Skip to main content

Was Mark Twain for or against imperialism?

By his own admission, there was a time when Mark Twain was a "red-hot imperialist." He once believed that it would be good for the United States to assist the Philippines in gaining freedom from oppression.


However, upon further studying the issue, Twain experienced a complete change of opinion on United States imperialism as it related to the Philippines. In a quote published in the New York Herald in October 1900, Twain shared the following:



"I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem."



Twain spent a significant amount of time speaking out against imperialism over the course of the conflict in the Philippines. In fact, he joined the Anti-Imperialist League in an effort to show his opposition to the United States' role during the conflict in the Philippines.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Is there a word/phrase for "unperformant"?

As a software engineer, I need to sometimes describe a piece of code as something that lacks performance or was not written with performance in mind. Example: This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. Based on my Google searches, this isn't a real word. What is the correct way to describe this? EDIT My usage of "performance" here is in regard to speed and efficiency. For example, the better the performance of code the faster the application runs. My question and example target the negative definition, which is in reference to preventing inefficient coding practices. Answer This kind of coding style leads to unmaintainable and unperformant code. In my opinion, reads more easily as: This coding style leads to unmaintainable and poorly performing code. The key to well-written documentation and reports lies in ease of understanding. Adding poorly understood words such as performant decreases that ease. In addressing the use of such a poorly ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Is 'efficate' a word in English?

I routinely hear the word "efficate" being used. For example, "The most powerful way to efficate a change in the system is to participate." I do not find entries for this word in common English dictionaries, but I do not have an unabridged dictionary. I have checked the OED (I'm not sure if it is considered unabridged), and it has no entry for "efficate". It does have an entry for "efficiate", which is used in the same way. Wordnik has an entry for "efficate" with over 1800 hits, thus providing some evidence for the frequency of use. I personally like the word and find the meaning very clear and obvious when others use it. If it's not currently an "officially documented" word, perhaps its continued use will result in it being better documented.
Post a Comment
Read more