Precious angel, you believe me when I say,
What God has given to us no man can take away.
We are covered in blood girl, you know both our forefathers were slaves.
Let us hope they’ve found mercy in their bone-filled graves.
Bob Dylan
Petros, a visible Asian minority whose grandparents fled Japanese oppression of Korea, asked Recalcitrant Expat, a visible African minority whose ancestors suffered as slaves in the United States, to discuss the legitimacy of making comparisons between the plight of U.S. expats today with past atrocities. This is in the aftermath of the posting of a Hitler spoof video which compared FATCA’s rounding up of U.S. citizens for taxation and FBAR fines to how Hitler rounded up the Jews for extermination in camps. This post is a result of their common reflexions.
But by conflating one of the most heinous crimes against humanity with any agenda found disagreeable, those who use the analogy are exploiting a tragedy. They are taking vile advantage of the victimization of others for political profit.
So says Ilana Yurkiewicz, who in a blog article for the Scientific America tackles what has become a touchy area in writing and logic, the proper use of “analogy, metaphor, simile, comparison”, particularly as it applies to the Holocaust. In recent weeks the Isaac Brock Society has hotly debated questions like these:
- When and how is it legitimate to compare a contemporary situation with heinous events in history?
- When it comes to making comparisons of issues today with past movements that we abhor, who has the right to decide whether or not such a comparison is legitimate?
- Does the right of comparison belong only to the victims of the atrocity or does human history belong to us all?
- Is it possible for two heirs of a tragedy to have different views as to how that tragedy may be compared to a contemporary problem, and if so, to which of these heirs do we listen?
These are just some of the questions. But can we solve this problem to the satisfaction of all participants? Probably not, but it might help to consider the fundamental issue of whether or not comparisons are legitimate and helpful. Petros has lamented that without making such comparisons people remain indifferent, but that when you do make them, people become outraged, not at the U.S. government, but at the one making the comparison. So one commenter has written:
To impress people with the seriousness of our problem, I don’t use comparisons to anything. I send on the actual stories of what this US policy is doing to the lives of real people, right now, plain and simple. People seem pretty shocked to learn of it, so I’ve found it to be a pretty effective means of consciousness raising.
In our opinion, this approach is unfortunately inadequate. Explaining our situation without making comparisons leads to people looking at you like you’ve gone insane. At best they feign surprise and shock, but then they go on calmly with their lives as if nothing ever happened. Who cares about expats when unemployment is high and one out of every seven people is on food stamps? In our opinion, it is actually better to face outrage than indifference on the part of the public. Furthermore, how does anyone know how outrageous this crisis is if they have nothing to compare it to? Since the authors believe that comparisons are necessary, we will first go through some of the stated or implied reasons as to why a comparison with the Holocaust or other such atrocities is unwarranted.
Arguments against the legitimacy of comparisons
(1) Those who would forbid any comparison of citizenship based taxation with past atrocities, such as the Holocaust or slavery, seem to have a strong belief in the sacredness of the victims suffering. For they would argue that the legitimacy of drawing an analogy their argument rests on finding more than enough dissimilarities between these two issues as to say that any comparison between them trivializes the Holocaust. But this is a matter of perspective. The counterargument is that one honors the Holocaust victims by remembering their suffering to the point of avoiding a repetition of similar events in the future. But to do that, it is necessary to be vigilant, to notice the earliest signs of trouble, and not to wait until it is too late to do anything.
(2) A second obvious reason that certain folks have denied the legitimacy of comparison is that they insist on a one to one correspondence between the earlier atrocity and our present crisis. They would insist, wrongly in our view, that the legitimacy of comparison rests on an absolute one to one correspondence between the things that are being compared. No one, to our knowledge, has been hauled off to internment camps, or gassed and had their bodies thrown in to mass ovens. But human learning itself would be impossible if we had to rely upon exact replication of attributes when applying knowledge gained in one area to developing an understanding of another. Such a requirement would make human intuition useless; for intuition makes use of similarities and inductive reasoning as opposed to relying on exact duplication. Thus, we must insist on the legitimacy of comparing historical events with our contemporary dilemma, and it is not valid to argue that it must match in all the details.
Dominique, a Central African friend, told Petros that lizard tastes like snake. Lizard was on the menu for Petros’ forthcoming visit to Dominque’s home. “That could well be,” said Petros in return. “But since I’ve tasted neither lizard nor snake, it’s not helpful. It is more helpful if you say it tastes like chicken.” Later, back in Canada, Petros replayed this conversation for Moussa, a Cameroonian. Moussa then proceeded in the conference he was teaching to use an analogy of how termites after the rain seek the light which people use to lure and catch them for a nice tasty treat. “It tastes like chicken!” he exclaimed with a twinkle. Whether true or not, at least his audience knew what chicken tastes like. At least he didn’t say, “It tastes like chenilles” (butterfly larvae). Analogy is an indispensable tool because one of the most important pedagogical methods is to move from the known to the unknown. The question is not whether saying termites tasting like chicken inspires in the hearer a notion of the taste and texture of termites. The question is really whether or not termites really taste like chicken–whether the analogy is apt–if it is, it helps a person who has never eaten termites to know what they are really like. None of the people who actually have gone into Swiss bank after Swiss bank, asking to open an account, objected to the FATCA Star post, since for them, that is what this experience really feels like; they feel it is similar to the Jews being singled out for special treatment under Hitler’s pogrom.
(3) A third argument against the comparison is the charge of insensitivity towards those minority groups that suffered, i.e., the political correctness argument. However, this argument is totally belied by the simple and obvious fact that a it was a Jew whose relatives died in the Holocaust who first made the Hitler analogy, Joe Smith commented in his defense:
As a Jew who had relatives who died in Europe, and is under threat of having himself thrown in jail and my family made destitute by the US government, I think the Hitler comparison is rather appropriate.
When I first became aware of all this around 2004-2005 from the website escapeartist.com, I did some reading of the Congressional Record of the debates around the Foreign Tax Exclusion, and expatriates in general. What was different then was that the most rabid statements were coming from Southern Republicans. What has changed is that they have been joined by so-called ‘liberal democrats.’ Listen to what they say. Listen to what they imply. It is indeed frightening. And it is getting worse.
Who dares tell a Jew that he cannot compare his current dilemma to the suffering of his own relatives in the Holocaust? To whom is he being insensitive if not to himself? Recalcitrant Expat, one of the authors of the present post, says that U.S. expatriation tax is comparable to slavery under which his own ancestors suffered in the United States. Shouldn’t people become irate with him because he’s being insensitive to African Americans? Didn’t 9-15 million African slaves die during the slave trade, on their way to be sold in a America? Petros too has compared the US to Japan insisting that his grandparents, who were economic refugees to Hawaii in 1905, that these little Korean slaves must continue to pay tribute to Japan–except that Japan never did do that, for it would have been patently ridiculous if they had tried. Bringing up this analogy, however, made Al Lewis reconsider his position and decide to do an article featuring Petros’ renunciation of citizenship.
So folks, we would like to encourage you all to get over this political correctness. As Dr. Walter E. Williams says, we forgive you of your white guilt for committing heinous crimes against minorities: Now stop acting like damn fools.
(4) A charge of antisemitism is leveled against those who would compare the suffering of expats today with the suffering of the Jews in the Holocaust. So the commenter “Annoyed” argued. But when Petros countered that he himself opposed antisemitic acts by of the U.S. government which is going after the money of Jews like Denise Rich and Eduardo Saverin, after the Swiss accounts of heirs of the Holocaust (funds that escaped Hitler), and the bank accounts of Jews who had moved out the U.S., like Joe Smith, who resides in Canada, Annoyed retorted (sic):
You make it sound like the US government is ONLY going after people in Canada that are Jewish. They are going after everyone in Canada and other foreign countires who have foreign bank accounts, not just Jewish people. Antisemitism is defined as the suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. So no I dont believe that counts, if the US Government was only going after Jewish people, sure I’d give you that one.
So Annoyed is saying its ok for the U.S. to persecute Jews, provided that other people like African Americans, whites and Koreans are also persecuted. This is twisted logic at its worse. Shouldn’t the response have been: “We should avoid going after anyone in order to protect the rights of Jews and to avoid being antisemitic.” But instead, Annoyed makes the U.S. into an equal opportunity hater and persecutor and that somehow exonerates them of the charges of antisemitism because it is persecuting Jew and non-Jew alike.
Arguments for the legitimacy of Comparisons
In this light, Ms. Yurkiewicz, whose grandparents were Holocaust survivors, continues (boldface ours):
Is it ever appropriate to invoke the Holocaust? Absolutely. The most egregious horrors bring with them a moral force. To learn nothing from them, to have the brutalities ignored, dismissed, or forgotten, would be just as insulting to the victims. …
The critical components of pointing to the Holocaust in contemporary ethical discussions are understanding how to make a proper analogy and harboring appropriate motivations. The Holocaust comprised so many diverse crimes on such an enormous scale that invoking it broadly does not say much. Rather, if it is to be used to productively and respectfully advance a discussion, it would be better to point out a specific aspect, compare to something specific today, and then explain why the analogy holds.
It is in this area of “similarities” where the comparisons become legitimate. For those who believe that it is legitimate to draw a comparison between the Holocaust or slavery and citizenship based taxation the legitimacy of the comparison rest in the similarities that they believe the two issues share. So what are some of those similarities?
- Deprivation of property: Citizenship-based taxation with all of its reporting rules and associated penalties deprives U.S. citizens of their non-U.S. property; not least of these is the threat of 383% FBAR penalties which could easily exceed even the total net worth of the individual. One may argue that the IRS has only threatened expats with destitution and poverty–but those who have entered the Offshore Voluntary Disclosure Programs may have a different view.
- Deprivation of financial accounts: U.S. citizens are having their non-U.S. accounts closed because non-U.S. financial institutions do not want to run the risks of incurring IRS fines that are levied on accounts of U.S. persons because they have not been properly reported nor do these same financial institutions want to have their U.S. source payments penalized by withholding.
- Denial of the right to work: U.S. persons who live abroad are now being discriminated against because their U.S. status puts a reporting and remuneration burden on their non-U.S. employers that makes them uncompetitive with residents of the same country who are NOT U.S. persons.
- Discrimination: Because of FATCA non-resident U.S. persons are now specifically being segregated from the rest of the population of the country in which they reside. Those who were not born in the U.S. now have lineage problems that are as much of an obstacle to them as is skin color, religious affiliation, sexual orientation etc.
Restrictions on movement: Citizenship-based taxation greatly diminishes the right of U.S. persons to determine where they will live and pay taxes. The U.S. treats U.S. persons as slaves who have no right to move away from U.S. jurisdiction and therefore its taxation. The U.S. government denial of any comparison of slavery and citizenship-based taxation, conveniently forgets that taxation without representation is a form of tax slavery against which the founders of the country led a rebellion. If the US government understood taxation the way the founding Fathers did, they would forbid extra-territorial taxation on the grounds of the 13th-15th amendment which emancipated slaves and gave them equal rights to non-slaves in America. To continue to tax Americans who live outside the country and who have chosen to do this as a lifestyle choice and on a permanent basis, is to indenture them into perpetual slavery to a government which being afar off cares not one whit for them, provides them no services and no protection. Citizenship-based taxation is a medieval relic in which the people born on the lord’s fief owe perpetual allegiance to a sovereign who neglects them except at tax time. Furthermore, this restriction on emigration is becoming more draconian with new measures to prevent the renewal of passports if the person has an alleged debt to the IRS. It should frighten us when a government places such restrictions on movement, like the soldiers of a certain German national socialist movement who, in the movie Casablanca, refused permission to depart if the person failed to produce the correct papers. The film depicts the fear in the people’s faces, and these kinds of restrictions in movement should make us afraid, as it is a warning to us all: Any government that restricts movement draws dangerously close to being a totalitarian state.
After having looked at the two different perspectives on whether or not a given historical atrocity can be compared to a seemingly currently equally heinous case of government misconduct we are still left with the question of which side to choose. The authors of this post do not believe that this question can be answered by looking only at the contradictory claims of the opponents. For there is actually a much more crucial issue at hand here; that is this: To whom does the right to interpret and apply history belong?
In pre-literate human cultures the question of the ownership of history was a much easier one to answer. This is because pre-literate cultures are composed of small groups of those who were genetically related, i.e. the tribe. In these small pre-literate cultures the responsibility for keeping an “accurate” historical record of it genetically related members was most often entrusted to one individual or a small group of individuals. Since these individuals were responsible for holding the collective memory of the group they and the memories which they held became surrounded with an aura of “sacredness” and were therefore not open to criticism from other members of the group. Literate societies though do not have the same dynamic around their collective history because memories record on paper are open to the examination of all readers.
In literate societies history is something that is accessible to not just all members of the group but also to those who are outside of the immediate group with whom the historical incident is concerned. In other words literacy democratized human history. Which means therefore that we all have a right to examine and apply it as we see fit. The fact that historical incidents can be misapplied is a reality that we as a society have to deal with but we should not attempt to deal with this danger by reverting back to a pre-literate handling of history. What instead we have to do is to have open debate about our differing applications. But never should we attempt to appoint gatekeepers of history or to allow others to appoint themselves as the protectors of the sacred.
by Recalcitrant Expat, Petros
@Recalcitrant & Petros
What an excellent paper! It will take me some time to digest.
good job guys. Something like this would be nice if some MSM websites or other publications would pick it up. I especially agree.. #5 seems to affect me the most.
Excellent article. Thank you both for posting it. One item jumped out as I read it: “One may argue that the IRS has only threatened expats with destitution and poverty…”
The IRS has indeed only threatened expats, but to my mind the threat alone is enough to constitute bad faith. Even if it’s an empty threat.
Suppose someone points a gun at you and demands your wallet, and you do one of two things: hand it over; or refuse and the gunman leaves empty handed. Later it transpires that the gun wasn’t loaded. In both cases a crime was committed. The difference may come down to extortion versus robbery, but both are unacceptable.
Being based in the EU, numbers 2,3 and 4 have been the most severe for me. I have no assets so number 1 hasn’t been an issue. I have been denied bank accounts, refused signing authority over a corporate account and discriminated against due to having a US birthplace.
Although there haven’t been reports of any fatalities, will we ever know how many US citizens have ‘died’ (renounced) as a result of FATCA, FBAR and citizenship based taxation, when in our acts of self preservation we forbid ourselves to speak the truth in US consulates throughout the world?
@recalcitrant and petros
Much to think about in your well written post.
There’s a distinction of using an historic event for shock purposes to relate a growing injustice, than trying to draw direct parallels. There is NOTHING about FATCA that will ever result in the depravation and outright horror of the Holocaust – EVER! Indeed, if it did, the taxation issue is insignificant by comparison.
There are appropriate parallels to the Holocaust, however, that sadly because of the scope of it everyone almost diminishes. What happened in the former Yugoslavia was an absolute parallel that particularly the Serbs were committing while the rest of Europe wanted to be “diplomatic” with Milosevic. I was at CNN International at the time and got into a ranging argument with the editor, a Jew, that we were complicit in the genocide whenever we used the Serbian term “ethnic cleansing” instead of “genocide.” He said, “forced relocation is not genocide”. I said, “it is when all males are moved into a pit and machine-gunned!” I almost lost my job because of my stand, but it didn’t change anything. Sadly there remains many examples of genocide that rises to the Holocaust. Pol Pot in Cambodia brings to mind; Idi Amin in Uganda springs to mind; Stalin’s gulags; and Mao’s “cultural revolution” all left trails of blood in the hundreds of thousands and millions of unarmed people that the rulers simply didn’t like.
Ironically, though people in America are loathe to be willing to be balanced on this issue, slavery in America, as truly abhorrent as it was, was actually not akin to the Holocaust or genocide at all. Not only that, but few remember that the reason why the North in particular were anti-slavery was that some 60% of the population who came to America in the North were white slaves – they were called “indentured servants” but they were slaves nonetheless. Most were for periods of 10 years, but they were considered property and traded in the same way as blacks in the South. But, while there were examples of beatings and even killings of slaves in the south, very few “Masters” had any desire to ill treat their slaves because they were the ones doing the work! An injured slave can’t pick cotton.
Back to FATCA…. Here is what is a parallel to the Nazis with reference to the Jewish issue, but it is definitely NOT the Holocaust. The Nazis identified the Jews as a useful scapegoat onto whom they could blame absolutely everything that was wrong in Germany, esp. what went wrong with Hitler’s policies. By denying them their rights, then property, then political voice, there was nothing Hitler did wrong that wasn’t the Jews’ fault. And there was nothing he couldn’t do against them afterwards.
Overseas Americans now find ourselves in similar circumstances. Obama comes overseas talking nicely asking for our money to fund his re-election while his administration has berated, belittled, and bedeviled all of us. The IRS has turned into a fiscal Gestapo, surpassing even Himmler – Himmler, after all, never forced the Swiss to divulge Jewish and other bank accounts during the 30s and 40s; the Swiss caved at the first approach with the IRS. And since most of those tax cheats were inside the USA, it hasn’t stopped the likes of Levin and Grassley, and Shulman from blaming overseas Americans as a bunch of tax cheats and traitors! Naturally, without anyone in Congress to represent the 4-5 million overseas Americans, they can get away with this with impunity, along with a totally fictitious statement by Levin that there is supposedly $100 billion in “lost” tax revenue hiding overseas.
The list of actions and statements against overseas Americans that are downright un-Constitutional is mind-bogglingly long. Let’s just start with the 8th Amendment that prohibits excessive fines – how “excessive” do you think the SCOTUS would find the levying of a $10,000 fine for not filling out one of the 668 forms the IRS requires overseas Americans to be aware of even if the taxpayer owes NO TAX?! But here again we are deprived of our access to courts without an enormous financial burden to even get there to argue.
I urge overseas Americans to read our “Declaration of Independence” – not the preamble that we all know by heart, but the list of grievances that Thomas Jefferson & Cie listed that were the specific reasons for our declaring independence from Britain. You will find an incredible similarity with the situation in which overseas Americans find themselves.
There are three enormous ironies in all of this as I see it:
1. The IRS with Levin’s backing is willing to wreck normal banking relations and procedures with the entire global banking community to supposedly generate a paltry $800 million in “lost” revenues from overseas Americans. And this only if the banks and overseas Americans take no actions whatsoever as a consequence of their actions, which we already know isn’t happening. So in a pent-up pogram of hatred against overseas Americans spirred by “the BIG LIE” of $100 billion in the “El Dorado” of overseas Americans, the IRS is likely to get even less.
2. The IRS has admitted that they haven’t collected $385 billion in taxes owed INSIDE THE USA! Of this amount, $3 billion is owed by employees of the Federal government, including over $800,000 by Pres. Obama’s advisors! Then the report came from TIGTA that the IRS has deliberately not investigated sending refund checks to crooks to the tune of $21 billion, let alone the reports also of illegal immigrants submitting false tax returns claiming fictitious children and receiving refunds. The Federal Reserve estimates that $150 billion is send in cash overseas each year. The assumption is most of this is from illegal immigrants sending it to their families. Aaaaahhhhh…. But that’s $150 billion that hasn’t been taxed either. Levying just a 1% tax on those transfers would yield TWICE the amount of money the IRS estimates it will get through the entire FATCA process!
3. No one points out the fundamental cause at the heart of FATCA which is an administration who has spend too much money that we don’t have, and plans to continue their deficit spending if it gets re-elected. Obama & Cie has added $5 trillion in less than four years; his “budget” as evinced in his OMB document, would add another $4 trillion over the next 4 years – but only if the economy grows by 5% or more each year! Since they haven’t ever gotten their year-to-year GDP forecast right, the very idea that this will happen is ludicrous. I’ve recalculated their numbers and found he understates the debt by another $3 trillion. I guess he’s the only one in the world who thinks money grows on trees. The rest of us – particularly the US Treasury and IRS – knows that the only place to find their money is in OUR POCKETS! And, since Obama has effectively taken 50% of American earners off the tax rolls, that leaves the upper 50% to pay for everything. That’s why overseas Americans are seen as “traitors” and “tax cheats” because we don’t pay our “fair share” so Obama & Cie can continue spending money that creates neither growth or jobs. HOW DARE OVERSEAS AMERICANS RUIN AMERICA LIKE THIS!!
It leads actually to a 4th irony which is this: The lowest 50% of taxpayers contribute only 9% of the total revenue to the Treasury (these are IRS numbers; check at http://www.irs.gov), leaving the upper 50% paying 91% of all taxes. So we have a case where the 50% of taxpayers who pay nothing complaining about how the 50% who pay everything aren’t paying their “fair share”. Just how does that happen?
Back to history a minute…. There is no history of genocide ever being committed under the guise of a flawed tax process, even under Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, Milosevic, or Idi Amin. Using the Holocaust or slavery as a parallel I believe is beyond the pale. Telling “Big Lies”, however, and blaming minorities that are responsible for all the ills in society ARE accurate historic parallels that DO describe the current state of the problems overseas Americans face. What should concern ALL Americans, not just those overseas, is why they aren’t seeing this obvious demogoguery going on and putting on the brakes and waking up to reality.
Reagan’s favorite line was: “A government that is powerful enough to give you everything you want, is also powerful enough to take everything you have!”
Then there is my favorite phrase that describes what we’re seeing this election year:
“Beware the naked man who offers to give you the shirt off his back!”
Thanks for starting this thread, Petros and Recalcitrant. Your initial post is thought-provoking, and so far the comments have likewise been so. Some valid points have been raised on both sides of the argument, IMO.
For me, the critical issue is not to lose sight of why we’re all here and what we’re all fighting, and not to get into name-calling and labeling when someone draws a parallel that someone else doesn’t like. The issues we’re grappling with aren’t as life-threatening and life-destroying as are genocide and slavery, but they are serious issues that severely upset and disrupt people’s lives in ways that matter a lot to them. And the issues also represent real and serious extra-territorial (some, including me, would say “imperialst”) intrusions by the US government into the jurisdictions and sovereignty of other nations, the laws of those nations, and the rights of citizens of those nations within their borders. I could draw my own parallels with actions by empires and countries over history, but I’m not convinced my doing so contributes to solving a problem. Venting anger is arguably more healthy than bottling it up, depending of course on how that venting occurs, but once the venting is over, let’s not lose focus on the issues and how to deal with them as constructively and effectively as we can, individually or collectively.
@Patric, thanks very much for your thoughtful comment.
I want to point out that I disagree with this line:
The Jewish people during the late second temple period rose up against the Romans in order to escape the choking burden of excessive taxes and the oppression of tax collectors. In the initial moments of the war, they killed all the Romans and their Jewish collaborators. This led to the genocide of the Jewish people, under Vespasian and Titus, and to the destruction of the Temple in AD 70. I’m sure, if you give me enough time, I can come up with other examples of where bad taxation policies leads ultimately to atrocities.
That said, we are not maintaining that FATCA will lead to genocide. We are not saying that. So I think that your point of singling out expats and using them as scape goats, is in essential agreement with our post.
Finally, I disagree about slavery in America. There is no way to say that the enslavement for 400 years of African Americans, along with the death of 9-15 million Africans in the slave trade, a most heinous crime that was integrally associated with slavery in America, is not somehow a crime comparable to the Holocaust.
@Schubert, Thanks for your comment. I appreciate your stance. However, I do not think it right to characterize what we’ve done here as “venting anger”. That is not what we are doing.
*Patric Hale
I was wondering if you knew the history of that 100 Billion number. I remember a Canadian government official being asked about it and basically not willing to comment because he had no idea what the source of it was.
@patric hale
‘What should concern ALL Americans, not just those overseas, is why they aren’t seeing this obvious demogoguery going on and putting on the brakes and waking up to reality.’
Who is there to put the brakes on for USP’s abroad? Certainly not Congress who through their apparent oversight (according to Mopsick) allowed FATCA to pass. The Republican Party is in a position to serve a big black eye to the Democrats on this issue, but with ‘offshore bank accounts’ being the root of all evil they’re best just to avoid the issue for the paltry 6 M of us abroad. It seems no group, other that those that represent USP’s living abroad, is willing or able to embark on a campaign that may help us. Maybe our only hope is that things will get worse and become patently obvious that US persons are being persecuted that there will be a paradigm shift in the way Americans view those abroad. So far the message that policies hurting Americans abroad also hurt every American hasn’t gotten through. How do we achieve empathy in those who can effect change? Images of the Holocaust may work for those who can comprehend the full injustice and where those injustices can lead, but for those who can’t, I believe they may only serve to alienate. Such is nature of controversy.
I am sure I won’t make any friends, but I am liberally offended by this statement:
Petros, a visible Asian minority whose grandparents fled Japanese
oppression of Korea, asked Recalcitrant Expat, a visible African
minority whose ancestors suffered as slaves in the United States, to
discuss the legitimacy of making comparisons between the plight of U.S.
expats today with past atrocities.
Although in the last paragraphs you do partially redeem yourselves.
Why does this offend me? Because I reject the entire thesis that people whose ancestors were slaves (or suffered in some special fashion) have any special right to judge, judge the judges, or even to judge the judges of the judges. IMO the ancestry of Petros and Recalictrantexpat has no bearing on their argument and does not strengthen it. In fact, by using the history of these ancestries they weaken the argument by linking it to one of the many grievance groups we are so sick of hearing from and because by using it as some special qualification they actually kow-tow to the PC elites.
A remarkable effort. An incredible amount of unpaid work. Anything that is not tautology is metaphor of a kind. Even tautology is disputable: if there are two distinguishable instances, how can those two ever be the same one? Leave that “one” to the theologians and the mystics and the lovers. Our lives are messy – and emotional – in a way that “logic” is not.
Well written Patric Hale.
@Petros
@Recalcitrant
Great post containing excellent arguments. This is a MAJOR contribution to the whole discussion.
Thanks!
In troubling times it can be wise to deny one’s ethnicity, national origin, religion, etc., and to seek out a more tolerant country and citizenship to escape persecution. Yesterday’s “Neue Zürcher Zeitung” newspaper carried a story on how Hungarian Jews increasingly hide their identity and are emigrating due to the rise of anti-semitism in Hungary. Below are several sentences from the article (translated):
“In Hungary before the last war there were approximately 725,000 Jews and another 100,000 Christians who were considered Jews under Nazi racial laws. Memorials, including in the garden of the Great Synagogue, remind us of the murder of 565,000 Hungarian Jews during the Shoah.
Even today, the number of Jews in Hungary is relatively large compared to other countries with largely destroyed Jewish communities – Hungary has the largest Jewish community in Central and Eastern Europe. It is, according to sources, estimated at 80,000 to 100,000. But at the last census in 2001, only 13,000 acknowledged to being part of the Jewish religious community, which with broken tradition since the war is explicable, but is also certainly related to fears to openly profess Judaism.”
http://www.nzz.ch/aktuell/international/antisemitismus-macht-ungarns-juden-zu-schaffen-1.17469384
@ConfederateH Actually, I agree partly with you. But first you have to establish your street creds to speak to a politically correct audience. Do you agree with the quote from Dr. Walter E. Williams? That’s what I’m calling for.
Another thing is that I am really quite surprised how some became so angry at the comparison to the Nazis, yet Recalcitrant’s comparison to US slavery and my comparison to Japanese atrocities are met with shrugs. To be consistent, they must get angry at all comparisons to historical atrocities or back down. Some are doing just that, but that does not help the discussion at all. We must have the ability to see how history applies to our situation.
@Confederate, re; “one of the many grievance groups we are so sick of hearing from”
– Who is the ‘we‘ you speak for? If it is your feeling as an individual, then own it by using the first person rather than evoking some nebulous larger number of individuals.
– IBS could be termed a ‘grievance group’ then, in the eyes of the IRS and the US who wants to continue to use us as tax scapegoats, and dismiss our real grievances as frivolous and unfounded in order to deflect attention from the real injustices we are highlighting, insofar as those on this site air the legitimate grievances of a diverse and loosely affiliated group of US citizen ‘expatriates’, US deemed taxable persons, etc.
@all, there are many types of ‘unfree labour’, and each one has historical and social specificity as well as a more general commonality as a metaphor.for example, see –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unfree_labor#Forms_of_unfree_labour http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bonded_labor http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indenture
*This site is aimed at three audiences
the original Brockers who were exiled from the expat forum
those seeking information and advice
gawkers who just want to see what we are about
In the absence of posting guidelines and overt moderation, the major authors are responsible for both content and tone of any item on the site.
No matter how righteous our cause, bad rhetoric can obscure a good argument and solid analysis.
It has been mentioned that the site may be infiltrated and possibly manipulated by IRS folks. Google any topic discussed by IBS, and this site is prominently displayed on the first page of any search result. Prominence invites scrutiny, do we want to be known for rhetoric or solid analysis and advocacy.
@PatricHale-You missed the whole point. The point of the essay was to say that no one owns exclusive rights to history. That is said at its conclusion. We are not claiming special ethnic priviliges to speak on these matters.
It is also quite clear that the comparision of the sufferings that are endured under citizenship based taxation are not complete parallels to acts of genocide. The point made in the essay though is that the comparisons don’t have to be completee in order to be legitimate. It is actually in the very nature of comparison itself that the things being compared not be exactly the same. If they were the same then we wouldn’t be using the word comparision.
The truth of the matter is that neither slavery nor the Holocaust were able to be implemented without the utilization of seemingly lesser, none threatening tools but all of which when put together resulted in the Ultimate solution.
Right now the ultimate solution for the world financial system means purging itself of any and all U.S. persons. This is discrimination based on nationality and it is in place because of the U.S. Congress and its henchmen at the Treasury. Life beyond the walls of the U.S. is now not possible unless you carry the IRS issued “pass system certificate”. But I guess that many won’t like that analogy either because they will say that “Apartheid” is nothing at all similar to citizenship based taxation.
That leaves me to ask just exactly what parallels if any can be drawn? Who can draw them?
If in fact there are no parallels between citizenship based taxation and any other epoch of human oppression then we in fact don’t have any complaint at all. Instead you should just go ahead, pay your U.S. taxes and keep your mouth shut.
@Bubblebustin
‘So far the message that policies hurting Americans abroad also hurt every American hasn’t gotten through. How do we achieve empathy in those who can effect change?’
Therein lies the rub. Although I would like to believe it can be accomplished, deep inside I believe empathy only comes when one has ‘walked in those shoes’. Homeland Americans need to see they are being hurt by all of this.
Even talking to my own siblings (4 of them,all living in the U.S.), they sympathize that I am having a difficult time but they really don’t empathize. They all believe the U.S. is ‘the greatest country in the world’. They believe their country is only doing what needs to be done. They feel bad that myself and my Canadian born children could be collateral damage but they really do not have empathy. Until they see PROOF that present policies are actually hurting them and their children, they will sympathize but do nothing because they can not empathize.
I don’t think Patric Hale missed the point. That he does not agree with the main thrust of the original post does not qualify as missing the point.
The root problem of genocide and slavery comparisons is this:
1) The banks that are doing the ‘discrimination’ are responding to natural market forces, i.e. seeking to avoid the complexity and unmeasurable problems / costs of having US clients. This is within current lawful behavior until someone / some group challenges and wins in a court of law in the particular country – and then it will be ruled discriminatory, i.e. illegal. Law is fixed in nature, fluid in evolution.
2) The country that is doing the heavy handed thuggish empire style overreach (USA) is free to try to get away with whatever it wants. All countries try to maximize their self interest to some degree. This overreach will be met by two forces: the resistance of other sovereign countries, and the internal politics of the USA.
Thus the key issues here are well within the civil arena, and a great deal of freedom is available to redress, flee, full ostrich, fight, whatever. Victims of genocide do not have these choices.
In addition, the perpetrators here are freely elected democratic countries, and corporations / banks with shareholders, stockholders, etc – all open to influence. Political, guerilla, media. Take your pick.
The genocide and slavery metaphor does not hold .
That Americans living abroad are heavily impacted here is not being disputed. That lives are being turned upside down, yes.
But. Genocide? Slavery? Which of you would trade places with the Malian 10 year old or the Bosnian in a machine gun pit? Or the young woman on the shore of Accra?
No one “owns” history. But the relief of the terrain is pretty clear.
@tiger, that’s why I’m beginning to believe that things will get much worse before they can get better.
@all- I wonder how America’s belief in its “exceptionalism” differs in any way from the Nazi belief in the superiority of the Aryan race? Don’t both nationalistic belief systems end up with the two nations commitin similar acts both at home and abroad? The only difference being that America’s expansionism being that it lacks a genetic basis while yet being the same thing.
Did the whole world ever say that it wanted to live under American tutelage? Isn’t that what America’s extraterritorial application of it laws amounts too? American militarism abroad and extension of its taxation powers is no different than Nazi expansionism in Europe. In the end it will actually be worse because America is now spreading its dysfuntional government to every corner of the globe.