Factoid of the day

This comment made me check it out and sure enough, Lima was not an Inca city:

From Wikipedia:

Lima was founded by Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro on January 18, 1535, as la Ciudad de los Reyes, or "the City of Kings". It became the capital and most important city in the Spanish Viceroyalty of Peru. Following the Peruvian War of Independence, it became the capital of the Republic of Peru

Lima also has the oldest university in the western hemisphere....
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Not to defend the Spanish, but these empires were top heavy empires where the common folks were essentially slaves. So yes, the Inca roads went from Pasto to Chile, but there were a lot of non Icans in this empire who had been conquered, and one wonders if the common people or the non Incan people had any rights after they were conquered...link

The third type is the Mitimaes; they were professional colonizers. They were move into recently conquered cultures to help them to adapt easily into the Incas way of living.

The Inca people final type is the Yanaconas. These men, women and children were from tribes that make fierce resistance to the Incas empire. Most of the Yanaconas live and serve to the royal family and important authorities. The Yanacona status was a punishment for been resistant to the Inca Daily Life way of living. The Incas slavery practice was not common, there were rare occasions; but it happens mainly during the main Incas culture expansion.

 and what about the unimportant folk?

The Inca people were docile and easy to manage people. 

ah, but why were they so docile?

They were the result of generations follow the: Ama Sua (do not steal), Ama Llulla (do not lie) and Ama Quella (do not be lazy). The laws were simple and effective. The Incas did not have prisons for the people that broken the laws, because they kill them immediately, no questions ask.

Yeah...killing those who are lazy or rebellioius does discourage troublemakers (until they rebel, or like the Indians in Mexico, help the Spanish kill their overlords, and alas find that like Animal farm, they are just left with new overlords).

So why the happy picture that Americans read about the wonders of the Incan empire ruined by those evil Westerners? Lack of critical thinking being taught in college maybe? 

It's not just the Incans: I am always aghast at how history books emphasize the greatness of the empires, showing huge construction projects made by the poor people (even assuring us that the pyramids were not built by slaves, but by farmers who "needed" work in the dry season, as if maybe they really wanted to do dangerous work instead of playing or getting drunk at parties). In other words, ignoring the hoi polloi.

That is what makes America different: we are descended from those who refused to go along with their rules.  

We're not Watusi. We're not Spartans. We're Americans, with a capital 'A', huh? You know what that means? Do ya? That means that our forefathers were kicked out of every decent country in the world. We are the wretched refuse. We're the underdog. We're mutts!

This is the only really revolutionary idea in the world: All that "socialism" being touted is nothing new: the idea that the elite were good becuase they cared for the common people was the justification of rulers from the time of the Scorpion king in the west or the "mandate of heaven" in the east.