georgeob1 wrote:Setanta has provided us with an engaging excursion into the 18th century history of eastern Canada, but completely ignored the fact that, unlike their counterparts in the thirteen colonies, the Canadians (Anglo and Habitant alike) chose not to revolt, and, each for his own reasons, to accept instead the benefits (to themselves) of the order the English provided - in both cases, at the cost of their freedom. My point stands.
"Chose not to revolt" is an amusingly interesting locution to use in regard to a population, largely comprised of
habitants, which was not armed, and which, unlike their counterparts to the south, had no militia, no militia experience (other than those who participated in Montcalm's expedition, almost twenty years before) and therefore no access to large quantities of fire arms and powder. That they chose not to revolt shows a good deal of common sense on their part. Prior to the arrival of the United Empire Loyalist, the English-speakers in Canada were a pitiful handful, and where found, were everywhere associated with the colonial administration, or the fur trade. Small wonder that they were unwilling to bite the hand which fed them.
Which is why i referred to the aftermath of the War of 1812; and especially the insurrections of the 1830's, when a much, much larger population, both anglophone and francophone (and including a truly dramatic rise in the proportion of anglophone members) did chose to revolt, did at least attempt to opt for freedom over order. However, i can understand that George is offended to have his silly pet theory denied, and therefore suggest that if my "pedantry" offend his eye, let him pluck it out.
Setanta-
I gave the two examples merely to point up the possible lack of veracity of historians in depicting past events.One ancient and one today as book ends.That's all that meant.I'm surprised you thought I meant more than that or,what is more relevant,I'm surprised you think fellow threaders would be confused by my remarks.I have read Tacitus and have most of his works in my library.I have also plenty of other stuff contradicting his interpretations of the events and the sources from which he drew his information.
But I'll grant you I'm not a historian.I do know stuff which calls into question most of the past record on the basis which I suggested.Some historians of note trust no documents.
I cannot possibly imagine how you could even entertain the slightest suspicion that I might think Tacitus had anything to say on any aspect of Canadian history.He wouldn't have even known of the existence of that land mass as you well know.
If you trust Canadian historians that is your affair.
I have a more sceptical nature it seems.That is not to say they are wrong.It is merely the way I look at things.If you don't respect that I regret it.
I happen to think that Napoleon,about whom I have read a great deal,was something of an idiot and seems to have been treated as such by my forebears in his exile.Stendahl,one of my chief mentors,was on the trip to Moscow with the great man and although he gives few details he does provide jocular hints here and there in his extensive writings.Maybe Bayle was bitter about not receiving what he thought his due.
I agree that history is a very interesting and informative area of study and,I confess,provides an endless source of entertainment as,if I may say so,does debating with you.
I found the post we are discussing useful,as I did the one on the river system leading down to the so sadly stricken area on your south coast which I have watched on Fox as much as I can.That is history in the making and in the raw.Tacitus would have needed 100,000 pages just to convey a dilute account of what I have seen in the past two days.So I can easily imagine a great deal of the stuff he left out just as I can imagine how much the Canadian historians left out.
Lastly,I think you do your cause no service by using pejoritive words about fellow posters.We are all ignorant of many things and often they are things which are pertinent to any discussion on almost any subject to those who look for a fuller picture close to the human scale on the ground.Mr Mailer wears his historical research for Ancient Evenings very lightly in his wonderful attempt to do just that and Gustave Flaubert in his Salammbo makes his five years of hard grind into life in Catharge entirely disappear.
With all due respect I think your writing capacities,admirable though they are,would benefit from a similar technique.And so would everybody else's.
I know I am ignorant of the ID controvesy as it applies in the US but I do know something about it in general.Once again my approach to it is different from yours.That is something you can just as easily benefit from as I can from your take there in the thick of it.But it is humans in dispute and when that happens I always place women and money in the forefront as I have learned they usually are.
It is that sort of approach which leads me to think that your problems on the coast are much more serious than the news suggests.I hope I am wrong.
Had I had a bet with Thomas I would hope to lose it.I can see the ripples.I listen to what those officials say and how they say it.
It is possible that ID is a necessary thing in some places and other ideas are necessary elsewhere.I think that is a price of having a Union of disparate entities.If you and I can live without a God it doesn't mean everybody can.You have wonderful institutions to hold the ring.Let's hope they do so.
Edited to end thread diversion, and personal exchanges.
Spendius, you think your way, and i'll think mine. Please have the courtesy to address no posts to me, and i will reciprocate. I of course understand that any member is free to comment on any other member's offering--i ask this as a courtesy.
Spendius,
I have often thought that Stendahl's unforgettable male characters, Julien Sorel and Fabbrizio were, at least partly modeled on either Napoleon or the characteristics of the class of 'young men in a hurry' who were attracted to (or merely exploited) the post reolutionary turmoil.
Napoleon was no fool, at least on the ordinary scale of human endeavor. As a minimum he was a far more successful version of the Sun King than was the original. His failure was the failure of enlightenment rational authotitarianism in conflict with relatively democratic pragmatism.
George
I also think that Napoleon was no fool.He pursued his idiotic path with great skill,intelligence and zeal.
And he lost bigtime and died embittered.As did Hitler who pursued an idiotic path with remarkable talent.
Have you read Lucien Leuwen.I find it superior to the Sorel story much as I admire that.It is a sad loss to literature that Bayle didn't last long enough to complete it.Self indulgent living probably.When he had his first funny turn his doctor advised a Vegan diet.So they knew then.
I can't imagine why my previous post has caused Setanta to stop speaking to me.I thought it quite reasonable and in someways complimentary.The response I got,however,does give me some idea of why this ID debate is conducted in the way it is.
Setanta is an interesting guy with admirable knowledge of history & culture; a gift for wonderful prose when he takes the trouble; a very agreeable finger-in-your-eye sense of humor when the spirit moves him; and, at other times cursed with an extremely low threshold of indignation. We too have exchanged similar barbs, including the resolution to address one another no more. I have always chosen to focus on the former virtues and ignore the rest, and I have been rewarded for it.
I think Set is pure Celt - a mixture of dour, sensitive Scot, always ready to take offense; and Irish, blessed with lyric sensibilities, too much knowledge for his own good, and a fine, if a bit combative (a vice he shares with me), sense of hiumor. Wait 'till the dark side passes, and then engage him again.
He has a hot temper, but doesn't stay angry. Correspondingly, I find it very easy to get pissed at him, but hard to stay that way.
On Stendhal - I have read "On Love", "Lamiel", "The Red and the Black", and "Charterhouse of Parma". Not sure about "lucien Lewen" - Is that the title of the Novel? I'll look it up.
Here is a 120 year old piece on Napoleon by the American Iconoclast, Robert Ingersoll. A bit melodramatic and dated, but a favorite nevertheless. Though I take a more sympathetic view of old Nappy.
AFTER VISITING THE TOMB OF NAPOLEON
by Robert G. Ingersoll
A little while ago I stood by the grave of Napoleon, a magnificent tomb of gilt and gold, fit almost for a dead deity, and gazed upon the sarcophagus of black Egyptian marble where rests at last the ashes of the restless man. I leaned over the balustrade and thought about the career of the greatest soldier of the modern world.
I saw him walking upon the banks of the Seine contemplating suicide; I saw him at Toulon; I saw him putting down the mob in the streets of Paris; I saw him at the head of the army of Italy; I saw him crossing the bridge at Lodi with the tricolor in his hand; I saw him in Egypt in the shadows of the pyramids; I saw him conquer the Alps and mingle the eagle of France with the eagles of the crags. I saw him at Marengo, at Ulm and Austerlitz. I saw him in Russia, where the infantry of the snow and the cavalry of the wild blast scattered his legions like winter's withered leaves. I saw him at Leipsic in defeat and disaster, driven by a million bayonets back upon Paris, clutched like a wild beast, banished to Elba. I saw him escape and retake an Empire by the force of his genius. I saw him upon the frightful field of Waterloo, when chance and fate combined to wreck the fortunes of their former king. And I saw him at St. Helena, with his hands crossed behind him, gazing out upon the sad and solemn sea.
I thought of the orphans and widows he had made; of the tears that had been shed for his glory and of the only woman who had ever loved him pushed from his heart by the cold hand of ambition.
And I said I would rather have been a French peasant and worn wooden shoes. I would rather have lived in a hut with a vine growing over the door and the grapes growing purple in the kisses of the autumn sun. I would rather have been that poor peasant with my loving wife by my side, knitting as the day died out of the sky, with my children upon my knee and their arms about me. I would rather have been that man and gone down to the tongueless silence of the dreamless dust than to have been that imperial impersonation of force and murder known as Napoleon the Great.
And so I would ten thousand times.
.
I do so love to be the object of jesuitical, ultramontane analysis . . . especially by an Hibernophobe Hibernian . .
George-
That post made all the trouble and strife of joining A2K worthwhile.
It is a wondrous thing to have been taught by priests.I wish I could explain how it was done.Osmosis maybe.Or possibly indignation being worn out by 18.
Setanta wrote:I do so love to be the object of jesuitical, ultramontane analysis . . . especially by an Hibernophobe Hibernian . .
Goddam, now its "Jesuitical ultramontane" !
Hell, it wasn't analysis at all: just my impressions of one of the several colorful, memorable characters who have evolved from the primordial slime, evidently with no aid from a benevolent (if not intelligent) designer.
Now where do you get that "Hibernophobe" bit? I'll acknowledge that the alliterative value alone would justify it (at least to me). However, I'll not willingly let the idea stand that I somehow fear or reject my cultural and spiritual roots.
I have on several occasions concluded that both you and Spendius were either nuts or simply offensive or both. Happily I did not act on those impressions and was later rewarded for it. I suppose it is conceivable that you too have had a similar experience with me.
George-
No.I'm sorry to disappoint.I never once considered you nuts.But you are in a large group if you considered me nuts.Which is not very elitist.In fact it is downright common.
You misspelled goddamn . . .
setanta wrote:neither will i ignore your attempt to suggest you are the innocent victim of unprovoked attacks
I make no attempt to suggest that I am the victim of unprovoked attacks. I brought the whole thing up to point out the contradiction in what you said in your post. As I have said before:
adele_g wrote:I simply found it amusing that in the same post that you discussed the slim possibility of you even reading a post not directed to you, you mentioned one of mine that you replied to unsolicited.
setanta wrote:Your failure to find said posts is no fault of mine. I don't care to clutter the thread,....This was followed by your post 1533576, in which you first quote the final half of the last paragraph of my post 1533179, and then two sentences at the beginning my post 1532821:
I am confused as to why you would clutter the post with two copies of posts between yourself and Elsie when neither of them are the posts that you referred to above. When I said I couldn't find the post of Elsie's that you replied to, I was referring to the post below and whatever post it was in response to, not some random exchange between the two of you.
Quote:setanta wrote: I find it significant to see the desparation with which IDers attack evolutionary thoory. Were one comfortable in one's belief, in one's faith--one shouldn't feel threatened by scientific research which only seems to contradict the core theses of one's dogma. I strongly suspect that those who put so much energy into discrediting evolutionary theory, and who make the specious claim that science is out to "disprove" the existence of god--are people with sufficient intelligence to see the flaws in adherence to dogma based on folk tales from millenia ago, and they object so strenuously in order not to be obliged to face their own doubt.
Then again, maybe not . . .
If you were so desparate for me not to reply to this, perhaps you should have addressed it to someone and we could have avoided this tedious discourse.
That is ludicrous. I was sublimely unaware of your existence when i wrote that post, and at all events, the thought that you would comment would not have altered my decision to post it.
Once again, you have no support for a contention that i've been trying to pick a fight with you, given that you chose to comment on posts of mine which were not addressed to you and did not mention you.
setanta wrote:I was sublimely unaware of your existence when i wrote that post
If you were so sublimely unaware at that time, why did you reply to my post to Lola 10 pages before?
setanta wrote:Someone new will show up with the same shop-worn arguments, false claims, half-truths and misrepresentations, and anyone with the energy and the time to dispute them will be obliged to go through the list once again. It grows tedious.
I have had my recent arrival on the thread referred to many times and by many people. Do you think that somehow, this referrence to 'new' people on the thread could have seemed like it could have been implicitly referring to me too. This is the way I took it, and therefore, both of my posts were in response to ones that were either implicitly directed to me or the general forum community. If I misunderstood, and you were not also referring to me, fair enough, but at the time I thought that you were. Happy?
adele_g wrote:You know what, I don't think I ever intentionally engaged in conversation with you setanta. The only times I have replied to you have been when you comment on my posts to other people, and more recently your comments about me to other people.
I went to the trouble of posting the sequence of posts reference numbers to demonstrate that this was not a true statement. You then stated that you hadn't seen the post by Elsie_T to which i had referred. So i went to the trouble of copying the relevant posts in the series,
in order to demonstrate that i had not commented on your posts to other people or made comments about you to other people, but that you did thereafter quote two of my posts and comment on them. The point was to thereby demonstrate that not only is the post above which you made false, but, that this:
Quote:I never picked a fight with you setanta, if anything, you picked one with me.
Is a contention for which you have no case. Now, however, you want to contend that in speaking of the arrival of new members in such a thread in a general way, you are justified in asserting that it refers to you. Even though there had been no exchange of posts, and you had not made a post for more than ten pages. Your position just gets weaker and weaker.
Basically, you're just hacked-off because i won't show what you consider to be appropriate respect to your imaginary, invisible friend. You need to get over it.
That's much better, George . . . i'm sure the shades of the Jesuit brothers rest easier now, knowing that you have made the appropriate effort to correct your error.
setanta wrote:So i went to the trouble of copying the relevant (?) posts in the series, in order to demonstrate that i had not commented on your posts to other people or made comments about you to other people, but that you did thereafter quote two of my posts and comment on them. (emphasis added)
I think where you went wrong here, setanta, was to copy irrelevant posts. I made comment on none of the posts that you 'went to the trouble of copying'. If you wanted to post relevant posts, you could have copied the ones that I actually replied to.
setanta wrote:I went to the trouble of posting the sequence of posts reference numbers to demonstrate that this was not a true statement.
Sure you went to the trouble, but you got them wrong. You didn't mention one of the two posts that I replied to.
setanta wrote:you did thereafter quote two of my posts and comment on them.
That I did, but as I have said before, one of them was addressed to the general forum community and the other, I felt, was implicitly directed at me. And so I felt it was you who started it, and therefore:
Quote:I never picked a fight with you setanta, if anything, you picked one with me.
setanta wrote:there had been no exchange of posts, and you had not made a post for more than ten pages.
You say there had been no exchange of post and then mention our exchange 10 pages prior? The same exchange that you initiated? Sounds a little fishy to me.
setanta wrote:Basically, you're just hacked-off because i won't show what you consider to be appropriate respect to your imaginary, invisible friend.
Amusing but wrong. This has nothing to do with that. In fact I think this whole exchange started with another one of your posts to no one that in this case, more explicitly begged to be answered by either Elsie or me:
setanta wrote:The "usual suspects" in this thread post in a wide variety of fora, on many topics. They also make friends online, and frequently arrange to meet in person. Their tastes and interests are patently catholic. However, this site is also frequently by the likes of Miss Elsie and Miss Adele, who arrive at this thread, and post only in this thread, and having quickly deployed ridicule of others, cry bloody murder when treated in like kind. Then Miss Adele indulges in special pleading for her superstition of choice. As with those who arrive here only to post in the political forum, or the religious forum, and display an obsession with a single message, it is difficult not to conclude that such members only object in coming here was to mercilessly flog their preferred dead horse.
Setanta wrote:That's much better, George . . . i'm sure the shades of the Jesuit brothers rest easier now, knowing that you have made the appropriate effort to correct your error.
They do indeed. However they're sore about that ultramontane bit: that's for the Dominicans.
I refuse to be drawn into the internecine struggles of bands highly-educated, obsessional people who only have in common the same imaginary friend.
