Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (118584)	11/5/2003 1:33:38 AM
From: frankw1900	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 281500

I'd consider the Khmer Rouge to be Cambodian patriots I'd consider Stalin to be a Russian patriot, because they defended their countries. This is interesting. They, like Hussein, saw their countries as extensions of themselves. (And their fellow citizens as disposable breeders). Folk are usually defined as patriots because they love their countries and therefore defend them. That is only an intentional relation not a reflexively intentional one as is seen in the psychopathology of the folk you mention. By your definition they're patriots, but they're also NFG and the world and their countries would have been much better off if they'd been dead a lot sooner.

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (118584)	11/5/2003 3:59:03 PM
From: Hawkmoon	Respond to of 281500

I'd consider the Khmer Rouge to be Cambodian patriots, when they opposed the invasion by the Vietnamese army. That's like calling the Crips and the Bloods "patriots" when they battle to subjugate populations of people under their totalitarian control.. Listen.. you can't have TRUE patriots unless the will of the people as a national identity is being fought for.. And totalitarian Maoism (Khmer Rouge/Cambodia) and Marxism (Vietnam) were fighting for control and influence in Indo-China.. It certainly wasn't about patriotism anymore than Baathists are being patriots.. Because they don't represent more than a small percentage of the total Iraqi population. Hawk

To: Jacob Snyder who wrote (118584)	11/6/2003 1:07:56 AM
From: Ilaine	Respond to of 281500

Altruism doesn't make any sense unless you recognize that self-sacrifice is sometimes useful in the cause of something larger than oneself. One's "patria" is something larger than oneself, larger than one's family, larger even than one's tribe. Seems to me that in order to judge somebody's motives, you'd actually have to talk with him. It is theoretically possible that some Cambodians defended their country against the invading Vietnamese because they were motivated by defense of something larger than saving their own miserable skins - but to make sweeping generalizations that they were all so motivated seems to me to be deliberately inflammatory, just to tweak people that you know it will tweak. You wouldn't deliberately tweak people just to make points, would you?