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  hardie karges 11:57 am on March 17, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Europe ( 19 ), history   

  European History 

  Europe is a living museum, tourists crawling through the bowels where Romans tortured Christians before Christians tortured Protestants, where the English passed laws and the Germans baked bread.  It’s ironic that one of the most technologically advanced cultures in the world does more than almost any other to preserve its past.  This is easily justified by the large numbers of tourists it attracts, but I doubt that that is the reason.  Preservation is expensive.  To tear down and rebuild is relatively cheap.  It’s hard to find any architecture in a modern Chinese city over a hundred years old, far fewer the Renaissance-era buildings ubiquitous in Europe.  And China is probably the most socially conservative nation in the world, remember.  It is also probably the most face-conscious, that is, pretentious.  They want to be seen as the wave of the future, for whatever that’s worth, probably not much, aesthetically.  Europe is proud of its artistic and cultural heritage, and so preserves it.  So would be America, if it had any.  It’s just too young.  Europeans like to rag on America’s lack of refinement and culture, but that’s just jealousy at America’s rapid rise to the top of the world heap politically, economically, and culturally.  America is more creative than the rest of the world put together, by far.  Most of the world’s patents go to America, with Japan coming in second.  In terms of popular culture, there’s no contest.  America almost single-handedly creates the world’s movies and music.  Africa’s got the animals and Asia’s got the girls.  But for history, you go to Europe. 

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    TraveloVacations 11:41 pm on March 17, 2008 Permalink | Reply

    I think Europe is a very great history.

    Thank you. 🙂

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  hardie karges 1:27 am on January 27, 2008 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: history, Vietnam ( 9 )   

  Historical Relativism 

  North and South Vietnam are totally different, the north culturally Chinese, the south culturally akin to its Theravada Buddhist Southeast Asian neighbors, with which it was part until the Viets overran it a few centuries back.  They showed no mercy to the Chams in the process, decimating them almost to the point of genocide, then proceeding to wrest the Mekong Delta from the Khmers.  Siam and Vietnam were in the process of dividing Laos and Cambodia up amongst themselves when the French intervened and decided that they would take it instead, and Vietnam, too.  Nobody ever had to take Siam; just ask for what you want nicely.  Genghis figured that out long ago.  When he left Burma, he left the Tai Shans in charge.  All of which just goes to show what Vietnam can do to you.  That the tribal Tais there can co-exist with some degree of dignity is a testament to their own endurance, but the writing’s on the wall.  Tribal Tais are steadily migrating to lesser-populated Laos.  The US, too, finally decided to cut and run, rather than pursue a hopeless cause.  Let’s call it ‘peace with honor’.