Not everyone feels that their personal or national circumstances are inevitable.

razib  
 
that britain abandoned mercantalism in the 19th century and become one of the most powerful forces for free trade (and a significant one since they controlled so much of the planet) 
 
Mercantalism created a searing hatred of the British in George Washington and many other revolutionary leaders. Since we can't run history twice its impossible to know how much reform in Britain came as a result of losing the war. Ironically losing the war may have created a wave of reforms that actually helped the British. 
 
Modern example: 
The civil war in Iraq will almost certainly deter future American presidents from any serious adventurism.

Tiananmen Square photos 
http://cryptome.cn/tk/tiananmen-kill.htm 
 
Near the middle check out the Statue of Liberty the students made. 
 
/Sorry Brian Caplan, no statues of the British royal family anywhere in site.

because i wanted to see if your opinion was based on a large base of knowledge or not. i think i found out what i needed to know. you sound like you're being hassled as if it is strange to be expected to explain in detail the rationale behind strongly held opinions. it isn't, here "cuz i believe so" really doesn't add anything to the discussion. 
 
The first 10 amendments to the constitution are better than what the British had, right? Getting the USA out of the shizz end of mercantalism was better too, right?

razib 
 
that's probably an indisputably correct statement, but nothing like what you started out with. 
 
Whaddaya want me to keep writing the same statement over and over? My opinion is unwavering. In any case I'm glad you brought this back to my first post which happened to be directly on topic.  
 
The founding of the USA (against all odds) is direct counter evidence to the concept of inevitability. You might classify that as... 
an indisputably correct statement

Razib 
 
say more. what acts of despotism are you talking about? what rights do you think americans had that british did not have? 
 
Without doing a book report how about the first 10 ammendments to the constitution?  
 
http://usinfo.state.gov/usa/infousa/facts/funddocs/billeng.htm 
 
Google mercantalism, if you'd like to learn about how the British treated colonies from an economic standpoint. 
 
Look, I didn't come up with the phrase, "The shot heard round The world." America was not inevitable and its creation had a major impact on North America, Britain, Continental Europe and ultimately the rest of the world. 
 
If you don't believe America has anything to do with a free Europe in the year 2007 fair enough. But I disagree.

J. Goard 
 
Wait a minute, maybe I missed what you were getting at. 
 
Do I believe Europe is less authoritarian today because the USA is tucked away safely on a far away continent espousing freedom and capitalism? Yes.

Razib 
 
England was ruled by a despotic, crazy king when the revolution broke out. His power might have been somewhat limited but British freedom and civil rights were SHIZZ compared to what was offered under the U.S. system. 
 
I stand by my earlier points: (maybe this should be directed at J. Goard) 
 
A)Victory during the revolution was lucky 
B)America and it's ideals have had a major direct and indirect impact on the world

J. Goard 
 
Backpeddle? That was elaboration.

razib 
 
Vaccines, skyscrapers and the moon landing are all inevitable. A world superpower founded on the principles of limited government is absolutely not inevitable. The concepts of Democracy and freedom (both ancient ideas) are nothing more than debating points without a strong nation to champion them.  
 
Its impossible to test history with and without the USA. However America has sold the idea of freedom and capitalism for over 200 years. It doesn't take a genius to assume the USA has had a major impact on Europe and the rest of the world.

Let me boil that down to one sentence. 
 
Let the spirit of the age be your sail. 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeitgeist 
 
Not sure how that jives with the American Revolution. Many colonists risked everything on a slim chance for victory against the world's only superpower. I wouldn't call that going with the flow. A few thousand people changed the direction of the world. Without their sacrifice the western world would be logorithmically more authoritarian.

All babies look the same

Someday soon gay and transgender activists will be found chanting "It's a child, not a choice! in front of medical clinics. 
 
/its inevitable

If universities taught anything of value there would be something at stake in these debates.  
Take out the advanced sciences, law and medicine and most of the rest (95% or more of the classload) is filler. 
 
Self starters don't need no stinkin' degrees.

razib 
 
I don't mean to imply that liberals are wrong. I supported the war and liberals opposed it. It is now obvious that they were right and Bush was wrong. 
 
But the fact remains that Cindy Sheehan and her followers are still a little "different." 8-) 
 
/big hug to all of my liberal friends

DOH! Hosed my linky. 
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2006-03-13-babybust_x.htm

The left wing blogosphere has made me realize that liberals are in fact "different" from conservatives. 
 
I don't mean liberals are wrong. I pretty much mean crazy. 
 
Exhibit A: read any thread 
www.democraticunderground.com 
www.onepeoplesproject.com 
 
I don't favor a genetic explanation because liberals have significantly fewer offspring than healthy controls. 
http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/20 
06-03-13-babybust_x.htm

If you want to get a lot of attention write about sexual dysfunction. Threads on Pedophiles, transexuals & gays regularly attract 100 plus posts on GNXP. 8-) 
 
Threads on hot females also a consistent winner.

razib 
 
When you consider that humans spent around 250,000 years living as hunter gatherers and only 5,000 to 10,000 years as farmers shouldn't we still be optimized for hunting gathering? 
 
I'm not suggesting there hasn't been selection towards a farming/village economy but wouldn't it be minimal? How fast can positive mutations occur and then spread?

"Greg Clark reports that most of the gains in income due to increased economic efficiency have gone to unskilled laborers over the past few centuries; we live in a relatively egalitarian age in many ways." 
 
I can attest to that. I used to work in an office doing technical work and made a middle class living. I quit and started a landscaping company. Even if I did all the physical work myself (which I don't) guess which one pays more? 
 
Knowing how to operate a computer? 
Knowing how to operate a rake? 
 
If your guess is rake you are correct.

A little long but interesting. 
 
"Another example of paleopathology at work is the study of Indian skeletons from burial mounds in the Illinois and Ohio river valleys. At Dickson Mounds, located near the confluence of the Spoon and Illinois rivers, archaeologists have excavated some 800 skeletons that paint a picture of the health changes that occurred when a hunter-gatherer culture gave way to intensive maize farming around A. D. 1150. Studies by George Armelagos and his colleagues then at the University of Massachusetts show these early farmers paid a price for their new-found livelihood. Compared to the hunter-gatherers who preceded them, the farmers had a nearly 50 per cent increase in enamel defects indicative of malnutrition, a fourfold increase in iron-deficiency anemia (evidenced by a bone condition called porotic hyperostosis), a theefold rise in bone lesions reflecting infectious disease in general, and an increase in degenerative conditions of the spine, probably reflecting a lot of hard physical labor. "Life expectancy at birth in the pre-agricultural community was bout twenty-six years," says Armelagos, "but in the post-agricultural community it was nineteen years. So these episodes of nutritional stress and infectious disease were seriously affecting their ability to survive."

I'm searching for the link but dang I can't find it. Early farming communities were also ravaged by far more disease than hunter gatherers. I would imagine that quite a few pathogens suddenly found a target rich environment. Morover its only been a few thousand years since civ began. We might not have had time to develop completely effective immune responses to these yet. 
 
An example 
Autism and Schiz triggered by mothers own immune response 
http://www.autismconnect.org/news.asp?section=00010001&itemtype=news&id=6252 
 
Our immune system works, but it would probably work a lot better if we had a few thousand more years to evolve in cities.

Hunters, Gatherers, Growers and Gods 
http://www.fsmitha.com/h1/ch00.htm 
 
"Farming created more food, and more food made possible more people. More people kept farming communities on the brink of inadequate nutrition. And farmers were more dependent on nature than were hunter-gatherers, who were free to drift from drought to areas that had more game and wild foods. Domesticated plants were vulnerable to insect ravages in ways that wild plants were not. Archaeologists have found in the bones of children in agricultural societies more signs of malnutrition than that of people living from hunting and gathering, and the average height of early farming populations has been discovered to be shorter than that of hunter-gatherers."

So intelligent people have lower libidos and less masculine physiques. What hormone is responsible for both sex drive and masculine builds? That's right: testosterone. 
 
And two new papers suggest that testosterone may depress IQ. One team found that salivary testosterone levels were lower for preadolescent boys with IQs above 130 and below 70. (the same two groups most likely to be virgins in adolescence) 
 
Another paper suggests that a gene responsible for androgen sensitivity and higher sperm counts may also create a tradeoff for intelligence. 
 
My whole life I've noticed that less masculine men tend to be more intelligent. Wealthy men (who tend to be intelligent) are also less masculine than the average. Take a trip down to your local construction site or auto repair shop and the opposite is true. 
 
I find it interesting that researchers are starting to figure out why.