Steven A. Grasse, the author of the book The Evil Empire: 101 Ways England Ruined the World, has created a website called britishreparations.org seeking reparations from England to the rest of the world to the tune of 31 trillion pounds (appx. $8300/person worldwide). And while I agree that nothing quite says, "Sorry for the historical butt-reaming," quite like eighty-three hundred smackers in cold, hard cash, that one silly-ass "solution" begs a single silly-ass question.
Why???
Well, at least according to Steven Grasse, it's because England has "ruined the world" by inflicting upon it a bunch of "British things" like The Industrial Revolution, and "Bad Inventions," claiming that, "If it hurts people, the British probably came up with it."
NOTE: As an impolite aside to Mr. Grasse; "Hey stupid! Have you ever heard of Nerve Agents, such as Tabun, Soman and Sarin? Yeah, they're called "G-agents" because they were all invented in GERMANY!
"How about Blister Agents? That's another class of chemical WMDs. They're called "Hun Stuff," because they too were invented in GERMANY! And "Genocide," nice try, but that was almost certainly NOT "invented" by the English. In fact, I'd look to blame that neat little "invention" ("discovery" is more likely the word your looking for) on those chimps with spears a few columns down...or at least their distant, hominid ancestors. Here's an idea, try and do a little cursory research next time.
He also calls for a Versailles Refund (oddly enough, France was behind the most brutal points of the Versailles Treaty), an Opium War Refund (oddly enough, again, it was British citizens and not the Chinese who suffered the most from the burgeoning opium trade). According to Grasse, everyone suffered because of Britain's "global misrule."
OK, Mr. Grasse is obviously an imbecile and I say that in the nicest possible way, but only an imbecile could possibly achieve the unlikely scenario of a descendant of an Irish-Catholic lineage defending...(GULP)... England. CONGRATULATIONS Mr. MORON...I mean, Mr. Grasse.
The TRUTH is that the rest of the world OWES England for a whole host of things, INCLUDING the aforementioned and excoriated Industrial Revolution!
Yes, the Industrial Revolution first took hold in England as the age of the Guilds gave way, first to proto-industry, a phenomenon that had taken hold across all of Europe and then moved onto industrialization, starting out in jolly old England. The truth of the matter is that those factories freed untold numbers of people from being tethered to the land by creating thousands of new jobs. This allowed for human advancement through more and more advanced industrialization on to the electronic and information ages that followed in the developped parts of the globe. The Industrial Revolution was a vital and necessary step toward all the advancements that followed, the inane opinions of nimrods like Mr. Grasse, notwithstanding.
England has given the world as close to a unifying language as is possible, as now more than 60% of the earth's people are at least somewhat conversant in English.
England along with its English-speaking Allies (Canada, Australia and the United States) saved the world from Axis Power tyranny in WW I and Nazi tyranny in WW II.
It was also the Irish monks, of "the British Isles" that "saved civilization" during the Dark Ages, by hiding and protecting and copying thousands of volumes of the world's recorded knowledge up to that point.
England was also the very first nation on earth to eradicate chattel slavery, outlawing it in England in 1807. Something the majority of the rest of the world has yet to accomplish, as chattel slavery still exists throughout the entire Islamic world, most of sub-Saharan Africa and much of Asia.
But perhaps the greatest gift that England bestowed upon the rest of the world is FREEDOM!
The concept that bubbled bottom-up in Great Britain. From the Magna Carta (1215) that took power from the Monarchy, requiring the King to renounce certain powers, respect certain legal procedures and accept that the will of the Monarch could be bound by the law and it guaranteed the right of all English subjects free, or unfree, to Habeas Corpus.
John Locke's ideas and those of Adam Smith, whose Wealth of Nations was first published in 1776, set the stage for America's Founders who sought to rein in government excess and advance individual liberty even further. In fact, all of America's Founders were themselves of English descent, from Jefferson to Madison, to Franklin to Adams to Paine, all of them were of English descent!
No, if anything the world owes a great debt to England, for it's England that has forged the modern world, with all its conveniences, prosperity and greater individual liberty than any generation has ever enjoyed at any time in man's annals here on earth.
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Please send me your address Mr. Grasse, and I'll send you a pen...in hope of the unlikely event that you ever learn how to write.
3 comments:
You are right. This is more to my liking and certainly amusing :) Good post.
The idea itself is an absurdity and obviously not very well thought out.
Generally, the idea of reparations in general (except in cases where those actually wronged can be made whole) is an absurd and ill-thought out idea.
fuck england
They owe the world a big one!
What about your beloved Cromwell, slave trade, and great injustices that came at the hands of that empire of yours? The world is still dealing with the consequences of your immoral acts.
England is the shit hole!
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