maps of nations show borders. Maps of traditional Asian governments (e.g., Siam) show the hubs of power -- central and regional governments.

Political boundaries in much of the rest of the world reflect decisions made in Europe. Particularly in Africa, colonial boundaries did a poor job of fitting how people in those areas saw things. Not surprisingly, a lot of nations in Africa don't function particularly well.

As you say the lines of Africa, the Middle East and SouthEast Asia were drawn by colonial empire. Making them unnatural in my mind. In Subsaharan Africa, the ethnic nations (the tribes) are so small that becoming a nation is not really practical. But still, the tribes in each country fight with eachother. But in the Middle East and Central Asia the ethnic groups are much bigger, but where the colonial lines are drawn, the lines are not natural and will move towards the natual borders, ethnolinquistic borders.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop It's not just that borders shifted to mirror languages and ethnic groups. People change, too. I said above that elites in many countries started speaking the vernacular. With the development of various communications technologies, you have new reasons for people in a country to speak the same language. (Analogously, think of the way regional variations in American English have disappeared with the spread of TV.) So with industrialization, minor languages tend to die out.

Yes - I acknowledged this. Al this it true. But as I said, it only explains why languages congealed with in borders. It does not explain why borders were moved to reflect ethnolinguistic boundaries.

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop And then there are population movements. E.g., ethnic Germans all over Eastern Europe headed for Germany after WWII. People move constantly.

OK. Massive ethnic movements only happened after WWII. And these were mainly people were moved by Stalin. He moved them because he understood what I have been saying all a long. You can draw borders however you want but if they are not drawn along ethnolinguistic lines they are not stable borders. Stalin could have left the Germans in Pomerani and Silesia, and drawn the Polish border around them, but he realized that would create an unstable country. Pomerania and Silesia would push to rejoin Germany and leave Poland after the occupation was over. So Stalin ethnically cleansed those two areas and pushed all the Germans into what is present day Germany. 2.5 million people were forced at gun point to leae their homes and move hundred of miles into Germany. He did the same thing with Konigsberg (East Prussia). He knew if he left the Germans there they would want to rejoing Germany so he expelled them and pushed them into Germany. He replaced the Germans with ethnic Russians. What is ironic is that Kongisberg (now kalingrad) has put out feelers about rejoining Germany, but Germany does not want them because they are not ethnic Germans (if they were German you can bet your bottom dollar that they would want them back). He realized in order to move political boundaries and to make them stable, he had to move ethnolinguistic boundaries. He did the same thing with the Germans in Sudentenland. He moved all them all out of what became Czecholosovakia because he knew if he let them stay they would try and rejoin Germany again. At the end of the war, Austria was occupied. Part of the treaty that allowed the occupation of Austia to end was a promise that Austria would never rejoin Germany. The Allies were very worried Austria would want to rejoin Germany so they made sure it would never happen.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
But it's interesting, is it not, that Sikhs want a nation defined by religion, not ethnicity or language. Many Islamists feel the same way. And that would be the salient split in Northern Ireland.

yes it is interesting. And as I said these nations make more rational sense. People wanting to live with coreligionists so they can be with people with shared values. But these nations never last. Where the ethnic nations do.

Over time the ethnic nation form and congeal. But the regligous ones never make it. The Caliphate will never happen. Khalistan will never happen.

The only time a religious state can make it in the long term is when the religioius state is composed of only one ethnic group. But this is why I think Persia is doomed. Most of the people are Shia but only fifty percent are Persian. The non persian parts are going to split off.

[Cletus Miller]

Originally posted by Spanky
As you say the lines of Africa, the Middle East and SouthEast Asia were drawn by colonial empire. Making them unnatural in my mind. In Subsaharan Africa, the ethnic nations (the tribes) are so small that becoming a nation is not really practical. But still, the tribes in each country fight with eachother. But in the Middle East and Central Asia the ethnic groups are much bigger, but where the colonial lines are drawn, the lines are not natural and will move towards the natual borders, ethnolinquistic borders.

What about Central and South America (excluding Brazil)? There doesn't seem to be any movement toward those countries combining, notwithstanding speaking the same language and having (broadly) similar ethnic origins. Or do all countries in the Americas fall (generally) into you "mutts exception"?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Cletus Miller
S--

Don't you answer your own implied question--Why do people want to be governed by people who have the same native tongue?

No - because I don't know the answer except that people are natually bigoted.

Originally posted by Cletus Miller at the end of this post when you say: "It seems to be part of human nature to not trust someone whose native tongue is unintelligible to you or at least hard for you to understand."? Seems rational enough to me. If you don't speak/read the language of your government, then you don't know what your government is doing to you.

OK this is a good point. But the problem is in this day and age it is not a rational excuse. There are translators. Shouldnt you be more concerned with the form of government (Democratic, capitalistic, Socialist, Dictator), how the government treats you and what benefits you get from the government as opposed to what language they speak? And in Canada, the government speaks French also. It seems not so much if they can undestand the government, but they want the people in government to have the same native language. So your ruler just can't speak your language, he has to have the same native language you speak.

Originally posted by Cletus Miller How would you feel if the official language of California (or the US) was changed to Spanish, so that all government business was transacted in Spanish and all publications in Spanish only? I would feel excluded and if I were a part of a large community of English-speakers who couldn't get the Spanish-speaking government to accomodate us, I would want my own country with English as the language of the government.

I think to distill the issue it would be what if the California government was run by people whose native language was Spanish. They translated everything into English, and most of them spoke English, but their native language was spanish. Would I still object? I wouldn't care. If the native Spanish speakers were Republicans and the Democrats were native English speakers I would vote for the Republicans. But the kicker is, most people in the world are not that way. In Iraq the Kurds voted for Kurds no matter what their political persuasion. In Belgim the Walloons vote for Walloons. In most of the world people people choose who they vote for based more on their native language than on their political philosophy.

I think it is good that this country speaks one language. It is also good that the language is English because that is also the international language. So I would like to see English stay the language of the United States and would llike people who move here to learn it. But there is nothing special about English per se. If the national language of the United States were German, I wouldn't be that attached to it (or conversely if English was only spoken in England outside of the US) I wouldn't be that attached to it. But Spanish doesn't bother me that much because it is widely spoken throughout the world. So if we are going to be bilingual, Spanish would be the language at the top of my list.

If a bunch Ukrainians were moving here, and not learning the language and wanted to the US to become bilingual: Ukrainian and English, I would be throwing a huge hissy fit.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Secret_Agent_Man
Spanky --

Riddle me this. If the key decision-makers with regard to Iraq really had and have all the information they need to do the rigth thing, how did it get so fucked up? What does that say about the performance of Bush and his senior staff, under your theory?

S_A_M

You are assuming that what happened in Iraq was completely up to the administratoin. It could be possible that Bush did all the right things and things still turned out the way it did. Sometimes events are beyond your control. The only criticism I can see that could be valid is that we should have had more occupation troops. That is the only criticism that I have heard that if implemented, in my mind, could have made a difference. But having said that, from what I have read and heard, the Generals on the ground have gotten the troops they asked for. They were asked if they wanted more troops and they turned them down. In addition, I don't even know if the troops levels needed were ever politcally possible?

But this Iraq study group is a bunch of hot air. Nothing that they recommend, if implemented earlier, would have changed things. Of course that is just my lay opinion, but is there something besides higher troop levels that would have made things any different today?

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Cletus Miller
What about Central and South America (excluding Brazil)? There doesn't seem to be any movement toward those countries combining, notwithstanding speaking the same language and having (broadly) similar ethnic origins. Or do all countries in the Americas fall (generally) into you "mutts exception"?

That is a good point. I have often wondered why Spanish America has not united more, so I asked around and I think the probem is mainly racial bigotry. Argentinians are mostly of European Racial stock, so are the Costa Ricans. Mexicans are pretty mixed, but not as mixed as the countries on their Southern border. I think every Spanish speaking country in the Americas looks down their noses at every other Spanish speaking country that has people with more mixed Native American blood. At the bottom of the heap is Peru, where I believe the majority of the population does not speak English.

Simon Bolivar (and I think Martin) wanted a United States of Latin America but their dreams never came to pass. I think part of the problem is that until recently all these countries were controlled by dictators who would have all been happy to absorb their neighboring countries but were not going to give up their own.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Spanky
But why did this happen in Europe and not elsewhere?

I think I can tell you something about why it didn't happen in the Middle East.

Mobile populations is one reason. In the Middle East, the string of large empires made travel and migration easier (crossing borders is always a bitch and led to lots of no-mans lands full of danger), the society was less focused on a four season agrarian economy and had more nomadism (in large parts of the Middle East and North Africa, well into the 19th century), and the whole society was positioned as a way-station on major trade routes. all of this meant highly mobile populations. Casbahs developed in almost every city where people who originated in other major cities lived (so in Cairo there would be an Isanbul Casbah, a Baghdad Casbah, etc.).

In addition, the Middle East didn't have a "dark" or middle ages period where communications broke down almost completely and deeper localist identities developed. European nationalities are basically derived from old German or Celtic tribes who became isolated once they settled; the Turkic tribes that overcame the ancient Middle Eastern settlements were never so isolated (there's a brief period in Anatolia in the 12th and 13th century where the same kind of tribal developments start going on, but then Constantinople falls and the Ottomans reverse the trend).

Also, while multiple languages flourished in the Middle East, the tendancy was for each language to gain a function and for people to become multi-lingual. Thus, Persian literature flourished next to Arabic religion and Turkish governmental strictures. There was some of this in Europe with Latin, but I don't think it went as deeply into the population (which was, after all, a much less literate population until the very late Middle Ages).

I'm sure there are other distinctions, but everyplace has a unique history, and the European one focuses on the development of nationalism. I suspect there are also good reasons there weren't similar developments in China, though I don't know as much about East Asia.

[Spanky]

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy
I think I can tell you something about why it didn't happen in the Middle East.

Mobile populations is one reason. In the Middle East, the string of large empires made travel and migration easier (crossing borders is always a bitch and led to lots of no-mans lands full of danger), the society was less focused on a four season agrarian economy and had more nomadism (in large parts of the Middle East and North Africa, well into the 19th century), and the whole society was positioned as a way-station on major trade routes. all of this meant highly mobile populations. Casbahs developed in almost every city where people who originated in other major cities lived (so in Cairo there would be an Isanbul Casbah, a Baghdad Casbah, etc.).

Good point. I also think this helps explain why there are fewer languages in the middle east. Arabic, Persian and Turkish cover much larger areas than any European languages, and they have much less of the little langues (Czech, Hungarian, Slovenian etc).

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy In addition, the Middle East didn't have a "dark" or middle ages period where communications broke down almost completely and deeper localist identities developed. European nationalities are basically derived from old German or Celtic tribes who became isolated once they settled; the Turkic tribes that overcame the ancient Middle Eastern settlements were never so isolated (there's a brief period in Anatolia in the 12th and 13th century where the same kind of tribal developments start going on, but then Constantinople falls and the Ottomans reverse the trend).

That makes sense.

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy Also, while multiple languages flourished in the Middle East, the tendancy was for each language to gain a function and for people to become multi-lingual. Thus, Persian literature flourished next to Arabic religion and Turkish governmental strictures. There was some of this in Europe with Latin, but I don't think it went as deeply into the population (which was, after all, a much less literate population until the very late Middle Ages).

Good point.

Originally posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy I'm sure there are other distinctions, but everyplace has a unique history, and the European one focuses on the development of nationalism. I suspect there are also good reasons there weren't similar developments in China, though I don't know as much about East Asia.

I think the biggest reason why the nations of the middle East and central Asia do not follow ethnolinguisic lines is because, as Ty pointed out, Europeans drew the lines. But as you point out the languages were spread over a much larger areas and it is much easier to create a small ehthnically homogeneous state.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Spanky

....But in the Middle East and Central Asia the ethnic groups are much bigger, but where the colonial lines are drawn, the lines are not natural and will move towards the natual borders, ethnolinquistic borders. ...

OK. Massive ethnic movements only happened after WWII. ...

On the first point up there, I do think a lot of middle eastern boundaries have some relation to prior Ottoman boundaries, and are not like the African boundries, where basically they represent which colonial power got there first, or the American boundaries, where it's some combination of who got there first and how colonial powers like England and Spain divided up and ruled their colonies.

But the boundaries in Ottoman hands relate to how it was convienent for a central empire to rule, and that empire regularly moved tribes or people of specific ethnicities around to meet its own needs.

On the second point, there are lots of massive movements prior to WWII, ranging from the movement of Germans east in the 13th through 15th centuries, the movements that accompanied the Reformation, the settling of the pale in Ireland, movements of French or Germans into or out of Alsace-Lorain and movements of Germans and Danes into and out of Schlesswig-Holstein, etc. In the period before WWII in the 20th century, the Greek/Turkish/Armenian population moves and transfers were particularly notable.

But, there is an odd kind of stability that hangs over the core states of Europe for several centuries (right after the Reformation on), and it may be that stability that is unusual and gave birth to nationalism of the sort that prevails in the West today.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Spanky

I think the biggest reason why the nations of the middle East and central Asia do not follow ethnolinguisic lines is because, as Ty pointed out, Europeans drew the lines. But as you point out the languages were spread over a much larger areas and it is much easier to create a small ehthnically homogeneous state.

You get different results in your analysis if you start trying to explain nationalism as a particularist phenomenon that comes out of post-Reformation Europe rather than if you start trying to explain why others aren't nationalist, assuming nationalism to be some kind of norm.

We'll see what emerges, but I am not convinced that nationalism per se is the end game for every region of the earth.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally posted by Spanky
I think the biggest reason why the nations of the middle East and central Asia do not follow ethnolinguisic lines is because, as Ty pointed out, Europeans drew the lines. But as you point out the languages were spread over a much larger areas and it is much easier to create a small ehthnically homogeneous state.

Did boundaries in these areas follow ethno-linguistic lines before the Europeans came? I can't speak to India or East Asia with any authority, but in the Middle East I think the answer is sometimes, but probably not most of the time.

And remember, outside of Algeria and Israel, the Europeans never really settled anywhere in the Middle East; their influence on lines was really from the outside.

[Shape Shifter]

Originally posted by Spanky
You are assuming that what happened in Iraq was completely up to the administratoin. It could be possible that Bush did all the right things and things still turned out the way it did. Sometimes events are beyond your control. The only criticism I can see that could be valid is that we should have had more occupation troops. That is the only criticism that I have heard that if implemented, in my mind, could have made a difference. But having said that, from what I have read and heard, the Generals on the ground have gotten the troops they asked for. They were asked if they wanted more troops and they turned them down. In addition, I don't even know if the troops levels needed were ever politcally possible?

Iraq didn't fuck itself up.

And, as to the Generals, they learned very quickly that if they asked for more troops, they were shown the door because it didn't fit Rumsfeld's vision.

Iraq was a war of choice. You guys had all 3 branches of government, so stop pretending that Iraq "just happened". Take some responsibility.

[Secret_Agent_Man]

Originally posted by Shape Shifter
And, as to the Generals, they learned very quickly that if they asked for more troops, they were shown the door because it didn't fit Rumsfeld's vision.

There is a lot of truth to this.

S_A_M