Origins is an Ohio State University history publication that puts current events in historical context, such as fluoridation, Chernobyl, and Hong Kong.
HN commenters cite it for historical background on racial injustice, Copernicus, and Chernobyl, and as support in arguments about industrial contamination.
Westerners, and Americans in particular, are very bad at understanding nationalism. This prevents them from understanding the failure of post-colonialism.
Throughout Africa and the Middle East we see countries with straight borders that used to be colonies of Western powers. These powers left and left behind democratic governments. These governments are plagued by the fact that the countries they rule over are not nations.
A country is a political entity - a set of borders enforced by an army. A nation is a psycho-social entity. It is a group that people identify with, normally composed based on ethnic, linguistic, or religious similarity. Nationhood marks an in-group. Americans have an anti-nationalist, universalist ideology, so their brains reject this reality to the detriment of the places their armies occupy.
In most post-colonial countries, there are many different nations within an arbitrary border. Democracy does not work because the citizens don't see themselves as the same people. When a person gets power in the government, of course he turns into a "kleptocrat" instead of working for the common good because he doesn't value the "common good". He values the good of his people.
These post-colonial countries are also prone to civil war. If one ethno-religious group gets the majority over another, the losing group doesn't see the government as legitimate. So there is war and genocide. The post-colonial idealists in the West have done more damage to the world than…
A list of references for both sides of arguments.
Calgary removed fluoride from its water supply. A decade later, it's adding it back https://www.npr.org/2024/12/13/nx-s1-5224138/calgary-removed-fluoride-from-its-water-supply-a-decade-later-its-adding-it-back
Toxic Treatment: Fluoride's Transformation from Industrial Waste to Public Health Miracle https://origins.osu.edu/article/toxic-treatment-fluorides-transformation-industrial-waste-public-health-miracle
Portland has a divisive relationship with water fluoridation https://www.opb.org/news/article/portland-oregon-water-fluoridation-history-explained/
Fluoride Exposure: Neurodevelopment and Cognition https://ntp.niehs.nih.gov/whatwestudy/assessments/noncancer/completed/fluoride
Effect of fluoridated water on intelligence in 10-12-year-old school children https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5285601/
A tale of two cities finds that community water fluoridation prevents caries https://adanews.ada.org/ada-news/2021/august/community-water-fluoridation-prevents-caries/
Children exposed to higher fluoride levels have lower IQs, a government study finds https://edition.cnn.com/2025/01/06/health/children-higher-fluoride-levels-lower-iqs-government-study/index.html
DRAFT NTP Monograph on the State of the Science Concerning Fluoride Exposure and Neurodevelopmental and Cognitive Health Effects: A Systematic Review…
Ohio State backgrounder on Transnistria, https://origins.osu.edu/read/transnistria-history-behind-russian-backed-region?language_content_entity=en
> ..ethnic migration resulted in its current ethnic diversity: 158,000 Russians (33.8%), 153,500 Moldovans (33.2%), and 124,200 Ukrainians (26.7%). Throughout the Soviet period, these ethnic populations lived in harmony, freely speaking their respective languages and intermarrying. Thus, nationalism was traditionally an unappealing ideology to the multi-ethnic communities of Transnistria.
> ..The Transnistrians of 1989 and 1990 were not part of a grand Russian strategy to destabilize Moldova. Rather, the protests and independence referendums in these years were grassroots efforts by a multi-ethnic population, which felt threatened by Moldovan nationalism and pan-Romanianism. Only in the years after these actions did Moscow begin to exploit the conflict. As ties with Russia increased, Russian chauvinism usurped true linguistic equality and multiculturalism in Transnistria.
>Ukraine claims they'll fight to the last drop of blood, but theory and practice are a bit disconnected when you are a garrison in a city that's being approached by a few tens of thousands of soldiers and a few thousand tanks. Thinks looks different still if 50 other cities surrendered without a fight by the time it's your turn.
You have to be really insane. Poles did it at the start of WW2 resisting for a month https://origins.osu.edu/milestones/september-2014-nazis-take-poland-and-start-world-war-ii https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/14/books/review/poland-1939-roger-moorhouse.html
and again in 1944 for over two months https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warsaw_Uprising
Twice with no direct outside help. So much for international security guarantees.
Btw Ukraine also had a toilet paper full of UK/US promises https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budapest_Memorandum_on_Security_Assurances how much good did that accomplish?
> Jefferson, and the founders in general, were referring to covenants or trusts governing the use of property after death, such that no living person had unrestricted use of it
Did you read the article I linked? Cause that doesn't seem to be the case. He repealed the laws of primogeniture and entail, and he himself quoted Smith, showing that he was in agreement with Smith.
And confirmed here as well:
> Some founders wanted to eliminate inheritance entirely. In a letter to James Madison, Thomas Jefferson suggested that all property be redistributed every fifty years, because "the earth belongs in usufruct to the living." Madison gently pointed out the plan's impracticality. Benjamin Franklin unsuccessfully pushed for the first Pennsylvania constitution to declare concentrated wealth "a danger to the happiness of mankind."
From https://origins.osu.edu/history-news/death-taxes-and-american-founders
> But it was Europe who conquered the world and colonized the so called new world, not China.
A Chinese emperor once famously said to the British: “Our celestial empire possesses all things in abundance and lacks no product within its borders. There is therefore no need to import the manufactures of barbarians in exchange for our own products.”[1]
Old civilizations are deeply connected to their geography, and once they settle down in a fertile area, they generally don't feel the need to colonize or fight people beyond their immediate neighbourhood. Barring a couple of exceptions, the Chinese and Indian experiences are very similar.
The only reason Europeans went out on their ships was to find a sea route to India after their traditional routes were blocked by the Turks and the Arabs.
[1] The Second Opium War (https://origins.osu.edu/read/second-opium-war)