Could it be that bush has some friends heavily invested in Iran?

And that ended nice and tidy. After about 100 years.

 

It's up to the colonized to make them evolve.

 

That's a very fair point. If necessary, those being oppressed must stand and fight if their spot in life is not acceptable.

 

Yes. Poverty

http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=MjE3NTA4Yjc0NjQxMDA4ZjhlZjczMWM0YWNlM2JhOTg=

And as more opportunity develops the poor's lot in life gets better.

This in little thanks to the War on Poverty which continues to enslave people an a substandard existence.

By that measure, instead of stopping trade with South Africa, perhaps every artist, musician, company in the west that called for an end to apartheid should have had insisted that their records/goods get fabricated in Soweto.

Technology stopped child labor. Government just closed the door.

 

If we are going to interfere with another nation in such a way we need to declare war on them (althout technically Hitler declared war on us after we did it to Japan). IMO that is the only constitutional remedy for foriegn atrocities as it forces everyone to be on the same page.

 

I'm drawing some logical conclusions about what you think should have been done about slavery in the 1860s, and I'm not liking the conclusions I'm coming to.

 

Nonsense. There were not great technological changes in the middle of the Industrial Revolution that suddenly made child labor inefficient and not cost-effective.

And it was the technological innovation of the cotton gin that helped entrench slavery in the antebellum South, just when the institution was beginning to fade. Slavery was more--not less--entrenched in 1850 than it was in 1800 or so.

 

I would have let the south go.

 

Technology would have phased out slavery as well. Deere and Company was formed only 3 short years following the civil war.

 

The sort of farm equipment they were making in the early 1870s didn't have much to do with picking cotton.

And this is slavery we're talking about, Matt. You would have been willing to sacrifice yet another generation or more to that loathsome institution so that technology and the market could do their magic.

The real problem was that Reconstruction was half-assed and finally abandoned unfinished. It wasn't too much government interference that doomed civil rights for a century after the war, it was too little government interference.

 

We could if Deere and Co. was formed in the south. But it's headquarters is and always has been in Illinois

 

I would let it continue in the CSA as that is not my nation. I would not tollerate it in the USA.

Because there was no social will to contiune it. That's why the process took 100 years. The public needs to be on board for such grand changes to be successful.

 

That's pretty disingenuous. Not to mention short-sighted.

Come on now, it was a backroom political comprimise that finished Reconstruction. Sure, the public wasn't thrilled about it, and sure there was strong opposition in the South. That's one example of a situation where real leadership is called for.

 

I was against the Iraq war up until the minute it started. From then until now I've just been rooting for the best result.

 

Why do you say?

The nation was not interested in electing such leaders at that time.

 

True. But it is weilded with the force of a hammer and not a surgeon's knife. The reason why we have clean air and clean water here is because we value it enough to make it an essential priority. China values making a quick buck. But as their society evolves, their priorities will change and they will value clean air and clean water as essentials as well.