Orientalism Revisited (was RE: G. Bush: US in Holy War Against Iraq?)

[Brad De Long]

>Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
>> In short, Said obscures the origin of Orientalism by falsely assimilating
>> the world before capitalism (including ancient Greece!) to our modern world.
>
>One feature of eurocentrism (in many or most of its manifestations) is
>the inclusion of ancient Greece and Rome in "Europe." Europe (the
>Europe which is a creation of capitalism) in a sense "colonized" those
>civilizations after the fact, a manufacturing of  geneology captured
>in such words as "Kaiser" and "Tsar." Someone some day may be
>able to write a long book on this theme, taking as their central text
>the near 70 years of the comic strip Prince Valiant.
>
>Carrol

Hasn't it always been obvious to everyone that western civilization is an
enormous con game, simply picking out predecessors of whom we approve?