IS AMERICA A BULLY?

@Frank Apisa,

This ("my") professor used his knowledge differently: he got the worldwide patent for an "baby-anti-night-peeing-apparatus" (which was actually just an alarm bell).

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@Foofie,

Quote:

Tell me a Catholic country in Europe where Jews feel comfortable enough to voice any dissonant opinions

Protestants were not less antisemitic than the Catholics. Luther's "The Jews and Their Lies" displayed a rabid level of hatred, and led to mass expulsion of Jews from a number of German states. Jews had been banned from England as early as the 13th century, when England was still catholic, but the ban remained in force when they parted way with Rome, way into the 18th century I think.

So much so that papal states became a refuge for Jews of Europe, around 1400-early renaissance. The first Talmud print, the famous Soncino, was printed in the town of Soncino, then part of the Italian papal states, and it could not have been printed anywhere else. In France, the city of Carpentras, part of the papal states, became a center of Jewish presence, trade and scholarship around the same period.

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@Olivier5,

Actually, it was the way immigrated German Jews worked which helped to allay English prejudices against the Jews in the 18th century Wink

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Jews had been banned from England as early as the 13th century, when England was still catholic, but the ban remained in force when they parted way with Rome, way into the 18th century I think.

What you think is wrong. Jews were readmitted into England in 1656, under Cromwell. Mid 17th Century, not "way into the 18th century."

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@izzythepush,

Yes, Cromwell tried to get them back in, but he failed, no? Couldn't get the parliament to vote the law or something. Maybe a few came then.

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@Olivier5,

Quote:

a small colony of Sephardic Jews living in London was identified in 1656 and allowed to remain.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_England

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@izzythepush,

Yes, a few hundreds who came under Cromwell were allowed to stay but that's a bit anecdotal.

From your link:

Quote:

Jew Bill of 1753
Main article: Jewish Naturalization Act 1753
The Jewish Naturalization Act received royal assent on 7 July 1753 but was repealed in 1754 due to widespread opposition to its provisions.[15]

During the Jacobite rising of 1745, the Jews had shown particular loyalty to the government. Their chief financier, Samson Gideon, had strengthened the stock market, and several of the younger members had volunteered in the corps raised to defend London. Possibly as a reward, Henry Pelham in 1753 brought in the Jew Bill of 1753, which allowed Jews to become naturalized by application to Parliament. It passed the Lords without much opposition, but on being brought down to the House of Commons, the Tories made a great outcry against this "abandonment of Christianity", as they called it. The Whigs, however, persisted in carrying out at least one part of their general policy of religious toleration, and the bill was passed and received the royal assent (26 Geo. II., cap. 26).

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@Olivier5,

It still established a population. We had Disraeli, you had the Dreyfus affair.

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@izzythepush,

Oh please! Not another Anglo-French peeing contest...

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@Olivier5,

You started it, as you did the last one, and I'm not interested. Foofie's done what he always does, and turns every thread into a discussion about him. It's the only subject he knows anything about.

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Apparently the Jews were treated horrible by everybody and have good reason to the feelings of (not sure how to put this) resentment over it.

Getting back to subject at hand, I don't feel we are particularly bullish towards other countries, I thought we were on that road under the previous administration with the "with us or against" mentality, but I honestly don't think this administration pushes its weight around. At least I haven't seen it.

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@izzythepush,

I'm interested in a historical discussion of Dreyfus, but 1) we should move it to another thread; and 2) not a peeing contest about who treated 'his Jews' best, France of the UK. That'd be gross.

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

A more important question would be: is America becoming some sort of 'soft fascist' state, where the people is controlled while being given the illusion of freedom and democracy. There are indications that it is turning a corner: Gitmo, NSA, the rising inequalities...

This is dead on accurate, although it has nothing to do with being a bully to other countries. It should also be said that the same applies to most countries. Personally, I want the erosion of freedom to stop.

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@Brandon9000,

Quote:

This is dead on accurate, although it has nothing to do with being a bully to other countries. It should also be said that the same applies to most countries. Personally, I want the erosion of freedom to stop.

I could not agree more. Democracy is under attack everywhere, eroded everywhere.

As I see it, the thread question is moot and dated: of course every world power has pushed hard for its own national interest, historically, as long as and as much as it COULD. And so maybe the US WAS a bully before, behaved as one during, say, the toppling of Allende or Mosadegh or the Vietnam war, but this era is over. The US dominance is severely eroded, too. America can't afford to be a bully anymore. I think we'll agree that the last try, Iraq, was an unmitigated disaster. Obama's careful if not timid foreign policy is a direct consequence of this loss of geopolitical influence.

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@Walter Hinteler,

Walter Hinteler wrote:

Actually, I don't feel uncomfortable with the German past - I just can't understand how it could have happened. And that makes me more than uncomfortable.
(I suppose, I can guess how it happened - and therefore I try to do all what I can that similar doesn't happen again.)

Since every country has a population of sociopaths, the question might be what makes utilizing their qualities suddenly of value? I'd still start with the Versailles Treaty. Also, President Wilson did not have the ability to lessen the vindictiveness of the Versailles Treaty, perhaps, due to his desire to birth his "baby," the League of Nations. And, lastly, the French collective character might give added meaning to the word, "schadenfreude."

One can also blame the Anglophilia of Wilson, since he wanted so much to join the war. According to an author of a newish book, the U.S., if it didn't enter the war, the adversaries would have eventually had a no-one-wins armistice, and there would likely have been no Second World War.

One can even say, perhaps, that if there had been a 17th century Bismarck, unifying Germany a century earlier, Germany would have already made its mark on the world stage, or is that just fanciful thinking?

I have read that WWI was really fought to crush the Ottoman Empire, so the industrialization of the 20th century would not have to rely on one source of oil. Does that mean that Germany was betting on a long shot, by being the ally of the Ottoman Empire? Turkey never really recovered from their former glorious days, I would guess?

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

It still established a population. We had Disraeli, you had the Dreyfus affair.

Touche!

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@Foofie,

Foofie wrote:

One can even say, perhaps, that if there had been a 17th century Bismarck, unifying Germany a century earlier, Germany would have already made its mark on the world stage, or is that just fanciful thinking?

That would have been two centuries earlier ... and 'legally' Germany was unified until 1806.

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@izzythepush,

izzythepush wrote:

You started it, as you did the last one, and I'm not interested. Foofie's done what he always does, and turns every thread into a discussion about him. It's the only subject he knows anything about.

Don't forget my years in the natural habitat of WASP's. The Upper Class WASP is a particularly interesting denizen of the U.S.. They play an interesting game that is a knock-off of the British model of class. Taken very seriously, a young WASP will introduce himself with the possible second sentence telling another what his father does for his livelihood.

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@revelette2,

revelette2 wrote:

Apparently the Jews were treated horrible by everybody and have good reason to the feelings of (not sure how to put this) resentment over it.

I believe "resentment" is totally incorrect. It is more like a contempt for a world that tolerates a fairly low bar for its masses, in my opinion, other than a few groups that maintain a high bar for it adherents (i.e., academia, Episcopaleans).

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@Olivier5,

Olivier5 wrote:

Oh please! Not another Anglo-French peeing contest...

The Jews in western Europe were a drop in the bucket to the number of Jews the Czar had in his Pale of Settlement. The main migration of Jews to the U.S. were Jews from Czarist Russia, and Russia still had five, or so, million after they left.

The Russian Jews are the tacticians in Israel. The German Jews the shop owners in Tel-Aviv. The Sephardic Jews the civil servants. An obvious generalization, but with a grain of truth, in my opinion. And, while they are all Israelis, their prior "selective breeding" elsewhere did seem to leave an ability for a specialty niche. By the way, the first migration of Jews to the U.S. was small, Sephardim that came from Holland, via the Inquisition. The next migration of German Jews, after the Revolution of 1848, was larger, but maybe half married into Christian families in a generation or two. The largest migration came from Czarist Russia in the late 19th century. They were originally looked down upon by the German Jews, and sometimes called "wild eyed Asiatics." They came in a virtual tsunami, and turned some cities into oddities with these foreigners babbling in Yiddish. But their children assimilated. Most U.S. Jews today are of Russian descent, and well intermarried with the lesser group of Polish Jews (also under the Czar in the 19th century). They might be pro-Israeli; however, the only country their families came from was just a hostile host, for all intensive purposes. They only feel American. They have no home country to look back to fondly. Sort of like American Blacks.

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IS AMERICA A BULLY?

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