The role of intellectuals and ideas in the project of empire has once again come to the fore. Witness the triumphs of William Kristol, Robert Kagan and others associated with the Project for the New American Century, who in many ways scripted the Iraq war long before it happened. The basic scaffolding of modern empire requires ideas, after all, just… return to article
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Reader Comments (10)Page 1 of 1 pages...and the scripting of these “ideas” originated in the ferment following the murder of the Kennedy’s, or, as Noam Chomsky notes, in WW I, with the advent of British propaganda to draw the U.S. into the war.
A TOTAL IMPERIUM requires a total script, including the _appearance_ of intelletual validity. These are pseudo-intellectuals of the most vicious kind, which will, before long, become clear.
Posted by Ryokan on Jul 29, 2003 at 12:30 AM ...and a little more. M. Parenti’s piece makes clear how long “these guys” have been around, how personal expediency always has over-run conscience, how WE are the CHOSEN race.
What is new is Corporate Control of the whole process. Remember, R. Reagan was the first president in history to invite corporate leaders into the White House. Yes. The first. And that’s when the scenario really picked up steam. Alexander Hamilton’s musings had come to pass. “This country should be run by those who _own_ it.” Tis now the whole planet and all its “people” who are to be _run_.
Posted by Ryokan on Jul 29, 2003 at 12:37 AM Parenti’s interesting review of what sounds like a valuable book betrays a commonly-found blindness to the long existence of the U.S. Empire. When he says, “Save for a few
actual colonies like Puerto Rico and the Philippines, the United States has always preferred the low overhead and ‘plausible denial’ offered by an informal, armís length empire of client states,” Parenti is denying the conquest and settler colonization of half the north American land mass, the attempt to annex Canadian territory, the annexation of northern Mexico, of Alaska, of Hawaii, the failed attempts to add Cuba and Central America to the Confederacy, the separation of Panama from Colombia and the more recent re-installation of the US military there.Long before “Friedrich Ratzel ...first
coined the term Lebensraum,” the founding fathers of the US invented the concept, embodied in the Monroe Doctrine, the notion of ‘manifest destiny,’ and in a Constitution unique in all the world in claiming the power to incorporate new territories into the state system it established. The US flag is a kind of map of that expansionism and conquest from 13 seaboard colonies to 50 states stretching into the Arctic and Pacific.Before geography was geological, it was botanical and agrarian. It is not a coincidence that George Washington was a surveyor, nor that one of the mythic figures of Yankee empire-building was Johnny Appleseed, whose mission it was to lay the basis for charting a grid across native lands for subsequent private expropriation and colonization by planting non-native arbors.
The US left has rarely understood the significance and importance of land, perhaps because it is so much in denial of the vast acreage of land that was and is stolen to create the US.
Those who believe corporations are a new arrival on the scene, or that German or Italian fascism was the only practitioner of corporatism until the WTO should remember that the corporate form was created in the world to carry out conquest and settler colonialism. the first corporations were the Hudson’s Bay Corporation, the British East India Corporation, and their like, chartered with limited liability to undertake the risks of colonialism and colonization.
The left needs to examine much more deeply its own absorption of the ruling ideas that help shape our world on-goingly toward empire.
Posted by Michael Novick on Jul 30, 2003 at 12:02 AM Good story.
However, I cannot help but imagine how the contributions of ideas, concepts and thoughts about “our” collective overall heritage would have been affected had full equality for those things been afforded to those denied.
As long as we limit the thorough excavation of the past, thus ignoring other potential outcomes, and denying other possibilities, the more the dark specter of ignorance clings to us and like the mythical “Tar Baby”—the more we deny it and the truth, the more we wallow and struggle in the dark home-made sink hole of barbarism.
It is getting late in the day...we should wake up.
Posted by George F. Sanders on Jul 31, 2003 at 6:22 AM Parenti’s article rightly decries Mr. Bowman’s anti-Semitism in the bureaucrat’s dealing with Jewish refugees. However when it comes to Isaiah Bowman’s opposition to establishing a Jewish State in “Palestine” he says that it was out of practical considerations and not out of anti-Semitism that he did so.
I find Parenti’s views on this issue unpersuasive. It’s difficult to see how one can ascribe a motive of anti-Semitism to Isaiah Bowman’s negative to Jewish refugees but not to the establishment of a Jewish State.
Racism, anti-Semitism is a negative emotion that distorts reality. To say that one can choose how and when he will distort reality is to say that these emotions can be turned on and off at will.
Either Mr. Parenti should stop calling Isaiah Bowman an anti-Semite or he should realize that the latter’s opposition to the Jewish State was motivated by same Judeophobia that animated his opposition to take in more refugees in our own country.
I know its chic these days to be against the Jewish State but the motivation for being so are no different today then they were in the 1940s.
Posted by jdyer on Aug 2, 2003 at 8:36 AM PNAC is our president. Bush was the electable, or should I say selectable face. Even James Baker, who came out of the woodwork during the Florida voting fisco is a PNAC boy.
The media mentions nothing.
Here is more on the subject:
http://tvnewslies.org/html/smoking_gun.html
Posted by Jesse on Aug 2, 2003 at 9:30 AM jdyer,
An anti-semite need not disagree with the Jews all the time. Smith’s argument seems to be that Bowman didn’t want the diaspora Jews to become too concentrated in too many different areas since he was afraid that this disproportionate influence would challenge American empire. Thus, Bowman was not entirely against the idea of having a nation where Jews, as a whole, would have relatively little influence over the affairs of other nations.ps What do you mean by your last comment? I hope you’re not implying that anyone who disagrees with Israel’s policies must be anti-semitic.
Posted by msmith on Aug 2, 2003 at 9:53 AM Michael N.,
I’ve seen this whole situation in the Middle East as a neo-Manifest Destiny and, once again, it’s fear being used to shape public opinion for support.I’ve read a bit about the Revolutionary War and I agree about the corporate aspect of it. Had most merchants profited by staying with England, it might have been a different story. England did everything wrong to push the colonies into rebellion. And if one wanted to get technical, the Boston Party and other acts commited against England were acts of terrorism.
I can’t say I agree about the left’s inability to see the horrific crimes of genocide and theft to take this country. It happens to this day in other countries.
You make some good points.
Posted by neil on Aug 12, 2003 at 7:11 AM To me the most important story is the failure of the regular media to report on the current administration’s drive toward World Empire and the growing number of Republicans shying away. The second most important story is the corperate owned press allowing liberal editorials (just opinion) but selecting and limiting the news (facts) reported with an iron hand.
Posted by Ed George on Aug 14, 2003 at 5:59 PM mahalo/thanks to iit for much needed coverage of ‘geography.’ sent copy to cousin teaching in l.a. and others. ryokan added to dialogue re america being the ‘chosen country’ which is a desperately needed analysis especially since this aspect of american deep culture operates on a subconscious level. ‘chosenness’ (a la john winthrop) led in 1893 to the overthrow of our hawaiian nation which parenti left out but m. novick mentions. globalization began in the rhine river nexus/french flanders area, in parts of the middle east, and in the po river delta area (venice). the key links in the foundation of globalization stretched from the calvinistic economies of northwest europe/england to boston via the e india co. and hudson bay. the deep culture of these expansionists used roman law to conquer/steal indigenous peoples lands and created harvards and yales to inculcate this roman law thinking throughout america so that in the 1840s a harvard trained lawyer, william lee, wrote the land law in hawai’i which enabled the legal theft of the indigenous hawaiian farmers/fisherpeoples basic resources. the descendants of these haole (foreigners) can trace their blood lineage back to the 1500s in europe when calivin began to expound his ideas on ultra fundamentalist hardline capitalism couched in religious terms. today in hawai’i nei, there is a growing sovereignty and independence movement to reclaim the nation and land back from these descendants of the rulers of the e india co. and from hudson bay who still control vast tracts of stolen land on our tiny island archipelago.
Posted by c. 'imiola young on Aug 23, 2003 at 3:09 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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