this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2024
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It may be my ignorance, but the history of the USA i know starts with the massacre of indigenous people, then goes to the massacre of black people, then the massacre of mexicans, the massacre of communists, then the massacre of vietnamese ppl, then iraqs and afhgans, and so on. Where is the part that inspires the idea that the USA has such great values?
You left out a bit. We also fought the British, and the Confederacy, and the Spanish, and the Kaiser, and the Nazis, and Imperial Japan.
America's history is complicated, and full of atrocities, like the history of nearly every major nation.
The values he's referring to in the comic are the core principles espoused in the founding documents. The idea of one nation with liberty and justice for all. At no point in history have those ideas been fully realized, but striving to meet those ideals is what America means to the Captain, not some borders on a map or colors on a flag.
But they were founded on the idea of the liberty of men... as long as they are white, protestant, male land-owners...
...which was remarkably liberal for its time.
Not really that liberal, compared to what the people they colonized were doing, before the europeans arrived.
Edit: Here's some notes on that claim
You are correct, actually. Not sure why you are downvoted. Several traditional tribal government structures of indigenous peoples were much more democratic in form.
However, besides the Iroquois Confederacy, it's hard to consider them as being sufficiently organised to be considered a state in the traditional sense. This isn't meant to exclude all indigenous governments; the Aztec, Mayan, and Inca civilisations were all examples of (non-democratic) highly organised states, especially in comparison to the North American tribes around and after European contact.
I don't think that being/having a state is necessary for a democratich governance. I don't know why you added that conditional.
It is not, but I think that discussion about democracy in cultures that don't organise themselves into states is very informative because those societies basically have to be democratic. A state apparatus that can enforce its will is what allows a state to be non-democratic in the first place. If there is no state, people who don't like it can just leave.
I kind of get your point. However, the state, as we knou it today is a relatively new invention. And the original idea of the post was that the US was founded on "enlightenment ideas", like democracy and such. This framing is very cynical, since the european upper class probably got those concepts from the native Americans which the US displaced/genocided.
Also: I'm an anarchist, so I'll guess you'll forgive that I'm not too fond of states. ;)
What an absolutely bizarre idea.
It's not that outlandish if a bit hyperbolic.
https://www.senate.gov/reference/resources/pdf/hconres331.pdf
The point is about the concepts of the European Enlightenment being derived from Native Americans (which is absurd), not that the Founding Fathers specifically understood and owe some debt to Native American forms of governance (which is controversial but mainstream and backed by evidence).
Are you suggesting that the native american tribes couldn't have had democratic societies? Why no[t?
I guess, you have some reading to do](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_democracy#Indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas)
I also suggest David Graeber's and David Wengrow's "The dawn of everything", if you're interested in the likely roots of US democracy.
No, I'm suggesting that the idea that the European Enlightenment era ideals of democracy were stolen from Native Americans because Europeans were too dumb to look at their own contemporary democratic societies and European history is fucking absurd.
Which contemporary democratic european societies do you mean, exactly? Which ones existed before the enlightenment?
Seriously, read the first few chapters of the dawn of everything. It's worth it.
Free Communes, guild-run city-states, peasant republics, the Swiss, Slavic Veche, Germanic Things, Diets, Parliaments, the Polish Commonwealth, the Hussites, Jesus fucking Christ.
Even if I'm a bit skeptical how "democratic" some of these were (since the prevalent ideology pre enlightenment in europe was that the demos wasn't actually capable of conducting policy) and how much e.g. germanic things of all things would have influenced central and western european thought that much (especially rince enlightenment philosophers usually referenced ancient greece - which actually didn't really favour our notion of democracy). I give you that democratic structures did partially exist in Europe.
I'm still a bit baffled that you would consider it ridiculous that native American thought didn't have any input on the enlightenment over 100 years after europe has discovered
Also: the native Americans were right there, the founding fathers knew of their great law of peace and the US congress has even passed a resolution on how that great law of peace had influenced the US constitution.
Yes, goodness me, how silly thinking that Germanic institutions might have influence on Central and Western Europe, which were filled with Germanic-derived states.
What.
Why would it? Ethnographic studies of Native Americans were not of considerable interest to European philosophers at the time. And certainly not accurate ones.
... did they? SOME of them practiced democratic forms of governance. But unless you're going to argue that the rationalist, social-contract style thinking of the Enlightenment was replicated amongst Native American tribes, I don't really know how much similarity there is in the thinking beyond the commonality of all democratic polities, in Africa, Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
Yes, I am well aware that the Founding Fathers knew about Native Americans and their forms of governance; that has very little to do with the Enlightenment-era ideals that predominated in the thinking and execution of the foundational documents of the USA.
Wait a second... are you suggesting that prussia could be considered a "germanic" country back then? Do you think they had things in saxony? Lol ^^
Our notion that democracy was spear-headed in athens is highly romanticized.
Ahem... "Philosophy is when you are uninterested in the biggest anthropological discovery of the last two centuries. The less interest you have, the more philosophic it is.".
Foreign culture is filtered through your own cultural lenses. Ever seen japanese media based on Goethe's Faust?
What? I thought it was...
Are you saying Prussia isn't a Germanic-derived state? Do I... do I have to educate you on Christian colonialism in Europe now too?
No, they had Diets.
... okay...?
Sorry that you were aware of early modern European racism two comments ago, but have seemingly entirely forgotten it now.
This you?
Because I'm pretty sure this is the third time I've mentioned that this is what I'm refuting. It's getting kind of tedious reminding you of what you just said a few comments ago. Are you even trying, or just keeping up the conversation so you don't have to confront how monumentally incorrect your statement was?
lol, things in Prussia, ok. ^^
Are you claiming the founding fathers weren't european?
This is what you said
But it seems to be too much to ask of you that you remember your own claims.
All seven were born and raised in the Americas.
Again, this is what YOU said
I can't believe I have to remind you of what you said over and over again, and that you still don't seem to recognize it. Do I need to underline it? Find a highlighter?
this u?
They were culturally still european, otherwise, your enlightenment point wouldn't make sense, either.
... yes...? That is me asking if you meant what you just said. Jesus Christ.
"Americans are not allowed to take from the European Enlightenment that I specifically cited as coming from Europe and which no serious historian doubts was instrumental in the thinking of the Founding Fathers and the founding documents of the US; an Enlightenment that arose independently of Native American polities and thinking - also something no serious academic disputes."
Okay buddy. We're done here.
Boy, they could use your strawman abilities in Gävle.
I disagree vehemently with the assertion that the state is a modern invention. Humans have organised themselves into states for the vast majority of human history. The earliest examples of writing were state records. In fact, to my knowledge, there are no ancient civilisations who (1) have developed writing and (2) did not organise themselves into states. Ancient Egypt, Sumner and Mesopotamia, Ancient China—all of the earliest known civilisations in recorded history—had states, the basic function of which has remained unchanged throughout history. They had rulers or bodies that created laws, collected taxes, raised armies to maintain their power and fight other states, and enforced their laws on their subjects.
While the Great Law of Peace of the Iroquois Confederacy was certainly known to the writers of the US Constitution, we know for a fact what their inspirations were, without needing to speculate, because they produced a large body of essays defending and explaining their reasoning. These are the Federalist Papers. You may have heard of them. We know that the writers draw inspiration from primarily European sources, such as the English Bill of Rights, the operation of the Roman Republic and of Athenian democracy, and of documents like the Magna Carta.
I'm sorry, but you are mixing state with form of government. The state was born as a concept with westafalia accord, not before that. And that is very very new
No, that's not true. The concept of Westphalian sovereignty was laid down and (somewhat) universally applied after the Peace of Westphalia. But there were plenty of states before that. The doctrine of Westphalian sovereignty amounts to nothing more than a statement that "each state should mind its own business".
By your definition, most of medieval Europe and imperial China were not states. The Roman Empire and the Roman Republic were not states, nor the Greek city-states, nor the Sumerian ones, nor Ancient Egypt, and many more. Even a cursory look at human history is incompatible with the notion that the concept of a state materialised after the Peace of Westphalia.
No, they were not.
They were forms of government that had important difference with what a state is. The monopoly in the use of force, for giving just one. To have a government force is not the same as to have a state that have monopoly of force in a land, that includes one.or.more nation and that is independent of the people that are part of the government class (as in group of people, not as in Marx/Weber concepts), that is why they are treated different and political science start studying state as it is from a westfalian order perspective and not from before that. Whit this I'm not saying there wasn't state like orders, but it wasn't state, in the same.way as atenean democracy was not a democracy as we understand it (for the Greeks, democracy was a perversion , actually)
Your definition of "state" is different from what most people consider a state to be.