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Politics : Foreign Affairs Discussion Group -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: neolib who wrote (153841)	12/11/2004 11:01:23 AM
From: Michael Watkins	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 281500

I'd still say it is closer to Mark Twain's "good people in the worst sense of the word" rather than intentionally evil. Perhaps I'm a pessimist, but I see the world much more as a Confederation of Dunces, then a Conspiracy of Geniuses. Perhaps we (and much of the developed world) are more like the Roman empire than we'd like to admit. Like the Romans, we use our transportation abilities to exploit far-off places. Like the Romans, subsidizing our way of live absolutely depends on this. Our modern day convenience, television (religious and secular), sports and the "economy" are much the same as what kept the people in line in Roman days - water, food, employment and entertainment with barbarity implying "keep in line or you can be in the pit". Its true that today we don't slaughter hundreds of thousands in a coliseum - we save that for our "crusades". Government exists to keep the people in line and if we need to do nasty things somewhere, the people are best kept in line if such things are performed under the cover of a purportedly noble pursuit. The Romans lived beyond their means; eventually it came tumbling down.