Successful society is usually predicated on genocide to remove dissent between factions. (Examples: USA, China, the current European ethnically-self-determined nations) Is that utilitarian?
Are you counting Native Americans as a "faction"? That seems like an odd definition of the word "faction".
Are you referring to the Civil War? That seems like an odd definition of the word "genocide".
Are you referring to the current state of politics? Also not a genocide and, please God, it will continue to remain not a genocide.
What exactly did you have in mind in your statement?
I just wanted gowld to clarify what, exactly, his/her point was, because it seemed to be rather incoherent. Was gowld talking about Native Americans? I honestly can't tell.
I think it's pretty obvious that they were talking about the "manifest destiny" genocide of native people, considering that "freeing up" that land was considered pivotal to "completing america's destiny". though i guess they could have been talking about the genocide of african enslaved people through forced labor. or the genocide of people in the Philippines during the Spanish American war, which birthed the American empire. lots of genocide to choose from, actually, so i guess your confusion is understandable.
i have no opinion in this argument, i am just trying to understand yours
Is the Europe reference to Germany? I could kind of see that (genocide, yes, and also a "faction"), but tarring all of Europe with it is rather a stretch. The claim seems to be that European nations achieved ethnic unity via genocide, which seems to me to be rather a stretch historically.
gowld seems to be taking behavior that has occurred at times, to the shame of both the US and Europe, and making it the defining element of their history. But I'm trying not to accuse gowld of selectively reading history before I'm sure that's what he/she is trying to say. I'm trying to find out what that opaque little paragraph actually was supposed to say, so that I then can accurately criticize it, if it needs criticism.
native americans were certainly a different group of people than european settlers. i think that is clear enough.
but i am not a native english speaker, so maybe my understanding of faction is different from yours, and you define faction in a way that is incompatible with its application here.
however for the sake of discussion i'd like to ask if that is important? isn't the definition that should be applied into the context of this discussion rather clear?
i mean, go back to the original statement and replace faction with something else:
Successful society is usually predicated on genocide to remove dissent between groups.
it doesn't seem to me that that would change anything in that statement. we still don't know exactly which groups are actually referred to.
faction, group, party, nation, ethnicity, opponents, whatever it seems you got hung up on that word when you really want to know more specifically which examples are being referred to.
And, to me, the Native Americans were not part of US society. US society was a European society carved out of land that had previously belonged to Native Americans.
In the same way, when the US fought the Germans in World War II, you wouldn't say that the Germans were a faction. They were a foreign entity.
You might also note that the US negotiated treaties with the Native Americans. You do treaties with foreign entities, not with factions within your own society.