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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: combjelly who wrote (263791)	12/8/2005 11:39:19 AM
From: American Spirit	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572359

The neocon dream is akin to Imperial Rome's quest for world dominance. It involves using foreign mercenary armies under semi-coirporate rule (see Halliburton) and one-party rightwing rule back home. Only problem is, we've already seen we can't even occupy a single country halfway around the world, and the mokre we push this the more the world despises us. So the dream is just a dream. We are much better off being a more benign paternalistic country, and cooperating with the rest of the world. One of our main challenges is now to reduce our use of gasoline and oil. We need to stop consuming and wasting so much. We need to think conservation and preservation rather than burning up everything we can. future generations will thank us if we can achieve this.

To: combjelly who wrote (263791)	12/8/2005 2:46:18 PM
From: tejek	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1572359

The US has something the Romans didn't. And that is the Constitution. The importance of this document, and the Federalist Papers which support it, cannot be overstated. Both could be the basis of the most liberal empire or hegemony in history. The fact of the matter is that the US is founded on the greatest philosophy of individual empowerment that has ever existed. None of the other philosophies come any where close. Marxism,which could have built upon the American experience, failed. The good of Marxism was already subsumed in the American labor movement. Why does the rest of the world celebrate an event in American history for Labor Day? A day that is ignored in the the US? Because it was especially seminal, and Americans view it with shame. The Haymarket riot happened. Not only that, but the Populist Movement that fed it, also happened. Between the two, that shaped what most of the world, sans the US, see as the focus of the Liberal movement. We, not the Marxists, are the orginators of the Liberals. In every country but the US, Liberals are the champions of what is right. Anti-liberals are the one that favor the status quo. They are the ones that favor the ones that don't want change because it upsets their applecart. You fail to point out that the Haymarket Riots was one of the worst miscarriages of justice in American history. That accounts for some of our embarrassment. And some of the players then have their equivalents in present day America. In fact, its a moment in history that is repeated all too often in this country..........that people who disagree with the mainstream and are trying to point out an injustice have been frequently treated with considerable brutality and a lack of justice. A US led empire or hegemony holds the promise of bringing most of the world to a egalitarian point that is unequaled in history. Don't let yourself get misled by the neocons that advocate something that seems simular. they don't value the Constitution that rules most American psyches. The Constitution is unique and it is important. It paves the way to a world that has never existed. I think you are letting your idealism get before the horse. Liberalism is an ideology that creates great ambivalence in Americans. Traditionally, Americans have been conservative with a liberal streak running though them on occasion. However, history suggests that that is not our normal state. When looking at American history, the current attacks on liberalism are very representative of past events. As for the Constitution, its not as unique as you suggest. Its important principles come from English Common Law which developed from the Magna Carta and which predate the Constitution by a few hundred years. Furthermore, the Constitution has not always been respected.....to whit, presidents declare war all too frequently instead of Congress as prescribed in the Constitution...... a dangerous precedent that helped to get us into our current mess in Iraq. I have the greatest respect for your opinions but in this instance, I think you have bought into the patriotic fervor we are fed from when we are young. In fact, our recent history.....dating from 1980, suggests we are not at all well suited for empire building and bringing the world to an egalitarian point of view. For an example what did egalitarianism have to do with the US support of the Shah of Iran and America's subsequent intervention on the side of Saddam in the Iraqi/Iranian war. And that was not an isolated behavior.....there are numberous examples. Maybe Clinton's intervention in Bosnia and Kosovo which again was not a Congressional act of war but a presidential one may have been an example of an American attempt to right a wrong and to bring egalitarianism to a part of the world where it did not exist, but I suggest to you that Clintonlike interventions have been the exception, not the rule. When things in this country are truly egalitarian, then and only then do I think we should bring that virtue to the rest of the world. However, I suspect when that happens, we won't because in becoming truly egalitarian, you become less willing to impose your values on others whether the act may be considered good or bad. ted