It never stops to amaze me the doublethinking necessary to simultaneously believe that "colonization is bad and Africa is war-torn because of the arbitrarily drawn borders by Western powers" and "multiculturalism for the West is a great idea".
Why? The problem with colonization is that it disrupted the holistic growth of national communities like we experienced in XVIII to XIX century. We've "grown up" since then, recognising the competitive advantage of exploiting talents regardless of cultural provenance; but we couldn't do the latter without going through the former process and recognising its limits. Colonised countries were blocked from experiencing a similar process.
No doublethink involved, as long as you see history as a continuum, rather than believing in a fixed set of norms (typically your own, no offense) as an absolute ideal "best" transcending space and time.
> The problem with colonization is that it disrupted the holistic growth of national communities
The same with immigration, then. Psychologically is even worse maybe, because instead of an overtly foreign power coming to conquer your land it's your own very government selling your society.
Mass-immigration in Europe didn't happen until late XX century, when national identities were entirely fully-formed and indeed brought upon us the disastrous World Wars. The cosmopolitan worldview that approves of melting-pots was born in response to the terrible failure of nationalism, which "we" experienced to the fullest.
> it's your own very government selling your society.
It's as much "your" government as it is mine, and I don't feel like they're selling anything, in this particular case.
If you think freedom of movement is bad, do you think capital should also be controlled? If not, why should money be free to flow, but not people? To artificially create "salary jails" to exploit? If you assume that money should move to maximize its potential, then the same should be allowed for people, surely?
Freedom of movement and freedom of enterprise are amongst the highest achievements of human civilization, which we paid for with millions of deaths in the XX and XIX century.
> The cosmopolitan worldview that approves of melting-pots was born in response to the terrible failure of nationalism, which "we" experienced to the fullest.
History hasn't ended up yet. I think we're going to see how far the string can be tensed, and whether that multi-culti "solution" isn't the genesis of new strife. Things aren't looking bright.
> If you think freedom of movement is bad, do you think capital should also be controlled?
Actually yes, in moderation. I used to lean libertarian, but not anymore. But that's another talk.
> then the same should be allowed for people, surely?
Why? Capital at least doesn't behead you, people do.
This is off topic, but what is up with the Roman numerals when referring to centuries?
I tried googling it but came up empty. I can't find any authoritative source for this being a thing in any particular dialect of English and at least one person I've seen using this was a native Russian speaker. Google results only indicate that this is common in Spanish and maybe Polish.
Am I missing something? Is this a thing in American or British academia? Is it part of some popular newspaper's house styles? As a non-native speaker I find this incredibly peculiar.
I'm actually Italian; that's the standard way to refer to centuries in Italian academia, and I believe it's common across the EU. It's probably linked to traditional research usage by Catholic scholars writing in Latin. It's also much more concise: XIX would become "diciannovesimo" in Italian...
Pretty much. Which makes me look at all the worries about native Americans and such and the complaints about their land being taken/their customes being ignored and wonder what the big deal even is. Every culture in history has conquered and been conquered. The UK has been conquered by tons of groups, yet we don't see people complaining about the actions of the Romans, or the Vikings, or the Anglo-Saxons, or the Normans, or anyone else. The hypocrisy about all this kind of confuses me.
And before then the Saxons. And it's worth bearing in mind the Roman soldiers in Britain weren't all of Italian peninsular extraction. Many of them were levies from places all over the Empire, including the regions of the Middle East and North Africa from which many of the current wave of migrants also originate. It's hard to believe that absolutely none of them left a genetic legacy behind.
