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Politics : PRESIDENT GEORGE W. BUSH -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: DavesM who wrote (240126)	3/20/2002 10:45:47 AM
From: CYBERKEN	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

I am no fan of the Maoist murderers or the corrupt royal classes the preceded them, but blaming the whole thing on opium is a bit of a stretch. We really have to get past blaming the world's current Great Plague of Ignorance on substances, and start looking to the intellectual corruption of the 20th Century as the culprit. It will help us to better understand the anti-socialist renaissance that is coming...

To: DavesM who wrote (240126)	3/20/2002 11:04:20 AM
From: joseph krinsky	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 769670

I was exaggerating to make a point. (900 BC) They were they most powerful in their area. There was no one else. They were not the most powerful on Earth. They may have been when the Mongols etc were running around. Opium from what I have read about it, addicted several million Chinese, however I do not think that the addiction can be the blame of their downfall, even 20 million addicts on a % basis isn't that many for them. It's a nice argument, but the Chinese had more deeply seated problems, and opium wasn't the cause of their stagnation. No agricultural nation can ever be the most powerful nation on Earth for long, if they ever do achieve that status, because power isn't gotten from farming. It's gotten from industry. We're not in the middle or ancient ages where bows and arrows win wars, or masses of people. As the weapons of wars changed, the power base shifted from those things. If they were the most powerful nation on Earth at the time, they would not have lost to the British. They resisted progress, and that was their stumbling block.