For context, Franklin had already been in Britain for 13 years by this point trying to lobby Parliament and the King about various grievances with the Crown's governance over the colonies. He would spend another 2 years trying in vain to get them to listen, before finally sailing back to America in March 1775.
That is a far more severe problem than 99% of the public realize. It is like light outside the visible spectrum, or bacteria and viruses, before we had tools to see them.
While we can detect them, unless somebody has a huge sudden exposure, so that they have clearly attributable symptoms, smaller effects can only - badly - attributed statistically, for populations. Badly, because what exactly do you measure? It's not like you get numbers naturally. More aggression, less brain-ability in general, the measurements used even for the statistical analysis is hard.
Long-term slow exposure always correlates with age, so problems can easily be attributed to "aging" instead. And of course stress. And "it's all in your head" - which funnily (or unfunnily) enough is true!
> That said, Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus without congressional approval, imprisoned political opponents, imprisoned journalists, conducted military trials against civilians, made extensive use of rule by executive decree, and initiated the only Civil War on American soil in history, (...)
I'm not from the US but even to me this reads like a highly disingenuous and outright blatantly manipulated take on history.
As others mentioned, Lincoln did not started the war. Also, Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus while the US civil war ravaged, and was specifically targeted at the riots in Baltimore that were preventing Washington from being reinforced by rail.
The people targeted by the suspension of Habeas Corpus were actively collaborating with rebels and participating in sabotaging the union's effort to defend Washington.
Why did you chose to leave this sort of detail out? Was it out of ignorance or to purposely push propaganda? I mean, your comment doesn't even pass off as revisionism.
There has been almost a concerted effort across the entirety of the West, to denigrate and destroy any historical figure of positive note. The reasons are myriad, but to destroy a powerful foe, weakening them before battle, is far better than on the battlefield.
And each thread of that foe's culture, is part of the tapestry that binds the society together. Break one thread here, another there, and soon it all falls to tatters. Soon there's not a unified people or a shared belief, the nation looses its hood.
But what many of the West's foes don't realise, is that all the blather on TikTok, all the influence they muster, is against not a highly controlled society like China, or one with an iron grip like Russia, or the religiously controlled Iran, but instead the West. Even the most controlled Western society is a collection of individualists.
Of all these, the US takes this to the most extreme.
So when China plots, Russia wheedles, Iran meddles, their myopic mentalities force their worldviews to plot upon what they know. What they fear. And they fear a loss of centralized control and thought.
It just cracks me up. Do they envision the clutching of pearls? Do they think their meddling matters? Oh no!! Look, behold, they're preaching independent ideas, non-sanctioned thought to the world's largest collection of individualists! What a joke. The buffoonery is a joy to behold. All this meddling, spewing of nonsense history is their waste.
So break the threads, I say. Give it a go. You're not even working on the right tapestry!
> responded by having him arrested on grounds of making anti-war speeches, tried him in a military tribunal despite Vallandigham being a civilian, and sentenced him to imprisonment, before Lincoln commuted the sentence to banish Vallandigham to the Confederacy)
You know what? I was interpreting the question as regarding public perception of personality, rather than actual personality, but re-reading it, I think you're right, my bad.
There only ever exists the public perception of personality. From the inside you just observe a stream of events. So you're not conflating and they're not funny.
Your so-called "deadliest conflict in American History" was just a blip in demographics of WASPs, whereas Native Americans have been almost exterminated and Black Slaves have died by the millions.
Breaking rules isn't bad; it's just hard to do successfully. Lincoln did it successfully, evidenced by the lack of people who sympathize with your complaints.
So just to be clear, your take here is that the president violating the constitution isn't bad as long as the president feels that the ends justify the means?
The "rules" - the constitution, the law - must apply to everyone equally, otherwise it loses legitimacy.
If Trump believes that the means of deporting US citizens to CECOT without a trial (unconstitutional) is justified by his end goals, does that make him right to circumvent the judicial system, violating the laws established by the legislature in the process?
The system of checks and balances exists for a reason. It sets a dangerous precedent when any president treads astray of those constitutional guardrails, no matter what party, no matter what policy, because it empowers future presidents to do the same.
Maybe if more people did sympathize with these values, we wouldn't have the president shipping American citizens to prisons overseas without trial.
try telling Sojourner Truth or Harriet Tubman that the constitution and rule of law applied to everyone equally.
Trump is making things worse by instituting oppression - Lincoln was making things better by dismantling institutionalized oppression. Trump is committing acts of racism, Lincoln was preventing acts of racism. It’s not the same thing.
The president - and any moral person - is absolutely honor-bound to break the rules, when the rules themselves are unethical, when the rules enforce mistreating others, and protect the perpetrators of injustice.
"Law" is a silly word to describe the regulation a legislative body puts to paper, in my opinion we should stop using it like that.
Here's some laws:
In an isolated system, entropy increases.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted.
An object at rest remains at rest unless it's acted upon by outside forces.
Law is a great word to describe these things. They're immutable facts of the universe.
Now here's some things humans call "laws":
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
> No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Well that's just orders of magnitude difference in scope! How can we use the same word to describe immutable facts of the universe as we do to describe how we think people should behave in order to create the kind of society we believe we want to live in? We can't even say for certain that perfect adherence to those "laws" would create that society we want to live in nor can we agree what that society should look like!
Not to mention these "laws" are easily violated, and sometimes it's good to do so, as when Lincoln did so in his fight against slavery and to maintain the State.
I think it's silly to pretend human law is law. Step into any courtroom and watch your law and due process at work - the overwhelmed court system plays so fast and loose and the results of any given case are so dependent upon the judge and their mood at the moment you'll be sick!
Trump violates due process, yes indeed, but due process barely ever existed in America. The same country that secretly infected black soldiers with veneral diseases, bombed its own citizens, threw Asian Americans indiscriminately into concentration camps, that country has "due process?" The same country where cops gun down unarmed civilians, or if you're lucky merely extrajudicially beat the shit out of you, that country has due process?
It's the same in every State throughout all of history. Laws are never laws, they're regulations applied when convenient to serve the needs of the State or those in power. When a law doesn't serve the needs of the State or its bureaucrats, even if its enforcement would benefit the people, the law is ignored or "temporarily suspended." Trump just does this quiet thing out loud.
The word "law" is used to trick people into thinking that these rules are as immutable as the first law of thermodynamics, when in reality the ones who write the laws and ostensibly enforce them flaunt them at every turn. I've just read a story about a USA politician who modified an age of consent "law" when it was being used to convict his cousin who was on trial for raping a child. Now the cousin gets off with time served and community service. Now that's a "law" alright!
> "Law" is a silly word to describe the regulation a legislative body puts to paper, in my opinion we should stop using it like that.
I understand where you are coming from, but you've got it backwards. Natural sciences adopted the word "law" to describe some "immutable" principles (that's obviously a descriptive use, ie. our descriptions of our understanding of some observations).
The word "law" comes from moral philosophy ("what is right?" and "what should we do?") and jurisprudence ("what is law?" and "what should be law?") of the ancient Romans ("lex") and is deeply rooted in the idea of norms (as in "normative", ie. that's how it should be) we, as humans, set for ourselves. Thus it is not silly to describe a regulation a legislative body puts to paper as law. That's what it means.
Note, I'm not saying you are wrong. It's just language changing and I wouldn't worry too much.
Because most people will silently endure abuse for far too long that teach billionaires, politicians, and celebrities that there are no boundaries. They can be pedophiles and pederasts, shoot people in the street, and lawlessly disband food aid organizations (killing 13M+) without consequences. (And receive more investment because they've wired their lairs for video and audio recording to collect Kompromat.)
Satire, Piece, and Virtues are the first Nouns that I find not capitalized. They occur within the first few Sentences, and I trust that my Observation and Diligence in this Matter might not go without Recognition.
Those are part of the modern day commentary, rather than the historic document that starts later in the article. The historic document itself seems to use capitalised nouns fairly consistently, though I haven't tried to find exceptions.
The Declaration of Independence and the original US Constitution (the main portion plus the Bill of Rights) are also written in this style, though not all nouns are consistently capitalized.
I was curious, so in case anybody else was, the first printed versions of these documents also retain this style. It wasn't just a habit of handwriting.
It’s not uncommon for the time. E.g. “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”
That's great to learn. A a German native speaker I have a tendency to write like that even though I know it's wrong. Good to know at least it would have been correct at some point in time :D.
If anything, the more capitalizations the more presidential the writing becomes, e.g.
> in Order to form a more PERFECT UNION, establish JUSTICE, insure domestic TRANQUILITY, provide for the common defence, promote the general WELFARE, and secure the BLESSINGS of LIBERTY to ourselves and our POSTERITY…
As non German native speaker, that lives and works across DACH space, speaks the language, what I hate is the AI learning from Android phones ortography correction, that after a while think that all words have to be capitalized when I am writing in other languages.
You're forgetting English is a far more confusing and ambiguous language.
"English" may mean a subset of British people, a language, or sometimes a restaurant MacGuffin, whereas "english" refers to only vertical spinning of a billard ball.
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” ― James D. Nicoll
I would secretly hope Harbrace printed no further editions and kids and crims didn't invent new cant. The only constants are change, death, taxes, the ineffective shrieking about the impending rhyming of history caused by dangerously-stupid leaders, and the co-evolution of language and culture.
Is it specific? What he describes is essentially the downfall of every single great Empire that has ever existed or even would exist long after his death. For that matter it even largely describes why a certain Empire without declared borders is in ongoing decline, first in soft power and now in hard.
It's essentially just describing hubris, which those who find themselves in power - particularly power that they themselves did not build, can never seem to escape.
Cause vs effect. Empires grow exceptionally hubristic over time. For instance the Brits likely never even considered the possibility, in a million years, that they could lose in a military conflict with the colonies. The idea would have been preposterous. It wasn't because of a careful and objective military assessment, but because of hubristic belief in their own inherent superiority - the imperial disease.
At worst it would be a mild rebellion which would be shut down in due order with a bit of good old fashion drawing and quartering. Empires grow out of touch with reality, and base their decisions on this false reality that they create. The outcome is not hard to predict. So for instance the exact same followed the Brits all the way to their collapse. Enjoining WW1 was completely unnecessary and effectively bankrupted them. The Treaty of Versailles was painfully myopic - all but ensuring WW2, and that was essentially the end of their empire.
Not all of your examples are simply hubris (although there certainly was some of that).
> Enjoining WW1 was completely unnecessary
It effectively was necessary. They were drawn it via a pre-existing treaty with Belgium; it also does not seem like a good long-term plan for them to allow Germany to dominate the entire European mainland.
The whole thing was a mess, but not because Britain was out of touch with the reality of the situation. They were very aware but felt they had no choice.
> The Treaty of Versailles was painfully myopic - all but ensuring WW2
It was, but that's a perspective that's very clear in hindsight, and at the time it arose more from ignorance of the consequences (and possibly some vindictiveness) than hubris.
> For instance the Brits likely never even considered the possibility, in a million years, that they could lose in a military conflict with the colonies.
They likely couldn't. The US independence war was part of a larger war between the French empire and the British empire. The british empire was also at was with Spain and the Netherlands at the time.
Hubris is a second order effect. It doesn't collapse the empire directly, it just hinders the ability to deal with military failures, economic decay, etc.
I think you could also argue that one of the reasons the Roman empire persisted so long was that their existential close calls (Hannibal being the most prominent one), became embedded into their cultural DNA.
I dunno about every scenario. But it’s a pretty obvious lesson for Pax Americana, which has been based on both hard and soft power, both of which are in the hands of someone who doesn’t seem to share the premise that they should be used at all the way they have been in the past.
Pax Americana isn't an empire, it's built on treaties with sovereign nations. The U.S. doesn't set arbitrary laws for Europe, like the British were doing to the American colonies.
It might be argued that the relative peace in Europe and Asia is already cracking up, given the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Either way the world is a completely different place than it was in 1949 or 1989, and as the global situation evolves it makes absolute sense to adapt with it.
I think Trump has made clear that Europe has no meaningful sovereignty. However, the only thing unique about Trump is that he doesn't play the typical games and makes no effort whatsoever to let them save face and pretend to be sovereign. We created a system where Europe is economically and militarily dependent upon the US, which means on issues we truly care about - they have no ability to say no. They're going to do what he says -- they know it, he knows it, and now everybody else also knows it because he loves to gloat about it and make it unambiguously clear that he's imposing his will on them.
The great empires of old, dating back to at least Alexander the Great and almost certainly before, all learned a simple truth. The way you create a stable empire is by giving those under your control so much as freedom as possible to maintain their own ways. We simply took this to the next logical step and created an empire no longer defined by borders.
Ok, good luck fighting Russia on your eastern flank and whatever spills over in the coming years from the middle east and northern Africa. And good luck funding your defense without making serious cuts to your entitlement programs. And good luck sorting out the internal tension in the EU in that context.
> I think Trump has made clear that Europe has no meaningful sovereignty.
How do you define "sovereignty" here? Because (for example) many European countries have made it crystal clear that they will continue to support Ukraine whether or not the USA continues or not. That's not something they could do if the US had taken over their sovereignty. There are plenty of other demands that Trump makes which the EU is going "lol nope" about, like adjusting its own taxes, selling Greenland, or lowering food safety standards so American foods could be sold here.
Does the US have a lot of influence? Sure. So does the EU over the USA, though the EU has long preferred soft power over military presence. China has a lot of influence over the USA too, simply by having to power to meaningfully harm its economy (although at significant cost to itself too). Does that make the USA "not sovereign"? The US has a lot of influence over Russia's economy too, but nobody would argue that Russia is "not sovereign" because they're under sanctions. By that logic even the USA is not fully sovereign because it's "forced" to spend time and money to counteract the countries out there defying its will. Defining sovereignty is very tricky in a globalized world.
Trump has never once opposed Europe continuing to fund Ukraine however long they want. On the contrary, that clearly became his plan once it became clear he wasn't going to be able to get a cease fire. Now he simply wants to get out of Ukraine without it being a huge L on his legacy like Afghanistan was for Biden. So how does he plan to do this? Just dump it on Europe. This started out with calls for the EU to 'pay their fair share.' It's now been made clear that "their fair share" is 100% of the cost of the war. We get out of the war, it's no longer tied to Trump, and the MIC lobby still gets filthy rich because the EU funding for Ukraine will go straight to the US MIC anyhow.
And what does the EU get out of this? Local economies that are already headed into recession now expected to pay dramatically more for Ukraine to the US, skyrocketing energy costs owing largely to being compelled to purchase US natural gas, getting to deal with jacked up tariffs to the US, and eventually being the ones that get to take the L over Ukraine. This is not "influence" - this is countries being dictated to act in a way that runs completely against their own self interest.
- Europe chooses to fight a war it wants to fight;
- with the weapons it has decided are the best choice available at the moment (even though many of those are not yet produced domestically and so need to be imported);
- while hugely increasing its own weapons manufacturing;
- paid for by its own money. (aka the factories built and new weapon systems introduced will not be controlled by the US)
You seem to argue (but correct me if I'm wrong) that this is somehow a huge win for the USA and proves the European states have barely any sovereignty as in your previous post. But the more logical result of all this would be that the European countries come out of this war with a significantly larger defense-industrial base. In addition this bigger DIB will be used to shift away the composition of EU armed forces away from American systems and towards domestically produced systems. Like you mention the USA will not pay for anything anymore, but as the saying goes "the one who pays is the one who gets to decide". Pulling support also means you no longer get a say in decision making. Finally, the USA not helping in Ukraine makes it much easier for politicians to say "no thank you" when the US wants help in a future Taiwan conflict. None of these things improve US influence over Europe.
Tariffs are completely separate and are mainly a US thing being paid for by US importers to the US government. Natural gas imports are Trump overstating his dealmaking skills: countries do not buy gas but companies do, and the global energy companies are not bound to this trade deal.
Finally this:
> Trump has never once opposed Europe continuing to fund Ukraine however long they want.
Yes he did. He proposed a peace deal to Putin in which Ukraine would basically surrender, then tried to pressure Zelensky and the EU leaders into going along with this. This very much included Ukraine giving up the fight and EU halting support. Obviously, this didn't happen and now Trump tries to pretend he meant this occur all along.
I'm with you all the way up to the last paragraph.
There has been no explicit peace deal with Russia. There has been an ongoing negotiation and attempts at agreements but my no means was Trump suggesting to surrender all of Ukraine to Russia.
You do realize that EU support and weaponry is completely insufficient to fight Russia, right? Their military is far stronger than anything you've got. The only reason Ukraine has been doing as well as it has is because of American training, intel, weaponry, drones, etc. If America walked away, Ukraine would collapse quite quickly, regardless of empty pledges by the EU.
> There has been no explicit peace deal with Russia. There has been an ongoing negotiation and attempts at agreements but my no means was Trump suggesting to surrender all of Ukraine to Russia.
I think you've been watching US propaganda? This "deal" explicitely happened, there was a lot of "wtf" moments at that. It was a thing that sparked protests.
Trump has made it clear America is his dictatorship and his own only. Republicans like it. That does not mean America already descended as much yet, it is just expression of Trump wishes.
> They're going to do what he says
Except they ... did not. He is loosing influence. He is getting face saving deals for himself, but that is about it.
That's a US law effecting goods coming into the USA, and mostly affecting prices for American consumers. European goods going to all other countries are unaffected.
Empires having a rise and fall or increase/decrease in power/land is probably the most evidence supported grand narrative of history there is, although the specifics are always going to be different the general problems are perhaps universal (see also: The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph A. Tainter)
Maybe I'm missing what you're saying, but I think that by itself, the bare statement that "sometimes empires get larger and sometimes they get smaller" is about as useless as saying that stock markets fluctuate? But the reasons why it happened in various cases are often worth reading about. That's why we read history.
"Things change" is not the point, rather that empires always have a secular trend of expansion and eventually decline. I was responding to someone who claimed that historical examples don't prove anything, but this trend is as good as proven as one can get in history.
If they all started at zero and the ones that are no longer in existence end at zero, then roughly speaking, wouldn’t that have to happen?
But in slightly more detail, not every empire has ended, yet, if you count Russia and the Chinese as empires. Also, some empires have had declines that reversed again for a while, such as Byzantine Empire.
The history of China is perhaps not the history of AN empire, but rather a bunch of states/kingdoms, some of which every now and then managed to subjugate their neighbors and build an empire, for a while.
Skillfully diplomatic? He's overtly mocking the behaviors of the British Empire. You're also off on your timeline. The 'shot heard round the world' would happen in 1775, not 1773, years after this letter was written. Even the Boston Tea Party hadn't yet happened. His overall complaint, and its solution are also rather plain. Britain was trying to impose their authority like a foreign occupation, rather than treating the colonies as an equal and integrated part of the Empire.
There's probably no timeline where Britain holds onto the colonies simply because of the distance involved - people don't like being ruled by those who don't represent themselves in any meaningful way. But they almost certainly accelerated the end through hubris. They were the Mighty and Civilized British Empire, and the colonies were just uncultured backwoods vagrants who's existence was only at the leisure of the Crown.
> Britain was trying to impose their authority like a foreign occupation, rather than treating the colonies as an equal and integrated part of the Empire.
...to be fair, Brits back at home paid way, way more tax than Colonials did, and also had to pay market rate for tea, among other things. If Britain treated the Colonies like the rest of Britain, it wouldn't have taken until 1775 for them to revolt.
Didn't have to be that way, though. Treat the Colonies more like the Persian Empire treated its conquered states, and the USA today would just be "lower Canada".
There were a bunch of MPs at the time who knew that trying to use force against the Colonies was going to be hell. The British Empire wasn't nearly as strong as it was before, and America was huge. Lord North was way too aggressive in trying to reign in the Colonies, and it was this constant blundering that eventually led the colonies to split. So Franklin wasn't alone in warning the Empire of the dangers of entangling themselves in a fight they might lose.
What you have written (copied from an llm?) is utter nonsense. The publication date for this is 1773, nearly two years before battles in Lexington and Concord start in 1775.
Chinese continuity is overstated for the purposes of modern nation-building. The Qing and Ming are as different from each other and modern CCP China as the kingdom of Prussia is from modern Germany.
but they still chinnese???? "but sorry you are wrong, its is mongolian goverment" nerd noise
Yeah but the empire is still in fact china, like you cant change that
1. does they identified some sort of "chinnese" ???: Yeah
2. does they still speak some form of "chinnese language": Yeah
"buttt it iss different eeeerrr" before you talking about whats different, BRO ITS 2000 YEARS, what do you expect ???? like do you expecting people not changing anything for two millenia????? like cmon bruh, use your critical thinking
"china proper" as whole is always referring to "whole region" not just this empire or dynasty or anything
That past is always a different country, but actually I'm kind of disappointed that Qing and Ming are not more different than Prussia is from modern Germany.
It's true, China went through a ton of unification -> division -> reunification phases in history. There's even a famous quote for this: "what is long divided must unite, what is long united must divide"
I think one possible reason is that the Qin Dynasty really managed to assimilate everyone into the same shared values, religion, language, writing, and so on. Other empires didn't succeed to that level, and the people in them always had strong differences, language, values, religion, beliefs, writing, philosophy, and so on.
In Western tradition, an "empire" is definitionally unassimilated in that there are multiple groups/territories ruled centrally from a metropole. A state would no longer be an empire once it assimilates disparate territories.
> I think one possible reason is that the Qin Dynasty really managed to assimilate everyone into the same shared values, religion, language, writing, and so on. Other empires didn't succeed to that level
Qin conquered the other Chinese states and the ensuing dynasty flamed out immediately. The work of creating an empire was done by the following Han dynasty.
> There's even a famous quote for this: "what is long divided must unite, what is long united must divide"
Often given as "the empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide", but your translation is much closer to the text, which doesn't mention empires except in that it follows this statement ["They say that across the course of history, what has long been divided must unite, and what has long been united must divide"] with a discussion of Chinese governments schisming and unifying.
China literally fought the bloodiest civil war of the 20th century! It's technically still going on, even. One of the sides makes a lot of good chips, maybe you've heard of them.
For context, Franklin had already been in Britain for 13 years by this point trying to lobby Parliament and the King about various grievances with the Crown's governance over the colonies. He would spend another 2 years trying in vain to get them to listen, before finally sailing back to America in March 1775.
15 years? He didn't really try hard enough.
If anyone is ever in London and looking for a fun two-hour diversion, the Ben Franklin museum is an interesting look at this time in his life
I loved the Franklin Institute, but (lol) it was in philadelphia.
It's the voice of someone who's done asking politely and is now holding up a mirror with a smirk
As much as he loved Britain, his returning to the colonies after 15 years says a ton about his well-deserved character.
Everyone arguing below this about a flagged comment, but I'm slightly behind - what does it say about his character?
> his well-deserved character
What would be an example of someone with a personality they didn't deserve?
This got me wondering if an actual answer would be folks with brain injuries.
Or heavy metal and other neuro-toxins.
That is a far more severe problem than 99% of the public realize. It is like light outside the visible spectrum, or bacteria and viruses, before we had tools to see them.
While we can detect them, unless somebody has a huge sudden exposure, so that they have clearly attributable symptoms, smaller effects can only - badly - attributed statistically, for populations. Badly, because what exactly do you measure? It's not like you get numbers naturally. More aggression, less brain-ability in general, the measurements used even for the statistical analysis is hard.
Long-term slow exposure always correlates with age, so problems can easily be attributed to "aging" instead. And of course stress. And "it's all in your head" - which funnily (or unfunnily) enough is true!
Marvin.
Explanation for the uninitiated:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_the_Paranoid_Android
Anyone with a personality disorder.
Maybe they meant well-deserved reputation or something.
[flagged]
The Confederacy initiated the civil war by attacking a US government military facility, not Lincoln.
> That said, Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus without congressional approval, imprisoned political opponents, imprisoned journalists, conducted military trials against civilians, made extensive use of rule by executive decree, and initiated the only Civil War on American soil in history, (...)
I'm not from the US but even to me this reads like a highly disingenuous and outright blatantly manipulated take on history.
As others mentioned, Lincoln did not started the war. Also, Lincoln suspended Habeas Corpus while the US civil war ravaged, and was specifically targeted at the riots in Baltimore that were preventing Washington from being reinforced by rail.
The people targeted by the suspension of Habeas Corpus were actively collaborating with rebels and participating in sabotaging the union's effort to defend Washington.
Why did you chose to leave this sort of detail out? Was it out of ignorance or to purposely push propaganda? I mean, your comment doesn't even pass off as revisionism.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habeas_Corpus_Suspension_Act_(...
There has been almost a concerted effort across the entirety of the West, to denigrate and destroy any historical figure of positive note. The reasons are myriad, but to destroy a powerful foe, weakening them before battle, is far better than on the battlefield.
And each thread of that foe's culture, is part of the tapestry that binds the society together. Break one thread here, another there, and soon it all falls to tatters. Soon there's not a unified people or a shared belief, the nation looses its hood.
But what many of the West's foes don't realise, is that all the blather on TikTok, all the influence they muster, is against not a highly controlled society like China, or one with an iron grip like Russia, or the religiously controlled Iran, but instead the West. Even the most controlled Western society is a collection of individualists.
Of all these, the US takes this to the most extreme.
So when China plots, Russia wheedles, Iran meddles, their myopic mentalities force their worldviews to plot upon what they know. What they fear. And they fear a loss of centralized control and thought.
It just cracks me up. Do they envision the clutching of pearls? Do they think their meddling matters? Oh no!! Look, behold, they're preaching independent ideas, non-sanctioned thought to the world's largest collection of individualists! What a joke. The buffoonery is a joy to behold. All this meddling, spewing of nonsense history is their waste.
So break the threads, I say. Give it a go. You're not even working on the right tapestry!
I see a negative response, but just where did the GP get such a distorted, made up, negative view of a historical figure?
> responded by having him arrested on grounds of making anti-war speeches, tried him in a military tribunal despite Vallandigham being a civilian, and sentenced him to imprisonment, before Lincoln commuted the sentence to banish Vallandigham to the Confederacy)
That was good enough for him in my book.
I'm struggling to see how this is relevant to the question of whether Lincoln deserved to have the personality that he did have.
You know what? I was interpreting the question as regarding public perception of personality, rather than actual personality, but re-reading it, I think you're right, my bad.
There only ever exists the public perception of personality. From the inside you just observe a stream of events. So you're not conflating and they're not funny.
> Lincoln
He didn't acted alone. He had an apparatus at his disposal. Blaming a single person for acts of hundreds is so 21 century.
Your so-called "deadliest conflict in American History" was just a blip in demographics of WASPs, whereas Native Americans have been almost exterminated and Black Slaves have died by the millions.
Breaking rules isn't bad; it's just hard to do successfully. Lincoln did it successfully, evidenced by the lack of people who sympathize with your complaints.
>the lack of people who sympathize
is evidence for nothing, same as the presence of such
It's democracy
So, no person - no problem?
So just to be clear, your take here is that the president violating the constitution isn't bad as long as the president feels that the ends justify the means?
The "rules" - the constitution, the law - must apply to everyone equally, otherwise it loses legitimacy.
If Trump believes that the means of deporting US citizens to CECOT without a trial (unconstitutional) is justified by his end goals, does that make him right to circumvent the judicial system, violating the laws established by the legislature in the process?
The system of checks and balances exists for a reason. It sets a dangerous precedent when any president treads astray of those constitutional guardrails, no matter what party, no matter what policy, because it empowers future presidents to do the same.
Maybe if more people did sympathize with these values, we wouldn't have the president shipping American citizens to prisons overseas without trial.
try telling Sojourner Truth or Harriet Tubman that the constitution and rule of law applied to everyone equally.
Trump is making things worse by instituting oppression - Lincoln was making things better by dismantling institutionalized oppression. Trump is committing acts of racism, Lincoln was preventing acts of racism. It’s not the same thing.
The president - and any moral person - is absolutely honor-bound to break the rules, when the rules themselves are unethical, when the rules enforce mistreating others, and protect the perpetrators of injustice.
Human rights are always worth having a war over.
"Law" is a silly word to describe the regulation a legislative body puts to paper, in my opinion we should stop using it like that.
Here's some laws:
In an isolated system, entropy increases.
Energy cannot be created or destroyed, only converted.
An object at rest remains at rest unless it's acted upon by outside forces.
Law is a great word to describe these things. They're immutable facts of the universe.
Now here's some things humans call "laws":
> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
> No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
Well that's just orders of magnitude difference in scope! How can we use the same word to describe immutable facts of the universe as we do to describe how we think people should behave in order to create the kind of society we believe we want to live in? We can't even say for certain that perfect adherence to those "laws" would create that society we want to live in nor can we agree what that society should look like!
Not to mention these "laws" are easily violated, and sometimes it's good to do so, as when Lincoln did so in his fight against slavery and to maintain the State.
I think it's silly to pretend human law is law. Step into any courtroom and watch your law and due process at work - the overwhelmed court system plays so fast and loose and the results of any given case are so dependent upon the judge and their mood at the moment you'll be sick!
Trump violates due process, yes indeed, but due process barely ever existed in America. The same country that secretly infected black soldiers with veneral diseases, bombed its own citizens, threw Asian Americans indiscriminately into concentration camps, that country has "due process?" The same country where cops gun down unarmed civilians, or if you're lucky merely extrajudicially beat the shit out of you, that country has due process?
It's the same in every State throughout all of history. Laws are never laws, they're regulations applied when convenient to serve the needs of the State or those in power. When a law doesn't serve the needs of the State or its bureaucrats, even if its enforcement would benefit the people, the law is ignored or "temporarily suspended." Trump just does this quiet thing out loud.
The word "law" is used to trick people into thinking that these rules are as immutable as the first law of thermodynamics, when in reality the ones who write the laws and ostensibly enforce them flaunt them at every turn. I've just read a story about a USA politician who modified an age of consent "law" when it was being used to convict his cousin who was on trial for raping a child. Now the cousin gets off with time served and community service. Now that's a "law" alright!
> "Law" is a silly word to describe the regulation a legislative body puts to paper, in my opinion we should stop using it like that.
I understand where you are coming from, but you've got it backwards. Natural sciences adopted the word "law" to describe some "immutable" principles (that's obviously a descriptive use, ie. our descriptions of our understanding of some observations).
The word "law" comes from moral philosophy ("what is right?" and "what should we do?") and jurisprudence ("what is law?" and "what should be law?") of the ancient Romans ("lex") and is deeply rooted in the idea of norms (as in "normative", ie. that's how it should be) we, as humans, set for ourselves. Thus it is not silly to describe a regulation a legislative body puts to paper as law. That's what it means.
Note, I'm not saying you are wrong. It's just language changing and I wouldn't worry too much.
I would quibble about calling something "immutable" - if something isn't falsifiable then it isn't science?
Sometimes the original typesetting is helpful to understand these kinds of artifacts: https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_rules-for...
This reads like the author has a lisp, with the letter s looking like an f.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_s
Timeless rules… They can be applied generally to large organisations, and serve as an excellent summary of symptoms of elite blindness
Let's not forget the monarch at the time had serious mental health issues.
Makes you wonder if it's elite blindness or just the gravitational pull of power structures repeating themselves
Because most people will silently endure abuse for far too long that teach billionaires, politicians, and celebrities that there are no boundaries. They can be pedophiles and pederasts, shoot people in the street, and lawlessly disband food aid organizations (killing 13M+) without consequences. (And receive more investment because they've wired their lairs for video and audio recording to collect Kompromat.)
Wild how he predicted that satire would do more to polarize than persuade
Interesting that all nouns are capitalized, like in modern German and unlike in most other modern languages that use the Latin alphabet.
Satire, Piece, and Virtues are the first Nouns that I find not capitalized. They occur within the first few Sentences, and I trust that my Observation and Diligence in this Matter might not go without Recognition.
Those are part of the modern day commentary, rather than the historic document that starts later in the article. The historic document itself seems to use capitalised nouns fairly consistently, though I haven't tried to find exceptions.
The Declaration of Independence and the original US Constitution (the main portion plus the Bill of Rights) are also written in this style, though not all nouns are consistently capitalized.
I was curious, so in case anybody else was, the first printed versions of these documents also retain this style. It wasn't just a habit of handwriting.
It’s not uncommon for the time. E.g. “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity…”
That's great to learn. A a German native speaker I have a tendency to write like that even though I know it's wrong. Good to know at least it would have been correct at some point in time :D.
If anything, the more capitalizations the more presidential the writing becomes, e.g.
> in Order to form a more PERFECT UNION, establish JUSTICE, insure domestic TRANQUILITY, provide for the common defence, promote the general WELFARE, and secure the BLESSINGS of LIBERTY to ourselves and our POSTERITY…
THANK YOU for your attention in THIS matter
Reads just like Trump's tweets
That's the joke
As non German native speaker, that lives and works across DACH space, speaks the language, what I hate is the AI learning from Android phones ortography correction, that after a while think that all words have to be capitalized when I am writing in other languages.
Now, we can't even get people to capitalize proper nouns to disambiguate soil from a planet.
In a some sense that goes back to the roots, as you can't distinguish these in German either ("Erde" is always capitalized)
You're forgetting English is a far more confusing and ambiguous language.
"English" may mean a subset of British people, a language, or sometimes a restaurant MacGuffin, whereas "english" refers to only vertical spinning of a billard ball.
“The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.” ― James D. Nicoll
I would secretly hope Harbrace printed no further editions and kids and crims didn't invent new cant. The only constants are change, death, taxes, the ineffective shrieking about the impending rhyming of history caused by dangerously-stupid leaders, and the co-evolution of language and culture.
“ And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe. And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot”
or engineers from Engineers
Decreasingly so, but even in stuff written in the last hundred years or so you'll sometimes find words capitalized for emphasis or similar.
Most communication from the highest office in the land is indeed now In this Exalted STYLE.
Famously Custer used to capitalize mule and horse and write Indian in lowercase
Capitalizing nouns was more of a stylistic convention back then
Is this like the prince or art of war where we are supposed to draw some lesson from very specific critiques and extrapolate it to every scenario.
Is it specific? What he describes is essentially the downfall of every single great Empire that has ever existed or even would exist long after his death. For that matter it even largely describes why a certain Empire without declared borders is in ongoing decline, first in soft power and now in hard.
It's essentially just describing hubris, which those who find themselves in power - particularly power that they themselves did not build, can never seem to escape.
"What he describes is essentially the downfall of every single great Empire that has ever existed..."
Even accounting for hyperbole this is just not at all historically accurate.
Military conquest and failures, economic decay, succession problems, and weather are responsible for at least as many cases and probably more.
Cause vs effect. Empires grow exceptionally hubristic over time. For instance the Brits likely never even considered the possibility, in a million years, that they could lose in a military conflict with the colonies. The idea would have been preposterous. It wasn't because of a careful and objective military assessment, but because of hubristic belief in their own inherent superiority - the imperial disease.
At worst it would be a mild rebellion which would be shut down in due order with a bit of good old fashion drawing and quartering. Empires grow out of touch with reality, and base their decisions on this false reality that they create. The outcome is not hard to predict. So for instance the exact same followed the Brits all the way to their collapse. Enjoining WW1 was completely unnecessary and effectively bankrupted them. The Treaty of Versailles was painfully myopic - all but ensuring WW2, and that was essentially the end of their empire.
Not all of your examples are simply hubris (although there certainly was some of that).
> Enjoining WW1 was completely unnecessary
It effectively was necessary. They were drawn it via a pre-existing treaty with Belgium; it also does not seem like a good long-term plan for them to allow Germany to dominate the entire European mainland. The whole thing was a mess, but not because Britain was out of touch with the reality of the situation. They were very aware but felt they had no choice.
> The Treaty of Versailles was painfully myopic - all but ensuring WW2
It was, but that's a perspective that's very clear in hindsight, and at the time it arose more from ignorance of the consequences (and possibly some vindictiveness) than hubris.
> For instance the Brits likely never even considered the possibility, in a million years, that they could lose in a military conflict with the colonies.
They likely couldn't. The US independence war was part of a larger war between the French empire and the British empire. The british empire was also at was with Spain and the Netherlands at the time.
> Enjoining WW1 was completely unnecessary
Britain didn't start WW1.
Hubris is a second order effect. It doesn't collapse the empire directly, it just hinders the ability to deal with military failures, economic decay, etc.
I think you could also argue that one of the reasons the Roman empire persisted so long was that their existential close calls (Hannibal being the most prominent one), became embedded into their cultural DNA.
This reads almost like a precursor to the Declaration of Independence, which lists many of the same offenses of King George.
That is, effectively, what it was.
I dunno about every scenario. But it’s a pretty obvious lesson for Pax Americana, which has been based on both hard and soft power, both of which are in the hands of someone who doesn’t seem to share the premise that they should be used at all the way they have been in the past.
Pax Americana isn't an empire, it's built on treaties with sovereign nations. The U.S. doesn't set arbitrary laws for Europe, like the British were doing to the American colonies.
It might be argued that the relative peace in Europe and Asia is already cracking up, given the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Either way the world is a completely different place than it was in 1949 or 1989, and as the global situation evolves it makes absolute sense to adapt with it.
I think Trump has made clear that Europe has no meaningful sovereignty. However, the only thing unique about Trump is that he doesn't play the typical games and makes no effort whatsoever to let them save face and pretend to be sovereign. We created a system where Europe is economically and militarily dependent upon the US, which means on issues we truly care about - they have no ability to say no. They're going to do what he says -- they know it, he knows it, and now everybody else also knows it because he loves to gloat about it and make it unambiguously clear that he's imposing his will on them.
The great empires of old, dating back to at least Alexander the Great and almost certainly before, all learned a simple truth. The way you create a stable empire is by giving those under your control so much as freedom as possible to maintain their own ways. We simply took this to the next logical step and created an empire no longer defined by borders.
This 'reasoning' explains why the predominent sentiment in Europe is now: 'Bye bye USA'.
I think the party in the USA has ended. And I'm definitely not investing there again until there is some clarity about the next regime.
> This 'reasoning' explains why the predominent sentiment in Europe is now: 'Bye bye USA'.
Is it? I'm (somewhat shockingly) not really seeing any willingness to detach from US Big Tech or even consider thinking what's behind the curtain.
Ok, good luck fighting Russia on your eastern flank and whatever spills over in the coming years from the middle east and northern Africa. And good luck funding your defense without making serious cuts to your entitlement programs. And good luck sorting out the internal tension in the EU in that context.
> I think Trump has made clear that Europe has no meaningful sovereignty.
How do you define "sovereignty" here? Because (for example) many European countries have made it crystal clear that they will continue to support Ukraine whether or not the USA continues or not. That's not something they could do if the US had taken over their sovereignty. There are plenty of other demands that Trump makes which the EU is going "lol nope" about, like adjusting its own taxes, selling Greenland, or lowering food safety standards so American foods could be sold here.
Does the US have a lot of influence? Sure. So does the EU over the USA, though the EU has long preferred soft power over military presence. China has a lot of influence over the USA too, simply by having to power to meaningfully harm its economy (although at significant cost to itself too). Does that make the USA "not sovereign"? The US has a lot of influence over Russia's economy too, but nobody would argue that Russia is "not sovereign" because they're under sanctions. By that logic even the USA is not fully sovereign because it's "forced" to spend time and money to counteract the countries out there defying its will. Defining sovereignty is very tricky in a globalized world.
Trump has never once opposed Europe continuing to fund Ukraine however long they want. On the contrary, that clearly became his plan once it became clear he wasn't going to be able to get a cease fire. Now he simply wants to get out of Ukraine without it being a huge L on his legacy like Afghanistan was for Biden. So how does he plan to do this? Just dump it on Europe. This started out with calls for the EU to 'pay their fair share.' It's now been made clear that "their fair share" is 100% of the cost of the war. We get out of the war, it's no longer tied to Trump, and the MIC lobby still gets filthy rich because the EU funding for Ukraine will go straight to the US MIC anyhow.
And what does the EU get out of this? Local economies that are already headed into recession now expected to pay dramatically more for Ukraine to the US, skyrocketing energy costs owing largely to being compelled to purchase US natural gas, getting to deal with jacked up tariffs to the US, and eventually being the ones that get to take the L over Ukraine. This is not "influence" - this is countries being dictated to act in a way that runs completely against their own self interest.
If I were to summarize:
- Europe chooses to fight a war it wants to fight;
- with the weapons it has decided are the best choice available at the moment (even though many of those are not yet produced domestically and so need to be imported);
- while hugely increasing its own weapons manufacturing;
- paid for by its own money. (aka the factories built and new weapon systems introduced will not be controlled by the US)
You seem to argue (but correct me if I'm wrong) that this is somehow a huge win for the USA and proves the European states have barely any sovereignty as in your previous post. But the more logical result of all this would be that the European countries come out of this war with a significantly larger defense-industrial base. In addition this bigger DIB will be used to shift away the composition of EU armed forces away from American systems and towards domestically produced systems. Like you mention the USA will not pay for anything anymore, but as the saying goes "the one who pays is the one who gets to decide". Pulling support also means you no longer get a say in decision making. Finally, the USA not helping in Ukraine makes it much easier for politicians to say "no thank you" when the US wants help in a future Taiwan conflict. None of these things improve US influence over Europe.
Tariffs are completely separate and are mainly a US thing being paid for by US importers to the US government. Natural gas imports are Trump overstating his dealmaking skills: countries do not buy gas but companies do, and the global energy companies are not bound to this trade deal.
Finally this:
> Trump has never once opposed Europe continuing to fund Ukraine however long they want.
Yes he did. He proposed a peace deal to Putin in which Ukraine would basically surrender, then tried to pressure Zelensky and the EU leaders into going along with this. This very much included Ukraine giving up the fight and EU halting support. Obviously, this didn't happen and now Trump tries to pretend he meant this occur all along.
I'm with you all the way up to the last paragraph.
There has been no explicit peace deal with Russia. There has been an ongoing negotiation and attempts at agreements but my no means was Trump suggesting to surrender all of Ukraine to Russia.
You do realize that EU support and weaponry is completely insufficient to fight Russia, right? Their military is far stronger than anything you've got. The only reason Ukraine has been doing as well as it has is because of American training, intel, weaponry, drones, etc. If America walked away, Ukraine would collapse quite quickly, regardless of empty pledges by the EU.
> There has been no explicit peace deal with Russia. There has been an ongoing negotiation and attempts at agreements but my no means was Trump suggesting to surrender all of Ukraine to Russia.
I think you've been watching US propaganda? This "deal" explicitely happened, there was a lot of "wtf" moments at that. It was a thing that sparked protests.
Trump has made it clear America is his dictatorship and his own only. Republicans like it. That does not mean America already descended as much yet, it is just expression of Trump wishes.
> They're going to do what he says
Except they ... did not. He is loosing influence. He is getting face saving deals for himself, but that is about it.
That's a US law effecting goods coming into the USA, and mostly affecting prices for American consumers. European goods going to all other countries are unaffected.
Also I reckon it reads as a good lesson for managers too!
Yeah, historical analogies are good mostly for suggesting possibilities you hadn't thought of. They don't prove anything.
Empires having a rise and fall or increase/decrease in power/land is probably the most evidence supported grand narrative of history there is, although the specifics are always going to be different the general problems are perhaps universal (see also: The Collapse of Complex Societies by Joseph A. Tainter)
Maybe I'm missing what you're saying, but I think that by itself, the bare statement that "sometimes empires get larger and sometimes they get smaller" is about as useless as saying that stock markets fluctuate? But the reasons why it happened in various cases are often worth reading about. That's why we read history.
The trend is secular, so fluctuations are not the point.
"Things change" is unconvincing to me as a "grand narrative." More an evidence-supported obvious fact.
"Things change" is not the point, rather that empires always have a secular trend of expansion and eventually decline. I was responding to someone who claimed that historical examples don't prove anything, but this trend is as good as proven as one can get in history.
If they all started at zero and the ones that are no longer in existence end at zero, then roughly speaking, wouldn’t that have to happen?
But in slightly more detail, not every empire has ended, yet, if you count Russia and the Chinese as empires. Also, some empires have had declines that reversed again for a while, such as Byzantine Empire.
There are plenty of empires in history that have had growth trajectories far more complex than "rise -> final fall".
Of particular note is China, which made falling and then regaining territorial extent a practical sport.
The history of China is perhaps not the history of AN empire, but rather a bunch of states/kingdoms, some of which every now and then managed to subjugate their neighbors and build an empire, for a while.
Sort of, but with a sharper edge of sarcasm
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Skillfully diplomatic? He's overtly mocking the behaviors of the British Empire. You're also off on your timeline. The 'shot heard round the world' would happen in 1775, not 1773, years after this letter was written. Even the Boston Tea Party hadn't yet happened. His overall complaint, and its solution are also rather plain. Britain was trying to impose their authority like a foreign occupation, rather than treating the colonies as an equal and integrated part of the Empire.
There's probably no timeline where Britain holds onto the colonies simply because of the distance involved - people don't like being ruled by those who don't represent themselves in any meaningful way. But they almost certainly accelerated the end through hubris. They were the Mighty and Civilized British Empire, and the colonies were just uncultured backwoods vagrants who's existence was only at the leisure of the Crown.
> Britain was trying to impose their authority like a foreign occupation, rather than treating the colonies as an equal and integrated part of the Empire.
...to be fair, Brits back at home paid way, way more tax than Colonials did, and also had to pay market rate for tea, among other things. If Britain treated the Colonies like the rest of Britain, it wouldn't have taken until 1775 for them to revolt.
Didn't have to be that way, though. Treat the Colonies more like the Persian Empire treated its conquered states, and the USA today would just be "lower Canada".
There were a bunch of MPs at the time who knew that trying to use force against the Colonies was going to be hell. The British Empire wasn't nearly as strong as it was before, and America was huge. Lord North was way too aggressive in trying to reign in the Colonies, and it was this constant blundering that eventually led the colonies to split. So Franklin wasn't alone in warning the Empire of the dangers of entangling themselves in a fight they might lose.
Indeed. As an American, I found The Rest Is History’s four part series on the American war for independence particularly enlightening.
What you have written (copied from an llm?) is utter nonsense. The publication date for this is 1773, nearly two years before battles in Lexington and Concord start in 1775.
And yeah I think he's having himself a bit of an LLM experiment. [1] Didn't expect that in a history thread.
[1] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44820586
except china, china for some reason always unite despite many civil war and unrest
like imagine at some point roman empire and china is co-exist together and 2000 years later only 1 survive
Chinese continuity is overstated for the purposes of modern nation-building. The Qing and Ming are as different from each other and modern CCP China as the kingdom of Prussia is from modern Germany.
but they still chinnese???? "but sorry you are wrong, its is mongolian goverment" nerd noise
Yeah but the empire is still in fact china, like you cant change that
1. does they identified some sort of "chinnese" ???: Yeah
2. does they still speak some form of "chinnese language": Yeah
"buttt it iss different eeeerrr" before you talking about whats different, BRO ITS 2000 YEARS, what do you expect ???? like do you expecting people not changing anything for two millenia????? like cmon bruh, use your critical thinking
"china proper" as whole is always referring to "whole region" not just this empire or dynasty or anything
Please do us all a favour and learn to communicate properly.
sorry that you aren't get it if you are not fluent native
but you can ignore the satirical part and focus at bullet point
also: https://web.archive.org/web/20250102025407/https://nces.ed.g...
That past is always a different country, but actually I'm kind of disappointed that Qing and Ming are not more different than Prussia is from modern Germany.
It's true, China went through a ton of unification -> division -> reunification phases in history. There's even a famous quote for this: "what is long divided must unite, what is long united must divide"
I think one possible reason is that the Qin Dynasty really managed to assimilate everyone into the same shared values, religion, language, writing, and so on. Other empires didn't succeed to that level, and the people in them always had strong differences, language, values, religion, beliefs, writing, philosophy, and so on.
In Western tradition, an "empire" is definitionally unassimilated in that there are multiple groups/territories ruled centrally from a metropole. A state would no longer be an empire once it assimilates disparate territories.
No, there is an alternative (and far, far more traditional) definition in which an emperor outranks a king, which is how China is termed an "empire".
> I think one possible reason is that the Qin Dynasty really managed to assimilate everyone into the same shared values, religion, language, writing, and so on. Other empires didn't succeed to that level
Qin conquered the other Chinese states and the ensuing dynasty flamed out immediately. The work of creating an empire was done by the following Han dynasty.
> There's even a famous quote for this: "what is long divided must unite, what is long united must divide"
分久必合，合久必分
https://ctext.org/sanguo-yanyi/ch1
Often given as "the empire, long divided, must unite; long united, must divide", but your translation is much closer to the text, which doesn't mention empires except in that it follows this statement ["They say that across the course of history, what has long been divided must unite, and what has long been united must divide"] with a discussion of Chinese governments schisming and unifying.
in the grand scheme of humanity, do you consider a single civilization largely persisting in key aspects over 2000 years a feature? Or a bug?
If it's my civilization it's a feature, if it's your civilization it's a bug.
It sounds like a joke but that is exactly how it works and many people have forgotten it.
China literally fought the bloodiest civil war of the 20th century! It's technically still going on, even. One of the sides makes a lot of good chips, maybe you've heard of them.