Iraq II, Come to think of it (was...China's wealthy)

[Tyler Durden]

>That seems improbable:   Qin had a cult of personality, in
>which every single person subject to his control had to
>participate.   A subject of Qin, like a subject of Mao,  was
>more aware of Qin, than he was of his mother and father.

You are apparently simply unaware of the real size and terrain of China. 
There were villages in remote parts of China that were unaware of Mao's 
death into the early 1980s. Travel around in China for a while and you'll 
get the picture. Just to give you an idea, short of renting out a 
helicopter, there are plenty of parts of China that are more than a week 
away from even me, living here in NYC.

>The proposition that the chinese emperors ruled with a light
>hand is historical revisionism.  Some of them ruled with a
>moderately heavy hand, some of them with an extremely heavy
>hand, and Qin was as heavy as it gets

No, as usual you seem to think that because I disagree with the simplicity 
of your "grid" that I must believe the opposite. Let's put it this way: The 
Qin was absolutely despotic in areas that could be guessed at ("Burn Books 
Kill Scholars"), as well as quite despotic in areas that would seem 
pointless now (like bell volumes, because bells were also measurements for 
grain). They also completely didn't care about other things that you would 
think a despot would really care about.

A thing to think about was that Qin Shr Huang seemed to truly believe that 
everything he did was necessary for the unification of China (which he 
accomplished). YOU (not me) might argue that by unifying a large portion of 
central China he actually prevented a lot more deaths due to "Barbarian" 
incursion by "Unfree and uncivilized" Muslims...OOPS--Did I say that? I mean 
"Unfree and backward people that should be killed".

-TD


>I did not pack them in to one simplistic grid - I said that
>legalism was much the same thing as communism/nazism, whereas
>Confucianism is a mixture of that, and also of rule by social
>conservatives.  The rule of Qin was very similar to commie nazi
>rule.  The rule of Qianlong was substantially different.  Both
>were despots, but Qianlong was no totalitarian.
>
>     --digsig
>          James A. Donald
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>      4EcgDCvx/77or2uD2Vhx/20HURcJ8XVeRylOk8puI