Being The Good Guys Again
By Janeen Jones - a senior research assistant from Berkeley, California.
Published: Sep 03 2002
tompaine.com
Long, long ago, a million years ago -- before 9/11 -- we reached the "end of history." In the mythic struggle between the good guys and the bad guys -- wouldn't you know it -- the good guys won. American ideals like human rights were free to spread across the globe like the sun's rays at dawn. Encouraged by our example and steadied by our solid economy, rule by law and the free market would replace rule by privilege and the command economy in Russia and the Third World. Vigilance, tough diplomacy, and international cooperation could combine to prevent the type of butchery that occurred in Rwanda.
But that was a million years ago. Since then somebody else's ideals have crashed into our own and tried to bring them down.
It was devastating. But in the aftermath of that heretofore unthinkable devastation, some invisible threats began to descend on our nation like fallout after an atomic bomb, and like fallout, they could be far more deadly in the long run than the initial attack.
Rule of law threatens to become subordinate to executive despotism. A person can be held without charges until a stubborn American president unilaterally decides that a war that was never declared is finally over.
The free market is free only for the privileged insiders, their free goodies being paid for by the shareholders and stakeholders of the companies they mismanage.
And instead of working to prevent future Rwandas, our government wants to have its own blood bath. To save Iraq's citizens from butchery we are told we must butcher them ourselves.
Instead of the end of history, we may be looking at the end of the Republic, replaced by an arrogant, go-it-alone Empire.
Let's go back to being the good guys again. |
