ORIGINAL: SireChaos
ORIGINAL: Mike Dubost
ORIGINAL: SireChaos
Starting about 100-odd years ago, the "patriots" of my country began to grow the idea that their country was the best there ever could be, and that they needed to export this goodness. In their words, "Am Deutschen Wesen soll die Welt genesen", i.e. roughly, the world shall be cured by the (wholesome) German example. We all know what consequences that had - two world wars and a holocaust, for example.
Now, whenever I hear the tireless repetition (impervious to criticism or inconvenient fact, of course) that America is good, America is great, and America must remake the world in its image, I remember my history lessons.
Well, as I feared, this thread is vering toward politics and polemics. I will make an attempt to remain civil, but I may allow my anger to show through.
Essentially the same as me, then? Fine, that´s something I can work with.
If you intend to refer to recent events by "remake the world in its image", then my interpretation of the no politics rule prevents me from arguing the pros and cons of Iraq, etc.
Including, but not limited to recent events. I guess everyone who has a high opinion of their own opinion tends to grow a missionary complex, but the US is in the unique position to be able to act on it on a global scale.
However, I would like to point out that you are the one who brought up forcibly remaking the world in our image. As you can see from my post, I merely advocated reducing the flaws of the US in order to make us a nation that can provide an example that others will desire to voluntarily emulate.
Well, yes,
you advocate this. And, assuming you are serious, (and I have no reason to assume otherwise) it is a rather noble goal.
Yet at the same time, I see in many American self-proclaimed patriots a profound unwillingness to take a critical look at themselves and their country, and work at its actual flaws - instead they see such flaws like "too many unpatriotic people badmouthing our great country", or "those despicable *insert rival party here* traitors scheming to destroy what makes America great".
Mind you, I see such tendencies elsewhere, too, including my own country - but for one thing, these tendencies are a lot more pronounced in the US than elsewhere in the West, and for another, by virtue of its sheer massive weight it can throw around, any wrong actions the US takes are pretty much by definition going to have much more of an impact than what smaller countries can do.
At the risk of venturing into "tu quoque" territory, I will also point out that in the recent past, other nations tried to remake portions of the world into their own image (with varrying degrees of success from total failure in Uganda or Algeria, through limited success in Ireland, general success in India, and near total success in New York and Quebec).
I´ll concede that this is not automatically bad, given a number of conditions. To avoid drifting too far into politics, I´ll be circumspect and say that the people doing such thing need to have (or have access to) and be willing to make use of, a number of skills and fields of knowledge that current world leaders, including those of the US, don´t have or refuse to use, and personality traits I don´t necessarily see them as having, and a lack of other traits that I do see some of them as having, and basing their decisions on.
(I guess if this was too confusing, you can always ask for clarification - by PM, I guess?)
To make it shorter - FDR and Truman and Churchill (or Lincoln or Washington, for that matter) were one calibre of statesmen; other people I could name who hold office these days are a different calibre
Do you regard it as always a bad thing to try to change the world? If you examine the history of Germany, I think you would agree that the conscious effort to remake Germany in the mid-1940s was not a bad thing for the German people. We niether destroyed German culture nor made you a carbon copy of us.
German culture post-45 was not the same as pre-33, and not just limited to the elements of it that, by necessity, had to be excised to make it safe for the rest of the world to have Germany be part of it again. Though I do not necessarily see this as a bad thing.
Indeed, the major difference between the US and Prussia/Nazi Germany is that we still seek to make the US more closely match our view of perfection. Your view of perfection is not the same as ours, and that is posssibly the source of some of the heat in this debate. But how can anyone look at US history (recent or older) or the current presidential / vice presidential candidates and still think the US is static and unchanging?
I think if you look closely you will see that Prussia and Nazi Germany were also trying to make themselves match their own views of perfection more closely. Of course, the Nazi view of perfection is too different from yours for any but a complete madman to not notice the total incompatibility. Prussia, on the other hand... I won´t say the US is like Prussia, but I can see parallels, and these parallels worry me.
I guess that I would have to say about the current president/VP candidates would go too far into politics. But... well, not so much static and unchanging, but more "what´s the real difference?" If you subtract all the posturing and the mutual character assassination, how different are these people from each other?
As far as "impervious to criticism" much of what I see on this thread reads as insult, not constructive criticism (e.g., the cartoon implying US troops are viscious murderers when the cameras are off, or the statement that only fear of the USSR caused us to rebuild Europe). As such, it tends to make patriotic Americans angry and makes us unwilling to listen to what you have to say (as my countrymen sometimes regrettably demostrate).
In my experience, the unwillingness to listen exists right from the start in too many cases, although of course any excuse for them is welcome. Those who are willing to discuss things at all do not tend to take criticism as an insult to begin with.
I would like to point out that I neither posted said cartoon nor agreed with it. And as for the reason the US rebuilt Germany - do you not think that the primary motive for this was enlightened self-interest, rather than the sudden and inexplicable desire to pour massive amounts of resources into a country that, shortly before had been considered the incarnation of evil?
