Conversations With History - Walter Russell Mead

[bigfriendlyben]

Now I understand why people hate america

[watching99134]

Refreshing for an American intellectual to have any awareness whatsoever of intercultural/cross-cultural issues but for some reason perceives it as inevitable in the nature of Anglo-America to try to change the rest of the world…isolationism is a powerful historical trend in America, and the need to "explore" (exploit?) has more to do with rapacious corporate capitalism…(which is *not* the same as small business capitalism)

[1888junkteam]

excellent work!

[shillyshallyz]

/

"IF CERTAINS ACTS AND VIOLATIONS OF TREATIES ARE CRIMES, THEY ARE CRIMES WHETHER THE UNITED STATES DOES THEM OR WHETHER GERMANY DOES THEM. WE ARE NOT PREPARED TO LAY DOWN A RULE OF CRIMINAL CONDUCT AGAINST OTHERS WHICH WE WOULD NOT BE WILLING TO HAVE INVOKED AGAINST US."

— Justice Robert H. Jackson, Chief Prosecutor, Nuremberg War Crimes Trials

[plummerjones]

Hmm he seems like a nice guy.

Wotan, I didnt understand a word you just typed. Please come back and rewrite what you wrote.

[wotan20]

What an exhibition of elitist, imperial hubris with a good measure of Anglo-American messianism thrown in for good measure. Sure it was eloquent and Mr. Mead seemingly cleverly integrated its thesis' contradictions into its proposition.

First issue: At what point it is facetious to talk of Anglo-American inner drive, when huge swathes of domestic underclass increasingly its wictims also? -Cont.-

[wotan20]

-Cont.-

Second issue: Could the distinguished scholar only talks history here, which looses its relevance daily? Does he talk past glories, which ran their course but it's no longer valid? For further info check some of my last favorite videos about the economic trends developing, which has been looming and in preparation in generations, indeed from the period of the 2nd WW.

[renaldo999]

excellent interview.

love the series.

please have Berkeley Professor Alan Tansman on next to discuss his forthcoming books "The Culture of of Japanese Fascism" (Duke), and "The Aesthetics of Japanese Fascism."

thx!

[NIRANJINI90]

It has always be obvious to me that religious doctrine is designed to support colonial economic expansion and God has nothing to do with it.

[shelata]

However, I think Mead did touch on this in describing the links between Protestantism in the US, UK, and Netherlands and global capitalism. Being rooted in the Abrahamic commandment to change, these religions in effect see pluralism, democracy, and capitalism as an extension of God's workings. However, this doesn't seem to explain the ebb and flow of fundamentalist religious sentiments in either the US or UK.

At any rate, thanks for posting this video. I enjoyed it tremendously.

[shelata]

I simply have one small critique (and it is small): while fundamentalist religion may act as a coping mechanism for people transitioning from closed, rural societies to open, urban societies, this doesn't quite explain why Christian fundamentalism grew in parts of the United States and ultra-nationalism in parts of Europe at a time when most people already lived in large, modern, and cosmopolitan cities.

[shelata]

I particularly liked Mead's thoughts on religion--particularly, fanatical or fundamentalist religion--as a mechanism for coping with the dangers of a transition to modernity. This reminds me greatly of Durkheim's theory regarding anomie and the transition of peoples from mechanical forms of society to organic ones.

[shelata]

Wow! Mead synthesizes such an enormous amount of economic, political, and anthropological thought to provide a historical explanation for the expansion of Anglo-American institutions and the successive forms of resistance that it has met. This is no doubt extremely relevant to the multitude of issues we face today.