In the past two days, the news in the United States has maxed out the major news pages, so we can just watch what we are going to do next.
At the same time, I also discussed many issues related to the United States with my friends. Many Americans’ ideological values are indeed different from those of China. There are many historical reasons for these differences in thinking. The underlying logic of the target, there are also many people who do not understand the underlying logic of the US bias towards China.
All these need to be sorted out from the history of the United States. Only in this way can we understand the United States more intuitively.
A clue that runs through American history: the struggle of various forces around centralization
Many people actually don’t understand what "centralization" is. In the years when China lost the right to speak, the concept of "centralization" was misinterpreted as " symbol of totalitarianism ".
But in fact, the two are very different. Centralization emphasizes the leadership of the central government over local governments, and totalitarianism emphasizes the extreme concentration of power.
Judging from this standard, centralization is indisputable, because the United States is also a very typical centralized country, but its degree is tight. In addition to the power provided by the Federal Constitution, it is the autonomy enjoyed by the state government.
Most countries in the world are centralized. What are the representatives of non-centralized political entities? It is the European Union, it is the Warring States and China before it. The Americans are certainly not stupid, they know the benefits of centralization. When the United States was just founded, it would be called a confederate system. It is not centralized. So the state power can be said to be huge. They have different laws, different tariffs, , and their own army. Basically, it is a bulk country. .
Can this be done? Of course it won't be possible. Therefore, when the United States was just established, it would be chaotic, commodities would not be circulated, and even the currency would not be unified.
The founding fathers of the United States realized that this country will end sooner or later, either by splitting the civil war or being recolonized by Britain. So everyone sat together for a meeting, formulated the 1787 Constitution, and since then established the federal system .
Federal system and Confederate system are only reversed, but the difference is very big, basically equal to the difference between enfeoffment system and county system.
Here is an interesting related topic. In fact, from the English country name of the United States, you can probably know that the founding of the United States is an AA bulk country.
United States, United means "united", and states are generally translated as "国" or "state". For example, the Warring States period in China is translated as "the Warring States period". So the literal meaning of the name of the United States is actually "the union of states."
It’s just that everyone is unified. If you refer to state as a country, it’s a bit of a lack of military ethics, so it’s translated into "state". The translation of
"United States of America" is actually very interesting. Although I haven't learned about it in particular, I believe this translation was probably finalized after the second industrial revolution, because this translation is simply full of the yearning for "America to be strong". It is "beautiful", "profit", and "firm", and the United States is full of "unity and unshakable".
In the early modern period, China often referred to the United States as "American" or "Citi". With the strength of the United States during the second industrial revolution, the Chinese translation of the United States gradually changed, but if you follow the "transliteration +" According to the principle of "free translation", it is more appropriate to translate the full name of the United States into "American Federation".
returns to the topic.
After the enactment of the 1787 Constitution, is everything going well?
Of course not. Since then, American politics have fought an unfinished struggle around "strengthening centralization" and "strengthening state power".
The original conflicting parties were Federal Party headed by Hamilton, and the Democratic Republican Party headed by Jefferson.
Jefferson is familiar to everyone, that is the President Hill; Hamilton is not so familiar to everyone, but his contribution to American history should not be underestimated. Because of his untimely death, his portrait is more handsome than other "fathers of the country".
Federal Party LeaderZhang strengthened the power of the central government, and the Democratic Republican Party advocated strengthening state power, so during the presidency of Jefferson , a series of democratic reforms were carried out, including the "electoral college" system that defeated Hillary Clinton.
And when was the peak of American centralization in history? It was Roosevelt's New Deal. Since then, successive U.S. governments have generally continued this direction, and did not begin to loosen until the 1970s and 1980s.
, especially during the Reagan period, began to slowly weaken the trend of strengthening centralization since the "New Deal" and advocated "returning power to the state."
If you want to clearly talk about the policies of previous U.S. governments, it is another huge project, so I won’t talk about it in detail here.
But we can think about why there is such a contradiction in the United States. This is what I said, the foundation of its founding is different.
The founding of the United States is essentially a bulk country under the AA system, so state power aspires to expand, but national governance is very realistic. Only unification can regulate resources to the greatest extent, so even Europe aspires to unification.
So what do you think those people who watch "Fu of Da Qin" and criticize Unity by using the Violent Qin Dynasty are thinking.
In addition to centralization, the Americans are also obsessed with unity. Anyway, he will not allow himself to split.
Don’t look at the fact that the United States is everywhere today to support the independence of others, but Americans have never relented in states that they want "independence".
is about to mention the well-known Civil War here.
Everyone knows that the main contradiction of the Civil War lies in the issue of the existence and abolition of the slave system, but in fact, the reasons for the division of the North and the South are much more complicated.
The main contradiction in American history in the ten or twenty years since its founding was whether to establish a federal system.
After the promulgation of the 1787 Constitution, the historical contradiction in the United States entered a new era, that is, the contradiction between North and South. The foreshadowing of the contradiction between North and South has actually been left from the colonial period. This is a question of how two different economic systems coexist in one country.
This contradiction has become increasingly acute with the deepening of the industrial revolution. Someone just wondered, why can't different things coexist? Can't we seek common ground while reserving differences? In fact,
simply cannot, because the fundamental interests of the plantation economy and the industrial economy are contradictory. The most intuitive manifestation of this conflict of interests is the issue of tariff policy. The industrial state hopes to raise tariffs to protect the domestic market, while the slave-holding state fears that raising tariffs will incur tariff reprisals from other countries, resulting in unsold agricultural products.
Therefore, in the 1940s and 1950s, the industrial states and the slave states basically became two powers of equal strength, and their struggle continued to the struggle for the central power.
According to the US Congressional system, each state has its own proportion of members. This proportion reached a balance in the early 19th century because the industrial states and the slave states were evenly matched.
However, with the expansion of the US territory, whether the newly-built state joins the Union as an industrial state or a slave state has become the focus of American political struggle. This balance of
was eventually broken by the " Kansas Act", according to which the people of Kansas have the right to determine the nature of their regime. As a result, slave owners poured into Kansas to establish a slave government, and a large number of people from the North also poured into the so-called "free government."
This led to the outbreak of the Kansas Civil War, which was also the prologue of the Civil War.
But thinking about its practical ass, you will know that the world trend at that time was industrialization. In the long term, the slave state could not compete for the industrial state. This means that the election of Lincoln is a historical necessity.
Even if there was no Lincoln, some of the Republicans at the time supported the abolition of slavery to run for the president.
So the slave state finally couldn't sit still. They decided to leave the Union, set up their own government, and launched a civil war.
Many people wonder, if your southern state is independent, why don't you have anything to go to war against the Union?
Here I have to praise the advanced nature of the upper class in the South. Judging from what they have done, compared with Li Hongzhang and Westernization School in the same period, the Americans are not making much progress, and it is a very prominent embodiment of "modern people". The difference with "ancient people".
Of course, this is not to scold Li Hongzhang, but to give an example. The
Westernization faction created the Beiyang fleet but has always adopted a policy of avoiding warThe Sino-French War and the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895 were successively discarded, and they were killed without seeing the inevitability of the war.
Where is the progress of Southerners in America? Progress is seeing the inevitability of the outbreak of war.
This is a very progressive thinking compared to the Qing Dynasty. You have declared independence. Will the federal government let you go?
will naturally not let it go. Since the war will break out anyway, it is better to take a gamble before the North is not ready to defeat the northern army in one fell swoop and strive for bargaining chips.
did indeed win steadily in the early days of the war, but they underestimated their exploitation and dependence on slaves. After
the North announced the "Proclamation on the Emancipation of Negro Slaves", which led to a large number of slaves fleeing in the South, which led to two most deadly consequences for the South.
The first is that a large number of black slaves joined the northern army, which led to a large number of replenishment of the northern army and greatly enhanced combat effectiveness.
The second reason is that a large number of black slaves have fled and led to the collapse of the economy in the South. You have no slaves, and you refuse to work in the land. How can you make money?
In the end, the Civil War ended in victory in the North.
Generally speaking, our textbooks are over, but there are many follow-ups to the Civil War in a broad sense. Including a series of liquidation of the South, historically called the "Southern Reconstruction" period. This period of
was also very complicated. It experienced a brief restoration of the slave system and military trusteeship. But the overall result was that the southern state completely lost its "state status", was forced to military control, and accepted "democratic" reforms.
will rejoin the federation after the reform is completed.
So what does every region have the right to join/exit the federation, joining is simple, but do you guess whether the slave state has successfully exited?
is written at the end. Talk about something more profound.
Many people can’t understand why Westerners are so keen to support other people’s poisoning and division.
Government behavior is of a game nature, but civil organizations also join in the fun, why don't they just sit idle and have nothing to do?
is actually not all, because their values are indeed like this, but why they form such values is related to the origin of their regime.
Chinese people think that the whole country is an indivisible whole, why? Because we have established the concept of great unification since the unification of the Qin Dynasty.
Our power structure is top-down. The power of local governments is given by the central government, and many cities are even established under the leadership of the central power.
But the West is different. The West was mostly not unified before the 19th century. Their cities were formed spontaneously.
Therefore, in many Western countries, cities have united to accept the same sovereignty to establish a country. This embodies a bottom-up power structure. The typical example is the United States. Therefore, they feel that cities have the right to withdraw from a sovereignty.
, for example, , Scotland, , England, Wales and Northern Ireland, they jointly accepted a sovereignty to form the United Kingdom. Therefore, Scots will feel that they have the right to be poisoned if they cannot stay in the "British".
Similarly, , California, , and Texas in the United States are also stupefied every year and are about to become poisoned.
So when you are arguing with foreigners, you want to try to arouse their empathy "What would you think if California separates?"-----It's useless, you might even get an irritant The answer to the stomachache---"Do not keep it for the New Year?"
Then how do you arouse their empathy? Then you can't compare the relationship between Hong Kong, Macao, Tibet and China to the relationship between California and the United States. You have to compare the relationship between Edinburgh and relative to Scotland and the relationship between Los Angeles relative to California.
Yeah, have you ever heard of Edinburgh's riots? Have you ever heard that Los Angeles has trouble with drugs?
