I was reading a textbook history of the United States and noticed this ditty composed by the British after the U.S. started running into debt problems following the Panic of 1837:
Yankee Doodle borrows cash,
Yankee Doodle spends it,
And then he snaps his fingers at
The jolly flat that lends it.
Ouch.
President Andrew Jackson had implemented several policies designed to benefit, or so he believed, the common man. Perhaps well-intentioned, his policies, combined with a wheat failure, nevertheless led to the Panic of 1837 and ultimately hurt that very same common man by making it more difficult for him to access capital.
After the Panic, the country, with its expanding transportation system and business growth, fell deeply in debt to the British. When several states defaulted on that debt, the Brits were understandably furious.
I wonder what kids will be reading in textbooks 20 years from now — and whether they’ll need to know Mandarin to get the joke.
The Kosovars should have their right to be independent. And the Serbs who live in Kosovo should have the right to secede from Kosovo and join Serbia. We have seen states split up. Provinces, on the other hand, can’t ever be divided. I don’t know why this should be so.
Bosnia-Herzogovina split off from Yugoslavia. The eastern half is semi-independent, but the world won’t allow it full independence—and the right to unite with Serbia—because provincial boundaries are sacred. Too bad. Serbia would stop fighting the independence of Kosovo if it were allowed to reconnect with the Serbian areas of Kosovo and Bosnia. If only provinces could divide, everone would be happy.
Good point, Gordon, but let’s be consistent here.
If the Kosovar Albanians have the right to break away from Serbia as a step towards linking up with Albania, then the Bosnian and Kosovo Serbs have the same right to leave Bosnia and Kosovo to join Serbia.
So a personified History demands the creation of kleptocratic mini-states?
And Lincoln–he really WAS a tyrant, wasn’t he? Or else he would have let the South go its own way.
George and Colin, further redrawing of borders is fine by me. I don’t think provincial lines should be considered sacred. This may be a complicated and lengthy process, but if it avoids unnecessary conflict, then it would be worhwhile.
Grumpy, the difference between the United States in the 19th century and the Balkans now is slavery. Fighting to get rid of it was justified, don’t you think?
Aren’t you confusing self-determination with separatism? Separatist aspirations might not necessarily reflect democratic or majority impulses.
Gordon -my history has it that slavery was not one of the original motivations for the civil war. . It took a few years into a stalemated war for the union leaders to advance slavedom as a cause.In context of the mass killings /starvation/mass relocations of the natives, being stolen & traded into slavery for one & one’s descendants is not a good look but better than genocide..
Baltimoron, self-determination and separatism go hand-in-hand although they are not exactly the same concept. Together they have, over the last sixty years, resulted in a large increase in the number of nations.
Unamerican, slavery is the one issue on which there could be no lasting compromise in the 1850s. Yes, other causes existed at that time, but the primary cause of the Civil War was slave ownership.
Gordon,
something the Kosovars have had in common with some of the other separatist groups you mentioned is the practice of terrorism. I don’t see them as being any better than the Russians or Chinese. I think they’ll govern just as oppressively and irresponsibly. I think they’ll gobble up a nice chunk of our tax dollars in the form of government aid, too.
Are you sure Kosovo’s sovereignty is a good thing? It seems to me that their aspiration for self determination is based on nothing more than hatred for Serbs.
I don’t think it’s accurate to lump Taiwan or Tibet in with “Chechnyans,” and other muslim terrorists. What a people do with their sovereignty is much more important than simply gaining it. Quite frankly, many countries don’t deserve their sovereignty. Does Kosovo? Do you think it will prove itself worthy? I have strong doubts.
Can we define the boundary between good self-determination and bad separatism? It may be easy to pontificate about foreign conflicts, like Kosovo and Serbia, China and Taiwan. I share Gordan’s sympathy for Taiwan. Closer to home, the United State is a great, liberal, multi-cultural empire with several potentially separatist groups and regions. Yet, it has done a better job of protecting minority rights and individual liberties than most of the runty national states we know. Readers of Commentary, in particular, should be sensitive to that.
Independent Kosovo, like sister Albania, will likely remain a repressive cultural and economc backwater ruled by political gangs, another potential Islamist beachhead in Europe. Catalonia and the Basque country have flourished economically and culturally in the more liberal Spain since Franco’s death; their nationalisms have become the tools of extremists who want to impose cultural and political uniformity on their respective regions.
Serbs are rioting in around the American embassy right now. They seem to be angry about something.