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Pastimes : THE SLIGHTLY MODERATED BOXING RING -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (20912)	9/28/2002 4:00:48 PM
From: Lazarus_Long	Respond to of 21057

I maintain that the combination of power with the conviction that ones own values are, in some abstract sense, "right" - not only for you, but for everyone - is an exceedingly dangerous thing. At the end of WW2, the US "imposed"- -or maybe that should just be imposed- -democracy on Japan, Germany, and Italy. This was based on the belief that a democratic form of gov't is superior to a dictatorship. Did we do wrong? We now plan on doing the same to Afghanistan. Should we instead hand back to the Taliban and mullahs? The idea that any nation- -and particularly a great power- -will not attempt to get other nations to conform to what it considers a desirable form of gov't is naive at best. I know you're not that. Better examples might be the cases where the US has overthrown democratic gov'ts and imposed dictatorships for economic reasons. But I know of nothing that Reagan did that would qualify as that. Nobody I can think of, in the US. It's no fun imposing your views on those who, for the most part, already share them. A great many people disagreed with Reagan, both when he was guv of CA and Prexy of the US. It really makes more sense to go after those people than to bother with foreign nations. That internal dissent is much closer and much more likely to cause you problems and possibly loss of power than foreign nations. And Reagan disagreed with his critics, but never took action against them. That danger may not always be realized, but it is always there, and I would prefer to keep the self-righteous out of power. Does that include Jimmy Carter? He often appeared quite self-righteous to me. For that matter, Bill Clinton, Lyndon Johnson, and JFK could do a pretty good imitation too.