As ever - Grim is worth your time: The question is therefore not why the age of genocide has returned, but why it ever stopped. The answer is that there was a brief window of history in which Western Christian states were the chief world powers, and those states had developed a religious and philosophical tradition of restraining wars violence against noncombatants. They wrote the rules of this tradition into the laws that are supposed to govern violence in our world, and they did something to enforce them or live by them. They failed at times -- especially the Germans did during the Nazi period, but there were other failures including our own treatment of certain American Indians -- but as a civilization they believed in these rules as if they were laws, and were willing to pay a cost to make them real. They believed in it so much that they wrote their laws as if civilization itself was synonymous with this traditions understanding, though no such tradition existed in much older civilizations elsewhere. They used their power to compel, urge, bribe, or coerce the most of the world into signing documents attesting to these principles they called laws. True belief in these principles, though, was not as widely shared as the signatures would suggest. The reason that the age of genocide has returned is not that the West has ceased to believe, although much of it has, but that it has ceased to be strong, or willing to pay a cost. For decades the last true force of the civilization belonged to America, with a few brave warriors from allied nations though those nations as a whole increasingly voted against strength. When the American people chose the same path, the return of genocide was inevitable. Thats not the whole thing - you owe it to yourself to click the link and read the whole thing. And if you arent willing to - probably ought to keep your opinion to yourself, vice splat it out. Resist the Internets bad habits.
Posted on: Fri, 08 Aug 2014 17:53:18 +0000
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