tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20077444.post8041130696778908848..comments2024-03-26T04:21:43.535-05:00Comments on Free Association: Newt Gingrich: Demagogue, PseudointellectualSheldon Richmanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15672237234580563637noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20077444.post-74175961058410842532011-12-12T17:06:29.230-06:002011-12-12T17:06:29.230-06:00Yes all peoples are essentially invented. But in t...Yes all peoples are essentially invented. But in the case of the Palestinians, we can, by pointing that they too are invented, focus on another question: <i>Why</i> were they invented?<br /><br />If they were invented to consolidate a pre-existing community, then the current Peace Process with its basis in putting the Israelis on one side of (a modified) Green Line and putting the Palestinians on the other side of the Green Line can still work out. After all, such separation would further consolidate Palestine finishing the task of inventing that nation-state.<br /><br />On the other hand, if the Palestinian nation was invented to <i>replace</i> Israel, then negotiations based on putting the Israelis on one side of the Green Line and the Palestinians on another side of the Green Line will never work because they miss the whole point of the conflict.<br /><br />Either way, it is important to acknowledge the invention of the Palestinian nation, even if other nations are invented, because then people can ask <i>why</i> Palestine was invented and if people can answer that, they can better judge the validity of the current Peace Process (a very important political event in the 21st Century, after all!).Hidden Authorhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05039410618383593927noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20077444.post-60360943429687359822011-12-12T00:29:29.075-06:002011-12-12T00:29:29.075-06:00As always, Gingrich's intellect is galaxy-wide...As always, Gingrich's intellect is galaxy-wide and a nanometer deep.<br /><br />So it's some sort of little-known clincher that Palestinians are Arabs? I guess that means there's no Egyptian or Iraqi people.<br /><br />And there's never been a Gypsy nation, so I guess the Romany aren't a real ethnic group.<br /><br />In any case, national identities can be based on things that strike outsiders as rather flimsy. Serbo-Croatian is one language spoken between two sets of people: Catholics who write it in the Roman alphabet, and Orthodox who write it in the Cyrillic alphabet. So the Balkan war -- in a largely secular culture -- was essentially between clusters of Southern Slavs who stayed home from two different churches every Sunday.<br /><br />How about Ukrainians? Ukrainian, Byelorussian and Russian are essentially two dialects of a single Eastern Slavic language. Southern Russian dialects sound closer to Ukrainian than to the speech of Moscow -- a lot like Yorkshire dialect and Lowland Scots. And shit, Kiev was the original capital of greater Russia. Besides which there's a shotgun scatter of Russian and Ukrainian settler villages all across Siberia. But they call themselves a separate ethnic group, and are recognized as one.Kevin Carsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07525803609000364993noreply@blogger.com