I can certainly see the genealogy thing -- I'm a mutt from a passle of mutts, so it didn't take hold. I don't mean to disparage my ancestry -- as far as I know most were good folk, just not well-bred. It probably would have helped if somebody could have pointed out a spectacularly illustrious ancestor to me, but then again, maybe not. Go back ten generations and we all have over a thousand blood relations. Lots of possibilities for kings/philosophers/thugs in a group that large. I like the story of your grandfather's name. Cool. Given a choice, my mom probably would have named me after Errol Flynn. She had some serious hots for Errol Flynn. Dad wouldn't have permitted it -- whew -- I'm glad I didn't have to spend my life trying to live up to that one!
I wonder what it means to have almost no emotional connection to one's name. First wife adopted my surname, though I offered to adopt hers. Second wife didn't (we lived together 18 years before becoming official, so it obviously didn't mean much). "Rexknobus" is a childhood nickname; I use my birth name day-to-day without much thought. But when I write a book, I use a pseudonym. That pseudonym actually takes on a bit of his own identity in web sites and publicity material. No lies, but a different slant on the same bio.
So why did I grow up completely unattached to my own name? No idea. It drives my wife crazy when she gets mail addressed to "Femrex Rexknobus" as opposed to her own surname. And it doesn't register to at all to me when I'm addressed as "Mr. Femrex."
Kazzy -- sorry for a bit of a late response and even more sorry for the "special snowflake" swing here, but I just remembered a thing that fits into this conversation somewhat (mostly as a possible insight into a film producer's mind).
Years ago I wrote a feature script about one of the scout/hunters on the Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery -- a very interesting fellow named John Colter. The script got well circulated, then died, and years passed. My phone rang one night and it was a producer who had gotten hold of the script and loved it. He only had one problem: "Listen, I know this is crazy, but I've got Meryl Streep on option -- is there any way this can be re-written to star Meryl Streep?"
In his defense, he was pretty embarrassed to be asking -- and of course she isn't really perfect casting for a mountain man circa 1808. But he had the tools he had to work with and he felt he had to try. I don't have much sympathy for bigotry, but the pressure of making a film profitable can take people down strange roads. (For some reason that made me think of John Wayne portraying Genghis Khan -- hopefully we've moved a bit past that!)
Tod - for what it's worth, I'm a great Idris Elba fan, but when he appeared on screen in "Thor" I had a half second of "Cool! Idris!", then a half second of "Wait a minute! A black Norse god?", followed immediately by a whole lot of "Cool! Idris!" I honestly think that the producers probably took that sort of reaction into consideration, figuring that most of their audience would only feel a slight hiccup, and then would be pleased with the choice.
Cast a white guy like, say, Woody Allen or Jonah Hill as Heimdall and the "hiccup" would become much larger -- insurmountable.
A similar hiccup when I first saw a preview with Will Smith playing West. Not because of anything relating to the TV show, but because I knew that the character as portrayed by Smith couldn't have appeared in the real West. Of course, neither could a 100 foot tall steam-driven spider. Minor hiccup, and then on with the show...
The race thing is difficult because it is so immediately visually apparent. It's no problem to cast an actor of average intelligence to play Einstein. Plenty of actors playing action heroes have never seen any action. Cast Daniel Day Lewis as Malcolm X and Denzel Washington as Abraham Lincoln and I'll buy a ticket to see both films, if only because of the interesting "stunt" casting -- but put Mr. Lewis in blackface or Mr. Washington in whiteface to play the roles and I, at least, would be offended.
One of the executive producers of "Alien" told me that when he and his partner wrote the original script, they wrote the part of Ripley for Richard Dreyfuss. Dreyfuss didn't work out, but Sigourney Weaver did and, according to him, they didn't change the dialog a bit.
It's not a very good movie, but an old action flick, "Remo Williams - The Adventure Begins," had an absolutely tone-perfect and award-caliber performance by Joel Grey as an Asian martial artist. I can certainly imagine Bruce or Jet or even Toshiro in the role, but they wouldn't have done it any better.
Similarly, Linda Hunt as the male, black (in the book anyway), Chinese dwarf, Billy Kwan, in "In The Year of Living Dangerously."
And there's always Ossie Davis as JFK in "Bubba Ho-Tep" ;)
I guess for me there's some real gray area in here, with a preference toward: "You want Chinese? Cast Chinese!" But it's only a preference.
"The dominance of white actors was a function of racism, not storytelling."
Oh, absolutely. We had to slowly build from Woody Strode to James Edwards to finally get to Sidney Poitier in the 60s.
In your last sentence, I think the word "won't" is the killer. If a producer "won't" hire an Asian for whatever reason, that's a big problem. If a producer likes the way a white actor plays the part better than an Asian actor plays it (even if the part is Asian) and decides that the non-alignment is less important than the performance, I can at least understand it. Is it right? Hmmmm, rather a gray area...
From a certain perspective nearly *all* non-white actors are playing traditionally white roles today -- go back a few decades and you won't find any lead roles (or even many significant secondary roles) going to persons of color. Any movie starring Denzel or Will today would have starred Charlton or Clark within living memory (at least my living memory!).
John Ford included actual Native Americans in many of his westerns, but as far as I can remember, never in speaking roles. The actor playing speaking Native-American roles were invariably of Latin or Italian descent. Was he ahead of his time for casting the background players from the actual racial stock back in the 50's, or was he a bigot for not giving them lines? I have no idea.
Expanding the field slightly, there's the play "Frankie and Johnny in the Clare de Lune," which was about two lower-class, not particularly attractive people finding each other. On stage the roles were originated by F. Murray Abraham and Kathy Bates. The film "Frankie and Johnny" starred Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer -- playing two not particularly attractive people (!). It's a good film and they do a fine job. But their casting isn't really on the money.
It comes down to utility. What will work? In 1950 an African American lead simply wouldn't work in a mainstream film; now it will. The characters in Mulan are overwhelmingly Chinese, but the casting is open to *all* Asian nationalities. It's the appearance that counts. I am completely sympathetic to your friend's ire, but would they similarly object to a Korean playing a Chinese role? Or a Cantonese speaker playing a Mandarin speaker, etc., etc.
If the producers do their job right, they will hire the best person for the role -- however that might work out.
I think back 60 years to 1953 (I am a toddler, but this is still within my lifespan). A survey is circulated asking for predictions (in this survey "Never" is a permitted answer):
When will:
- smoking be outlawed in bars and restaurants nation-wide
- there be a Negro (sorry, it's 1953) president
- your entire music library can fit onto a postage stamp that you can listen to privately on the bus.
- rayguns correct your vision
- everyone have a personal walkie-talkie that receives/transmits sound and pictures world-wide instantly.
- computers became smaller than buses and every automobile and wristwatch has at least one
- rayguns cook your dinner
- dirty movies outsell Hollywood
- that walkie-talkie with the pictures doo-dad can now hold all your books, too
any more?
(and, back to the topic at hand, I am certain that x years in the future, children will be looking at the evidence of fossil fuel burning and cry out: "But, Daddy, didn't they know?" "Yes, honey, they knew, but they would not, could not stop." We will be seen as villainous and backwards as slave-owners.)
FWIW -- I just finished reading Margaret MacMillan's "Paris 1919," a book about the boundary negotiations and re-drawings in the months after World War I. A really well-written look at an attempt to set the world right after a massive cataclysm, and the less than ideal results of that attempt. A very good read.
First off, after a few hours, I regretted using the harsh "bs" and wish I had typed "nonsense" instead. Sorry.
Second, I obviously don't get your mind at all. If you can equate a neighbor frying fish and parking in the street to having a McDonalds next door...well, we're just on different pages.
Dodging. My examples were "Jiffy Lube," "McDonalds," and "lube shop."
But I shouldn't dodge either. I would object to my neighbor tearing down his house and building a Jiffy Lube franchise. I fully support the government interference that keeps him from doing so. The difference between that and preferring to not have a black neighbor seems incredibly obvious to me -- but it amounts to noise pollution, smell pollution, traffic pollution, aesthetic pollution, etc. Show me a chart that measures those sorts of things and that also shows me that a black man moving into the house next door to me measures about the same (to use your notion) on the same chart and, by golly, I'll object to the black man as well. But since in all likelihood the black man is not going to have anywhere near the same effect on the neighborhood as a Jiffy Lube franchise or a McDonalds, then there is no objection. I'm not even stating that I am not a racist. Perhaps I really hate the thought of a black man moving in next door to me -- but I am not silly enough to think that his effect will be anything at all like the effect of the franchises that your notions would permit to come into my neighborhood.
"Your preference that your neighbour not set up an auto repair shop next door to you is about as valid as a white man prefering that a black man not move in next to him."
Seriously? Do you honestly believe those two things are "about as valid?"
Sam -- well, I don't think it's fair to categorize the slaveholders' meaning as "hey, owning people is totally cool." A more fair, and thus easier to understand, formulation would be, "hey, owning sub-humans or a lesser grade of humans, or perhaps a rather human-like animal is cool." (Perhaps Julius Caesar would have added the category of "subjugated humans").
I am not coming down on the side of slaveholders, but I am coming down on the side of understanding the situation in a clear way.
damn, I would really hate to have anything that I say being construed as an argument in favor of baseball apartheid.
For the record, the European invasion of the Americas was one of the world's Great Tragedies. It was not (is not) the only Great Tragedy this world has seen, but it is truly one of the biggies. Given the historical realities of the time (everything from medical knowledge to religious feelings to the accidents of technology and exploration/exploitation) I feel that it was a completely non-avoidable tragedy. I don't really see how it could or would have played out much differently.
As with a great many Human Great Tragedies, it fits into a conversation about property rights rather well, but discussing it is not condoning it.
thanks for the replies. I did not mean to imply that the European invasion of the continent would have gone any differently. I was only speaking to my own feelings. And I also understand that there was a wide range of nations existing on the two American continents in 1491 (and before). And I have been told (and quite willingly believe) that 100% of the treaties (i.e., European-style white guy pieces of paper) that the European invaders signed with native populations were broken, ignored, etc.
Sam: I would say: "It's their misfortune that they had no resistance to new diseases, and did not have the wherewithal to unite and resist the invasion." That can, indeed, be translated to "it's their fault they weren't more European," but I like my version better.
Here comes a spectacularly "privileged western civilization white guy" comment: I would be much more sympathetic to native american claims of land ownership if they had surveyed their lands, created deeds for their lands, bought/sold/traded their lands with signatures on pieces of paper, etc. Perhaps some nations did (I'm by no means knowledgable in the field), but I've never heard of it. Can anyone fill me in on facts here?
And, for the record, feel free to slag me in any way that feels good. I know the comment is incendiary.
I thought that was strongly implied. The government regulations (in the case of my suburban neighborhood called "zoning laws") keeps myself and my neighbors from doing a great many things with our "...right to use property in ways that one sees fit is an important and basic right..." freedom that would destroy the neighborhood. I own my property outright. It is mine. But I am not free to use it as I will and I am darned glad of that. I don't think that any of my neighbors would tear down their house and put up a Jiffy-Lube. But I don't trust that (or them) enough to get rid of the zoning laws that prevent it.
There are many, many laws affecting my, and my neighbors', property ownership and I am probably not aware of them all. But I'm glad they exist. That is government, from my point of view, curtailing my rights in order to reduce tensions. To make my living situation better.
I own my car outright. I am glad of the laws that restrict what I can do with that property. Those laws keep tension down. Not to open a whole can of fish (in both meanings of the word on this site), but I'd like to see firearms governed in much the same way that cars are.
I'm having a hard time coming up with any piece of property that I own that I think should be absolutely unencumbered by some laws. I type surrounded by an immense library of books. I don't want any laws telling me how to organize them, or indeed, which ones to read, but I am in favor of laws that limit my methods of disposing of them, for example. Just tossing them out on the street to let the rain wash them away should be illegal.
So I, for one, strongly disagree that "the right to use property in ways that one sees fit is an important and basic right." The right to own and use property is part of this big, complicated, interwoven web that we call society. We have rights and we have responsibilities and they can often clash. It doesn't always work all that well, but it's better than a world where everybody gets to do exactly what they want with all their stuff and somehow it will all even out.
"But it is property, in fact clearly defined and depoliticised property rules that reduce conflicts and enable social coordination. It is when ownership is up for bargaining with the government that tensions rise and people raise hands or in some cases votes against each other."
Except, of course, when I decide that my lot here in the suburbs would supply me with much more income if I were to put in a McDonald's or a Jiffy-Lube. The government keeps me from doing that...and, indeed, keeps my neighbor from doing that. Your notion of "whichever way one sees appropriate" not only won't work in the real world, but doesn't do a very good job keeping the tensions down.
I don't know if this will add much to the conversation, but what the heck...
I'm a male in the midwestern U.S. I wear pants to work every day. At home, relaxing, I wear a nightshirt. If I were Hawaiian, you might call it a muumuu. The nightshirt is a lot more comfortable than the pants (and my jeans are pretty comfortable). But I simply cannot wear a dress to work.
Is that oppression? There's no law saying I can't wear a dress. My co-workers would probably not accost me with much more than puzzled glances and a few letters to advice columnists ("I work with this weird dude who..."). Nobody tells me what to wear, but I would not be at all comfortable in a dress. That's purely cultural, isn't it? It's just how I've been raised. I don't walk out to the mailbox in my nightshirt (in the daytime) either. I'd feel funny.
My point is that I imagine a certain percentage of the women wearing the scarves, or even the burqas, are really wearing them because they just plain wouldn't feel comfortable in anything else. It's just how people dress where they are.
I'm certainly not denying the existence of oppression; I am glad that at least legally I could wear a dress if I wanted to. But my pants are neither a symbol of oppression (to me) nor a symbol of cultural pride (to me). So you need a third choice, is all I'm saying.
(FWIW - I also understand that my wearing jeans instead of slacks is a sort of message. I'm a boomer -- jeans and flannel shirts were probably a signal that I was "down with the common working man" sort of thing. But, no matter, it's still what I'm comfortable in. And, again FWIW, I have worked in places where I wore slacks. Jeans just weren't appropriate. But while I fit in better, and that was a good thing, I also felt less comfortable in my own skin, which was a bad thing. Was I oppressed?)
As a side note, a story that I've been meaning to write concerns John Colter and Daniel Boone, both of whom were living in the neighborhood of the New Madrid Quake and who probably knew one another. (Colter served in Nathan Boone's - Daniel's son - outfit).
me replying to me -- because I thought of another. (special snowflake stuff) Actually, the one that bugs me the most is replacing "handicapped" with "disabled."
"Handicapped" means you have a disadvantage. "Disabled" means you can't do it. I'm saving up all my angst on this issue for when I'm just a little older, and my body starts to really fall apart. I'm gonna be the cranky old guy in the wheelchair wing growling: "I'm not disabled, dagnabbit, I'm handicapped. So there!"
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “To Change or Not to Change: What’s in a Surname?”
I can certainly see the genealogy thing -- I'm a mutt from a passle of mutts, so it didn't take hold. I don't mean to disparage my ancestry -- as far as I know most were good folk, just not well-bred. It probably would have helped if somebody could have pointed out a spectacularly illustrious ancestor to me, but then again, maybe not. Go back ten generations and we all have over a thousand blood relations. Lots of possibilities for kings/philosophers/thugs in a group that large. I like the story of your grandfather's name. Cool. Given a choice, my mom probably would have named me after Errol Flynn. She had some serious hots for Errol Flynn. Dad wouldn't have permitted it -- whew -- I'm glad I didn't have to spend my life trying to live up to that one!
"
I wonder what it means to have almost no emotional connection to one's name. First wife adopted my surname, though I offered to adopt hers. Second wife didn't (we lived together 18 years before becoming official, so it obviously didn't mean much). "Rexknobus" is a childhood nickname; I use my birth name day-to-day without much thought. But when I write a book, I use a pseudonym. That pseudonym actually takes on a bit of his own identity in web sites and publicity material. No lies, but a different slant on the same bio.
So why did I grow up completely unattached to my own name? No idea. It drives my wife crazy when she gets mail addressed to "Femrex Rexknobus" as opposed to her own surname. And it doesn't register to at all to me when I'm addressed as "Mr. Femrex."
On “Asians Need Not Exclusively Apply”
Kazzy -- sorry for a bit of a late response and even more sorry for the "special snowflake" swing here, but I just remembered a thing that fits into this conversation somewhat (mostly as a possible insight into a film producer's mind).
Years ago I wrote a feature script about one of the scout/hunters on the Lewis & Clark Corps of Discovery -- a very interesting fellow named John Colter. The script got well circulated, then died, and years passed. My phone rang one night and it was a producer who had gotten hold of the script and loved it. He only had one problem: "Listen, I know this is crazy, but I've got Meryl Streep on option -- is there any way this can be re-written to star Meryl Streep?"
In his defense, he was pretty embarrassed to be asking -- and of course she isn't really perfect casting for a mountain man circa 1808. But he had the tools he had to work with and he felt he had to try. I don't have much sympathy for bigotry, but the pressure of making a film profitable can take people down strange roads. (For some reason that made me think of John Wayne portraying Genghis Khan -- hopefully we've moved a bit past that!)
"
Tod - for what it's worth, I'm a great Idris Elba fan, but when he appeared on screen in "Thor" I had a half second of "Cool! Idris!", then a half second of "Wait a minute! A black Norse god?", followed immediately by a whole lot of "Cool! Idris!" I honestly think that the producers probably took that sort of reaction into consideration, figuring that most of their audience would only feel a slight hiccup, and then would be pleased with the choice.
Cast a white guy like, say, Woody Allen or Jonah Hill as Heimdall and the "hiccup" would become much larger -- insurmountable.
A similar hiccup when I first saw a preview with Will Smith playing West. Not because of anything relating to the TV show, but because I knew that the character as portrayed by Smith couldn't have appeared in the real West. Of course, neither could a 100 foot tall steam-driven spider. Minor hiccup, and then on with the show...
"
The race thing is difficult because it is so immediately visually apparent. It's no problem to cast an actor of average intelligence to play Einstein. Plenty of actors playing action heroes have never seen any action. Cast Daniel Day Lewis as Malcolm X and Denzel Washington as Abraham Lincoln and I'll buy a ticket to see both films, if only because of the interesting "stunt" casting -- but put Mr. Lewis in blackface or Mr. Washington in whiteface to play the roles and I, at least, would be offended.
One of the executive producers of "Alien" told me that when he and his partner wrote the original script, they wrote the part of Ripley for Richard Dreyfuss. Dreyfuss didn't work out, but Sigourney Weaver did and, according to him, they didn't change the dialog a bit.
It's not a very good movie, but an old action flick, "Remo Williams - The Adventure Begins," had an absolutely tone-perfect and award-caliber performance by Joel Grey as an Asian martial artist. I can certainly imagine Bruce or Jet or even Toshiro in the role, but they wouldn't have done it any better.
Similarly, Linda Hunt as the male, black (in the book anyway), Chinese dwarf, Billy Kwan, in "In The Year of Living Dangerously."
And there's always Ossie Davis as JFK in "Bubba Ho-Tep" ;)
I guess for me there's some real gray area in here, with a preference toward: "You want Chinese? Cast Chinese!" But it's only a preference.
"
"The dominance of white actors was a function of racism, not storytelling."
Oh, absolutely. We had to slowly build from Woody Strode to James Edwards to finally get to Sidney Poitier in the 60s.
In your last sentence, I think the word "won't" is the killer. If a producer "won't" hire an Asian for whatever reason, that's a big problem. If a producer likes the way a white actor plays the part better than an Asian actor plays it (even if the part is Asian) and decides that the non-alignment is less important than the performance, I can at least understand it. Is it right? Hmmmm, rather a gray area...
"
From a certain perspective nearly *all* non-white actors are playing traditionally white roles today -- go back a few decades and you won't find any lead roles (or even many significant secondary roles) going to persons of color. Any movie starring Denzel or Will today would have starred Charlton or Clark within living memory (at least my living memory!).
John Ford included actual Native Americans in many of his westerns, but as far as I can remember, never in speaking roles. The actor playing speaking Native-American roles were invariably of Latin or Italian descent. Was he ahead of his time for casting the background players from the actual racial stock back in the 50's, or was he a bigot for not giving them lines? I have no idea.
Expanding the field slightly, there's the play "Frankie and Johnny in the Clare de Lune," which was about two lower-class, not particularly attractive people finding each other. On stage the roles were originated by F. Murray Abraham and Kathy Bates. The film "Frankie and Johnny" starred Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer -- playing two not particularly attractive people (!). It's a good film and they do a fine job. But their casting isn't really on the money.
It comes down to utility. What will work? In 1950 an African American lead simply wouldn't work in a mainstream film; now it will. The characters in Mulan are overwhelmingly Chinese, but the casting is open to *all* Asian nationalities. It's the appearance that counts. I am completely sympathetic to your friend's ire, but would they similarly object to a Korean playing a Chinese role? Or a Cantonese speaker playing a Mandarin speaker, etc., etc.
If the producers do their job right, they will hire the best person for the role -- however that might work out.
On “Thursday Night Bar Fight #1: What will be socially verboten in the future?”
Looking at it somewhat back-asswards:
I think back 60 years to 1953 (I am a toddler, but this is still within my lifespan). A survey is circulated asking for predictions (in this survey "Never" is a permitted answer):
When will:
- smoking be outlawed in bars and restaurants nation-wide
- there be a Negro (sorry, it's 1953) president
- your entire music library can fit onto a postage stamp that you can listen to privately on the bus.
- rayguns correct your vision
- everyone have a personal walkie-talkie that receives/transmits sound and pictures world-wide instantly.
- computers became smaller than buses and every automobile and wristwatch has at least one
- rayguns cook your dinner
- dirty movies outsell Hollywood
- that walkie-talkie with the pictures doo-dad can now hold all your books, too
any more?
(and, back to the topic at hand, I am certain that x years in the future, children will be looking at the evidence of fossil fuel burning and cry out: "But, Daddy, didn't they know?" "Yes, honey, they knew, but they would not, could not stop." We will be seen as villainous and backwards as slave-owners.)
On “Property Rights are Imaginary”
FWIW -- I just finished reading Margaret MacMillan's "Paris 1919," a book about the boundary negotiations and re-drawings in the months after World War I. A really well-written look at an attempt to set the world right after a massive cataclysm, and the less than ideal results of that attempt. A very good read.
"
First off, after a few hours, I regretted using the harsh "bs" and wish I had typed "nonsense" instead. Sorry.
Second, I obviously don't get your mind at all. If you can equate a neighbor frying fish and parking in the street to having a McDonalds next door...well, we're just on different pages.
"
Dodging. My examples were "Jiffy Lube," "McDonalds," and "lube shop."
But I shouldn't dodge either. I would object to my neighbor tearing down his house and building a Jiffy Lube franchise. I fully support the government interference that keeps him from doing so. The difference between that and preferring to not have a black neighbor seems incredibly obvious to me -- but it amounts to noise pollution, smell pollution, traffic pollution, aesthetic pollution, etc. Show me a chart that measures those sorts of things and that also shows me that a black man moving into the house next door to me measures about the same (to use your notion) on the same chart and, by golly, I'll object to the black man as well. But since in all likelihood the black man is not going to have anywhere near the same effect on the neighborhood as a Jiffy Lube franchise or a McDonalds, then there is no objection. I'm not even stating that I am not a racist. Perhaps I really hate the thought of a black man moving in next door to me -- but I am not silly enough to think that his effect will be anything at all like the effect of the franchises that your notions would permit to come into my neighborhood.
You said: "For me no difference." Bullshit.
"
Why don't you tell me what the difference in your experience might be standing thirty feet from a lube shop and standing thirty feet from a black man?
Thirty feet is an arbitrary choice made because "next door" doesn't have much precision. Choose your own distance.
"
"Your preference that your neighbour not set up an auto repair shop next door to you is about as valid as a white man prefering that a black man not move in next to him."
Seriously? Do you honestly believe those two things are "about as valid?"
"
Sam -- well, I don't think it's fair to categorize the slaveholders' meaning as "hey, owning people is totally cool." A more fair, and thus easier to understand, formulation would be, "hey, owning sub-humans or a lesser grade of humans, or perhaps a rather human-like animal is cool." (Perhaps Julius Caesar would have added the category of "subjugated humans").
I am not coming down on the side of slaveholders, but I am coming down on the side of understanding the situation in a clear way.
"
damn, I would really hate to have anything that I say being construed as an argument in favor of baseball apartheid.
For the record, the European invasion of the Americas was one of the world's Great Tragedies. It was not (is not) the only Great Tragedy this world has seen, but it is truly one of the biggies. Given the historical realities of the time (everything from medical knowledge to religious feelings to the accidents of technology and exploration/exploitation) I feel that it was a completely non-avoidable tragedy. I don't really see how it could or would have played out much differently.
As with a great many Human Great Tragedies, it fits into a conversation about property rights rather well, but discussing it is not condoning it.
"
thanks for the replies. I did not mean to imply that the European invasion of the continent would have gone any differently. I was only speaking to my own feelings. And I also understand that there was a wide range of nations existing on the two American continents in 1491 (and before). And I have been told (and quite willingly believe) that 100% of the treaties (i.e., European-style white guy pieces of paper) that the European invaders signed with native populations were broken, ignored, etc.
Sam: I would say: "It's their misfortune that they had no resistance to new diseases, and did not have the wherewithal to unite and resist the invasion." That can, indeed, be translated to "it's their fault they weren't more European," but I like my version better.
"
I shouldn't do this...but...
Here comes a spectacularly "privileged western civilization white guy" comment: I would be much more sympathetic to native american claims of land ownership if they had surveyed their lands, created deeds for their lands, bought/sold/traded their lands with signatures on pieces of paper, etc. Perhaps some nations did (I'm by no means knowledgable in the field), but I've never heard of it. Can anyone fill me in on facts here?
And, for the record, feel free to slag me in any way that feels good. I know the comment is incendiary.
"
well, then the easy answer is "no." Felons are denied the right to ownership of many things, guns, etc. Felon = human being.
As posited the question only needed one negative example to reach "no." Mission accomplished.
"
I thought that was strongly implied. The government regulations (in the case of my suburban neighborhood called "zoning laws") keeps myself and my neighbors from doing a great many things with our "...right to use property in ways that one sees fit is an important and basic right..." freedom that would destroy the neighborhood. I own my property outright. It is mine. But I am not free to use it as I will and I am darned glad of that. I don't think that any of my neighbors would tear down their house and put up a Jiffy-Lube. But I don't trust that (or them) enough to get rid of the zoning laws that prevent it.
There are many, many laws affecting my, and my neighbors', property ownership and I am probably not aware of them all. But I'm glad they exist. That is government, from my point of view, curtailing my rights in order to reduce tensions. To make my living situation better.
I own my car outright. I am glad of the laws that restrict what I can do with that property. Those laws keep tension down. Not to open a whole can of fish (in both meanings of the word on this site), but I'd like to see firearms governed in much the same way that cars are.
I'm having a hard time coming up with any piece of property that I own that I think should be absolutely unencumbered by some laws. I type surrounded by an immense library of books. I don't want any laws telling me how to organize them, or indeed, which ones to read, but I am in favor of laws that limit my methods of disposing of them, for example. Just tossing them out on the street to let the rain wash them away should be illegal.
So I, for one, strongly disagree that "the right to use property in ways that one sees fit is an important and basic right." The right to own and use property is part of this big, complicated, interwoven web that we call society. We have rights and we have responsibilities and they can often clash. It doesn't always work all that well, but it's better than a world where everybody gets to do exactly what they want with all their stuff and somehow it will all even out.
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"But it is property, in fact clearly defined and depoliticised property rules that reduce conflicts and enable social coordination. It is when ownership is up for bargaining with the government that tensions rise and people raise hands or in some cases votes against each other."
Except, of course, when I decide that my lot here in the suburbs would supply me with much more income if I were to put in a McDonald's or a Jiffy-Lube. The government keeps me from doing that...and, indeed, keeps my neighbor from doing that. Your notion of "whichever way one sees appropriate" not only won't work in the real world, but doesn't do a very good job keeping the tensions down.
On “World Hijab Day”
I don't know if this will add much to the conversation, but what the heck...
I'm a male in the midwestern U.S. I wear pants to work every day. At home, relaxing, I wear a nightshirt. If I were Hawaiian, you might call it a muumuu. The nightshirt is a lot more comfortable than the pants (and my jeans are pretty comfortable). But I simply cannot wear a dress to work.
Is that oppression? There's no law saying I can't wear a dress. My co-workers would probably not accost me with much more than puzzled glances and a few letters to advice columnists ("I work with this weird dude who..."). Nobody tells me what to wear, but I would not be at all comfortable in a dress. That's purely cultural, isn't it? It's just how I've been raised. I don't walk out to the mailbox in my nightshirt (in the daytime) either. I'd feel funny.
My point is that I imagine a certain percentage of the women wearing the scarves, or even the burqas, are really wearing them because they just plain wouldn't feel comfortable in anything else. It's just how people dress where they are.
I'm certainly not denying the existence of oppression; I am glad that at least legally I could wear a dress if I wanted to. But my pants are neither a symbol of oppression (to me) nor a symbol of cultural pride (to me). So you need a third choice, is all I'm saying.
(FWIW - I also understand that my wearing jeans instead of slacks is a sort of message. I'm a boomer -- jeans and flannel shirts were probably a signal that I was "down with the common working man" sort of thing. But, no matter, it's still what I'm comfortable in. And, again FWIW, I have worked in places where I wore slacks. Jeans just weren't appropriate. But while I fit in better, and that was a good thing, I also felt less comfortable in my own skin, which was a bad thing. Was I oppressed?)
On “Hurricane Sandy Open Thread”
TONS of Sandy imagery here...
http://cimss.ssec.wisc.edu/goes/blog/?s=sandy
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i.e. "The Perfect Strom"?
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http://showme.net/~fkeller/quake/mississippi_river_ran_backward.htm
http://www.amazon.com/When-Mississippi-Ran-Backwards-Earthquakes/dp/0743242793
As a side note, a story that I've been meaning to write concerns John Colter and Daniel Boone, both of whom were living in the neighborhood of the New Madrid Quake and who probably knew one another. (Colter served in Nathan Boone's - Daniel's son - outfit).
On “Touche”
me replying to me -- because I thought of another. (special snowflake stuff) Actually, the one that bugs me the most is replacing "handicapped" with "disabled."
"Handicapped" means you have a disadvantage. "Disabled" means you can't do it. I'm saving up all my angst on this issue for when I'm just a little older, and my body starts to really fall apart. I'm gonna be the cranky old guy in the wheelchair wing growling: "I'm not disabled, dagnabbit, I'm handicapped. So there!"
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