From: Damien Sullivan (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Date: Tue Apr 01 2003 - 13:28:30 MST
On Tue, Apr 01, 2003 at 01:12:07AM -0500, MaxPlumm@aol.com wrote:
Summary of what war debates sound like:
http://www.minimumeffort.com/nutshell.html
I think the reference to April is inaccurate. But then, it's accurate that
peaceniks would bring her up in a debate.
> Ron, mine, the Mikes, and many other posters determination to fully have
> the record of the United States analyzed and the positive (and negative)
> accomplishments recognized and understood cannot be dismissed out of hand
Points I'd make: the influence of the US is larger than the actions of its
government. I'd say the major part of any American influence toward democracy
is simply from existing, and from saturating the world with our popular
culture, and being so big that everyone has to pay attention to us. When you
have arrested people in other countries screeching for their Miranda rights
you know we've done something good.
When you look at government action it's much less rosy. Sure, we're better
than the Soviet Union. That doesn't take much. (And for the record, the
Soviet bloc seemed to have better education than we do.) We've also
overthrown elected governments, propped up dictators, trained death squads,
and turned a blind eye to abuses by our allies. The State Department's report
on human rights came out yesterday, and Human Rights Watch said "it's a fine
report, but is the US guided by it the other 364 days of the year?" Sometimes
we speak up, sometimes we don't. We isolate Cuba, but trade with China, which
I think is a worse regime.
And US influence, or US government action in the past, isn't a full
determinant of what the US government is doing now or will do. One could
believe the US has done tons of great things in the past and also believe the
Bush administration is wrecking that record right and left.
> States is deplorable. The freedoms that each and every human enjoys on this
> planet (those fortunate enough to enjoy some) can all be attributed to some
> degree to the United States. Yet some insist that merely because the US (or
They can also be attributed to some degree to Great Britain which spawned us,
and to France which spread Revolutionary values throughout Europe. I know you
didn't say the US was the unique fount of freedom, but I thought I'd make the
points anyway.
> any other country) is powerful and in a dominant world position, than it is
> bad, or "might makes wrong", in huMania's words. This position too is not
"power corrupts" in the usual formulation.
> acceptable in any form to many on this list, and the record of the United
> States as compared to other major world powers, most notably the Soviet Union
> or Nazi Germany, is a necessary part of illustrating why the position of
> "might makes wrong" is not appropriate in all cases.
We have a better record; yay us. It's not a perfect record. And I think it's
a legitimate fear is that if we've resisted the corrupting effect of power
until now, it's finally come to bite us. Or at least to bite the neocons who
dream of American empire.
> Illustrating that the United States helped foster and make possible
> democracy in Taiwan, Greece, South Korea, Japan, etc. is not "holding up a
Greece was democratic. Then it had a military coup in the 1960s or 1970s.
Then at some point it wandered back to democracy. What role, if any, did we
play in that?
> dominated by the USSR, while a great many proxies of the United States did
> indeed develop lasting and stable democracies. It is completely legitimate
For example, Iran, a US proxy, had a revolution and established a democracy
which while highly imperfect is real and more than most of the Middle East
has.
> Democracy and freedom are quite extropic, and thus the United States has
> done more to spread EXTROPIAN ideals than any other nation in the world. This
> is not nationalism or blind patriotism, it is a statement of fact, an
> observation based in reality. To assert otherwise is intellectually dishonest.
You know, if we were sufficiently bigger than anyone else, we could have done
more to spread extropian ideals and more to inhibit them than anyone else,
with a net effect of spreading but a real inhibitory effect as well.
-xx- Damien X-)
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