Technotranscendence wrote:
> On Friday, March 17, 2000 2:20 PM Robert Owen rowen@technologist.com wrote:
> > Very like "Manifest Destiny" during the expansionist, if not
> > imperialist, phase of American history. "Nationalism" can
> > degenerate into a perverse form of religious fanaticism.
>
> This makes it sound like that phase is over. America appears to be very
> imperialist of late... I gather it depends on how one defines imperialism.
> Surely, controlling other nations' internal politics is one indicator. If
> so, then in the past ten years, America has interfered in Somalia, Haiti,
> Bosnia, and Serbia. It's used military intervention in all four cases
> mentioned. This is aside from the various and often routine bombings of
> other nations -- Iraq, the Sudan, Afghanistan.
>
> Maybe there's some dividing line I'm missing here.
>
> Daniel Ust
I don't believe you are missing anything here, Daniel. Because this
letter was directed toward the issue of the management of inter-
personal aggression involving firearms, I hoped to avoid, by the
use of understatement, provoking any latent chauvinism within the
reading audience which would only have occluded the message.
In my view, your statement is an accurate historical description of
American foreign policy from Manila Bay to the present. Which is
not to say that, happily or not, such relations tend universally to
be based on the use of implicit threats of violence in order to
induce, by strength or by bluff, a stable system based on a dynamic
balance of power.
Thank you for your insight, and giving me the opportunity to express
my similar view without an obligation of constraint.
Bob
-- ======================= Robert M. Owen Director The Orion Institute 57 W. Morgan Street Brevard, NC 28712-3659 USA =======================
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