Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Humanities/2010 September 23

= September 23 =

Religion
I am looking for sources/references/ information/ validation/ discussion/ refuting on the information provided by Phillipe Van Rjndt in the "Tetramachus Collection", pertaining to theft of documents from Vatican Archives, if and when this actually took place. any pertinent information would be greatly appreciated. Cbre4229 (talk) 00:37, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

American Revolution
The American Revolution inspired all other democratic revolutions, so does this mean that if the American Revolution had failed, then the world would still be ruled by Divine Right Absolute Monarchs? --70.245.189.11 (talk) 00:51, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * a) What basis do you have for your claim that the American revolution inspired all other democratic revolutions? b) Wikipedia is not a crystal ball. Marnanel (talk) 00:56, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * And we hadn't had "Divine Right Absolute Monarchs" in Britain for a while before the American War of Independence. We had an undemocratic revolution (led by part of parliament) in the mid-17th century, and a slightly more democratic one (led by rather more of parliament) in 1689, which established that our monarchs rule by law, not by some sky god's fiat. From then on we've managed to avoid such vulgarities. DuncanHill (talk) 01:01, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * And the theory of a "divine rights" monarch had largely been abandonded by all scholars in Western Europe by the second half of the 18th century anyway, basing the theory of monarchies on Natural and legal rights instead, a theory which only has a few steps to the idea of a Social contract (and thus also to The Social Contract). --Saddhiyama (talk) 08:51, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * a) The revolutionaries in other countries used the American Revolution as their example of how a revolution could work; without it, people wouldn't have thought that they could succeed, so very few people would have revolted. --70.245.189.11 (talk) 01:22, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It's true that some revolutionaries looked to the US revolution as an example of a colony throwing off its imperial power, but many looked elsewhere for inspiration as well (e.g. the French Revolution, which was itself partially inspired by the US revolution, but not quite the same thing at all). Not all revolutions inspired by the United States were democratic, though. Ho Chi Minh was famously inspired by the US war of independence, for example, and he did not prove to be much of a lover of democracy. Anyway, we can't know what would have happened if you re-ran history a different way. It's possible, for example, that the French Revolution might have happened without the US one (in some form), and would have been "the Revolution," or what have you. Certainly the revolutions of the 20th century had more going on to them than just being democrats vs. absolute monarchs. --Mr.98 (talk) 01:39, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * There were many prior democratic revolutions, actually, but most notably, the English themselves had already decisively rejected absolute monarchy in the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Looie496 (talk) 01:41, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Even if the American revolution had failed, it seems reasonable that the Batavian revolution and French revolution still would have happened more or less on schedule. All that the "failure" of the American revolution would have proven is that the British military was stronger than realized -- America would have still been a liberal oligarchic democracy, just as it was before the revolution, and the Dutch and French would still have the native-grown philosophies and common problems that inspired them.  --M @ r ē ino 01:47, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * History in general, and revolutions in particular; is a complex mix of many different factors, circumstances, and motivations. We do have an interesting Philosophy of history article that at least sheds some light on how people approach history.  It is of course impossible to say for sure how history would have been different had the American war of Independence not taken place (or not been won), though people can make guesses.


 * There are people who do think about such things; it's often called "Alternate history". There are places on the internet where people discuss this type of thing (AlternateHistory.com, for example.  Their FAQ lists some other good online resources for this type of thing).  Uchronia has a pretty good list of alternate history literary works.  I used it to find this essay, which discusses pretty much exactly this question. Buddy431 (talk) 02:06, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Also see counterfactual history. Although, as Slavoj Žižek has pointed out, it is a genre fairly dominated by right-wing writers, who fantasize about how peachy thigs would have been had some left-wing event failed to happen (the Russian revolution), or some right-wing project succeeded (the Russian liberal land reforms), etc. Or how horrible it would have been if the armies of darkness had snuffed out the light of the world at the battle of Poitiers. But it is a legitimate genre of literature, even if some historians consider it frivolous.--Rallette (talk) 06:21, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I think Mr. Žižek got his analysis completely wrong, by either intentionally or accidentally limiting himself to right-wing examples. For example, for every story I've read about how the world would be great if the South had won the Civil War, there are three times as many depicting the horrors of a North America hobbled by institutional racism and ceaseless warfare.  --M @ r ē ino 14:21, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * I don't quite think so. Very many counterfactuals deal with military events (Waterloo, Battle for Britain, ACW, American Revolution), and these are indeed often written by fairly right-wing authors. On the other hand, Harry Turtledove, probably the preeminent and almost certainly the most productive author of alternative history, can hardly be described as right-wing. --Stephan Schulz (talk) 14:35, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * It's certainly a legitimate genre of fiction. But one should not confuse its occasional allusions to non-fiction as somehow making it any less fictional. --Mr.98 (talk) 11:43, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The Roman Republic was established when Lucius Junius Brutus overthrew the last king of Rome. Surely that counts as a revolution? It's possible, though, that this story is a simplification of what happened in Athens, suspiciously coincidentally in the same year (c. 510 BC), when the Alcmaeonidae overthrew Hippias. Nevertheless, the Athenian and probably also Roman democracies were established after revolutions, and the leaders of the American revolution were fully aware of this. The Federalist Papers were signed "Publius", after Publius Valerius Publicola, one of Brutus' co-revolutionaries. The Americans were also fully aware of other developments in British constitutional history, such as the aforementioned Glorious Revolution, and the Magna Carta, which were supposed to provide checks on the king's power; they thought George III was particularly abusive of his powers, but if he has been a better king, would they have bothered to start a revolution at all? Adam Bishop (talk) 02:25, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Difficult to know what a better monarch might have done. But the American Revolution article has this about the first steps in the conflict: "[The Americans] first rejected the authority of the Parliament of Great Britain to govern them from overseas without representation, and then expelled all royal officials."  Giving the Colonies representation in Parliament might have helped some. But probably not enough, as one of the root motivations was an interest in re-structuring society along more fluid and equitable lines -- ie., without any aristocrats.  (Anyway, it was a Freemasonic conspiracy and They would have done it one way or another eventually ;).  Wiki Dao  &#9775;  (talk)  03:26, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * What about the English Revolution - they executed the king! 92.15.8.96 (talk) 20:17, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * You're thinking of the English Civil War in which Charles I lost the use of his head; in the English Revolution, James II was sent off to France and took up religion. Both kings attempted to govern without the aid of Pariament; an example that has not been forgotten by their successors. Alansplodge (talk) 21:46, 26 September 2010 (UTC)

The OP might find this article of interest: American exceptionalism. TomorrowTime (talk) 23:44, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

What police incident was this?
I remember a case of a large African-American Man wearing a hat outside of a fast food restaurant being killed by police. This incident was caught on a police car camera. I believe the police were called because the man was acting disruptive. The police start talking with him, and then he sucker punches one of the cops sending his hat flying. The cops then proceed to hit and subdue the man. The man died shortly afterwards. I think the victim might have been on drugs, not sure. I believe this happened between five and seven years ago. This was also on a cop show World's Wildest Police Videos or such. 204.184.80.26 (talk) 18:29, 23 September 2010 (UTC)

question about if america ever had a planned invasion of Europe in case their relationship turned hostile??
question about if america ever had a planned invasion of Europe in case their relationship turned hostile?? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.25.104.7 (talk) 19:20, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Is there a reason "america" is not capitalized but "Europe" is? Are some continents more deserving of capitalization than others? Edison (talk) 03:42, 28 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Well "Europe" is a fairly big region with lots of specific countries in it, and there were no plans to "invade Europe" in a broad sense. But there was a plan for the US to wage war against the UK in the early 20th century: see War Plan Red. There were of course all sorts of specific plans as to what to do if the USSR invaded Germany or attempted to roll across Europe. But I gather that is not what you have in mind when you are asking this. --Mr.98 (talk) 19:25, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Gosh! Just think. Had the US gone to war against the UK —we might all be speaking English today! --Aspro (talk) 19:33, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * ...and Shakezpeare [sic] would be turning in his grave --Senra (Talk) 20:47, 23 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Not with the nukes there. France and weapons of mass destruction and List of states with nuclear weapons. These days US only bullies uses legitimate force against small developing countries barely capable of fighting a superpower rogue states these days.205.189.194.208 (talk) 21:28, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Though it's of note that the plans for possible invasion were long before any European states, or the USA, had nuclear weapons. --Mr.98 (talk) 21:57, 23 September 2010 (UTC)


 * In the 1890's the US seized Spanish possessions such as Cuba and the Phillipines in a big festival of imperialism, but had no appetite for invading, say France and Belgium as Germany often delighted in doing. War Plan Black was a US plan in the early 2oth century for war with Germany, but it focussed on fighting German forces close to the US. The US really did not have the troops and ships needed pre WW1 to invade Europe. They did lend a hand in WW1, but began with a tiny standing army which would have ranked very far down in numbers compareed even to smaller European countries. The US invaded far Eastern Russia post WW1 in concert with other world powers to try and defeat the Communists, but that ended badly, and I would not call the contested area "Europe.". Even in the 1930's, the US focus was on defending the Americas rather than invading European countries, and once again had only a miniscule standing army, with negligible numbers of tanks and combat planes, and really had no capability to invade Europe until after Hitler easily defeated British, French and other European powers on the European continent mainland in a few weeks in the summer of 1940. Edison (talk) 00:19, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Archangel is in western Russia though. See the Polar Bear Expedition of 1918. 75.41.110.200 (talk) 05:41, 25 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Right up until December 1941, when Hitler semi-inexplicably declared war on the U.S., most Americans most of the time wanted nothing to do with intervening in European disputes. What reason would there have been for the U.S. to plan for a logistical nightmare of launching an invasion across the Atlantic in the face of a hostile British navy? AnonMoos (talk) 00:50, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Maybe Americans wanted nothing to do with European disputes, but they have often been involved... April 6, 1917... for example. America (and the other allies) have (more than once) planned, and succeeded, at invasions of Europe, June 6, 1944 for example. Shadowjams (talk) 08:32, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * But only with significant logistical assistance from nearby locations. I don't think the US ever contemplated something like D-Day without British assistance, for example. D-Day was more of a "liberation" than an "invasion" — the US wasn't trying to maintain control over an unwilling populace except in the case of Germany, and even then they had help from the British and the Russians. --Mr.98 (talk) 13:49, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * It's an invasion of a different kind than the OP asked, but by 1944 both sides were in it together. France, Canada, Poland, Britain, and maybe some others all participated in Normandy, not just logistically. The allies occupied territories for varying amounts of time (as did other allied powers), including West Berlin (arguably France for a few weeks in late 1944)... the intentions were certainly different, and they didn't start the war, but the allied powers occupied Germany until the East and West German governments took power, both in 1949. Germany was divided into zones, American, French, Russian, and British. Each of those powers invaded and occupied Germany and other areas.


 * I suspect the OPs question is actually about early American ambitions though, not 20th century ones. Shadowjams (talk) 17:44, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * It would have been far more likely for the U.S. to want to seal off the Western Hemisphere from European influence than to try to conquer Europe, and in that case the logical move would have been to invade Canada (not to try to invade across the Atlantic). I'm sure that there have been U.S. contingency plans for invading Canada at various times... AnonMoos (talk) 14:25, 24 September 2010 (UTC)
 * Mr 98 linked to War Plan Red above, which was exactly that. Adam Bishop (talk) 17:42, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * Very true. See Monroe Doctrine. Shadowjams (talk) 17:44, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * One of the hallmarks of military organizations, especially those as sprawling as that of the USA, is planning for every possible contingency. You don't want to have to come up with something when the Fecal Matter Hits The Rotating Oscillator, you want to reach for the FMHTRO Plan and execute. I would be frankly astonished if, buried somewhere in files at the the Pentagon, there were not detailed invasion and defence plans for every nation on the planet. → ROUX   ₪  17:46, 24 September 2010 (UTC)


 * The early US attacked and defeated pirates in North Africa ("to the shores of Tripoli")who were ignored or even encouraged by European powers. The US in the first half of the 19th century tried to seize portions of Canada, which ended badly for the US, and invaded Mexico convincingly ("from the Halls of Montezuma") in the 1840's, but had no realistic hope of or incentive for loading troops on ships and invading and occupying, say, Germany, or Sweden, or Denmark even through the 1930's. The  war plans were aimed at keeping European conflicts out of the hemisphere where the US resided. The US, in the first early 20th century, was happy to use Marines and gunboats to maintain "friendly" dictators in Central America. Edison (talk) 02:53, 27 September 2010 (UTC)