Verv wrote:Tainari, I think that you are also overlooking the fact that the specific places you named receive a whole lot of benefits from being part of the US Empire (or however you want to call it) than they would if they were outside of it.
Indeed, it is preferable to be part of it than to not be part of it.
The fact that some people value the concept of independence more than their monetary relationship with the US reflects highly on them, but such movements are probably short sighted. Unless, of course, they can make an arrangement where they get to fleece the US government in aid money every year.
Who says it is preferable? You? Or the colonizers? That is what the British crown said about the USA's thirteen original colonies. They are better off with us. Oh REALLY?
I don't see how they are better off? Financially? No. In terms of trade? No. In terms of having the same political rights at the mainlanders? No. In terms of receiving the same social security benefits and medicare? No. Then how do they benefit? By being what? The insular cases Verve and John Rawls were legal cases that were argued in the SCOTUS for over a hundred years. The Puerto Ricans challenged the colonial laws ruling unincorporated territories rights. The cases were brought to the SCOTUS and the answer to their statements of violations of constitutional rights was a very old document from the turn of the century when they first acquired the islands and it is based on really racist arguments.
How is racism in the law keeping us in unequal statuses' benefiting us? If you say "because you are all a part of a great party and high standard of living. Just let us use your ancestral lands, bomb them, not give you equal rights, don't vote over any of the laws that might affect you and keep in limbo status and be grateful for it because we sell you some fridges and you have more money than third world nations." And that last part is not even true anymore for Puerto Rico. PR was without electricity for months and water that was potable for months. No Mexican, Colombian and Kenyan urban dweller in Nairobi would tolerate being without lights for a year. And they are supposedly 'third world'.
No, tell the truth. You think that the places that are colonized are not worthy of equality. And that is what being an empire is about. Who gives a damn about those people? They are not important. Our needs as an empire outweigh the need for self determination of a few scanty inferiors. And that is where the Empire's evil mentality reveals itself.
Verve and JohnRawls:
The Insular Cases and the Emergence of American Empire
Bartholomew H. Sparrow
When the United States took control of Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Philippines, and Guam following the Spanish-American War, it was unclear to what degree these islands were actually part of the U.S. and, in particular, whether the Constitution applied fully, or even in part, to their citizens. By looking closely at what became known as the Insular Cases, Bartholomew Sparrow reveals how America resolved to govern these territories.
Sparrow follows the Insular Cases from the controversial
Downes v. Bidwell in 1901, which concerned tariffs on oranges shipped to New York from Puerto Rico and which introduced the distinction between incorporated and unincorporated territories, to
Balzac v. Puerto Ricoin 1922, in which the Court decided that Puerto Ricans, although officially U.S. citizens, could be denied trial by jury because Puerto Rico was "unincorporated."
There were 35 Insular Cases in all, cases stretching across two decades, cases in which the Court ruled on matters as diverse as tariffs, double jeopardy, and the very meaning of U.S. citizenship as it applied to the inhabitants of the offshore territories. Through such decisions, as Sparrow shows, the Court treated the constitutional status of territorial inhabitants with great variability and decided that the persons of some territories were less equal than those of other territories. “A scholarly feat. Not only does Sparrow make the complex legal argument crystal clear, but he also delves deeply into the political and cultural factors underlying each opinion. . . . His work is also a study of empire, formal and informal, at the turn of the nineteenth century that he makes fascinatingly relevant to our own time.”
—Journal of American History
“Sparrow’s research is exceedingly impressive. . . . He has written a learned and thematically probing commentary on thirty-five Supreme Court decisions that established the constitutional standing and legal rights of the inhabitants of the new territories. He carefully locates this analysis in the relevant racial, economic, and political contexts; informatively traces the Court’s changing composition and dynamics; and provides engaging biographical sketches of the justices. . . . The Insular Cases were central to governing Americas island empire acquired at the turn of the twentieth century, much of which remains in existence. . . . [This book] . . . certainly contributes to our understanding of the American justification for and practice of imperialism.”
—Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era
See all reviews...
Sparrow traces the fitful evolution of the Court's Incorporation Doctrine in the determination of which constitutional provisions applied to the new territories and its citizens. Providing a new look at the history and politics of U.S. expansion at the turn of the twentieth century, Sparrow's book also examines the effect the Court's decisions had on the creation of an American empire.
It highlights crucial features surrounding the cases—the influence of racism on the justices, the need for naval stations to protect new international trade, and dramatic changes in tariff policy. It also tells how the Court sanctioned the emergence of two kinds of American empire: formal territories whose inhabitants could be U.S. citizens but still be denied full political rights, and an informal empire based on trade, cooperative foreign governments, and U.S. military bases rather than on territorial acquisitions.The Insular Cases and the Emergence of American Empire reveals how the United States handled its first major episode of globalization and how the Supreme Court in these cases, crucially redirected the course of American history.
About the Author
Bartholomew H. Sparrow is associate professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin. His previous books include The Louisiana Purchase and American Expansion, 1803-1898, coedited with Sanford Levinson, and From the Outside In: World War II and the American State.
That @Verv and @JohnRawls is basically not much different logic than the supposedly ugly imperialism of the past. They are unfit. Because we want them to be unfit for self governance. Lol. A bunch of lying pieces of shit are those imperialistic nations and bloody hands they got. They all wind up losing control of the supposed 'happy colonials'. Why? Because human beings don't like having to be restricted and being told what is allowed by people who live far away from them and don't give a shit about them anyway. It never works. Absentee landlords with arrogant mentalities. Would you like them if the shoe were on the other foot? Probably be cursing the 'invaders' and disgruntled with the whole situation.
Arrogance is not attractive in the ignorant.