america vs. the world- blind americanism continued

[DarkCorp]

Yes change is constant. However, change is manipulated not only by influences outside our control, but also safety measures and 'backups' that one nation takes so to speak. You speak truth with problems associated with armed intervention. However, as the U.S. takes mounting tolls on casualties, the public will grow evermore impatient. That is why the U.S. realises conventional occupation is a problem, and prefers to support dictators or whatever leader that serves their interests.

I don't think the british transferred hedgemony to the U.S. peacefully. The british had to deal with germany and the japanese stealing its colonies, its lifeblood. It simply could not have recovered from such a disasterous blow. America had to bail multiple countries out and many of our soldiers died before we became number one. Oh, also forgot we had to drop two atomic weapons to get to where we are today.

Dominance will never be done peacefully. Whether through shady covert operations, brief military intervention, the funding of dictators, etc, will always be key in maintaining supremacy. The only time I see a utopia is when we have either evolved into something better, or simply realised that working together and maintaining harmony is the only choice between destruction or salvation.

The closest thing to explaining it is Sid Meier's Civilisation. Sure its a game but it revolves around the same principle right. There is very few times one can work through peace because the computer is not only limited in its interaction with the player, but the computer is set on a constant buildup. When another country starts stepping on your toes, what do you do?

 

[Sander]

First, some misconceptions of yours, welsh:

So the danger was extreme ideals?

No, there was no danger. Antigone was being suicidal, which I think is just stupid, but she has every right to BE suicidal. This has little to do with her ideals, but more with what she is willing to sacrifice for them.
That could also be seen as the point where ideals become dangerous. I have ideals, yes, but would I be willing to go to war for them, to risk my own life for them, to possibly die for them? No.
What seems, to me, to be the danger in idealists is when they decide that their ideals should be fought for and that they should be willing to die for them...

One of the great mistakes of people, especially the young, is to think that idealism means optimism, and realism means pessimism.

But now you make the mistake that realism can take care of idealist things.
The person who first instated democracy somewhere was probably an idealist. The founders of the USA were probably idealists. In fact, every great revolution is, in it's basis, fueled by idealism. Because idealism comes up with the ideals. Realism does not. THAT is why without idealism there would not have been such things as democracy or human rights.

No, you can't really rest your case because it doesn't hold much water. You argue for a "constructed enemy" when real enemies have existed, and you can't consider periods of growth when no enemies were apparent.

So the argument is nonsense. What you can do is say, "Yes, there are big holes, better to think of a better theory," then to try to plug them up. THat argument is sunk.

If I'm correct, the sentence "I rest my case." merely means that you stop arguying. So I can bloody well rest my case.
Well, what I was saying was that you were right, welsh, not that I was right. So I don't really see what you're trying to say here.

no you are covering by saying you were just sloppy. Tsk tsk

No, welsh, I'm stating the bloody truth. That's how it was, and that was what I was trying saying. It was badly phrased, yes. But I still didn't alter my argument one bit. It just seems to YOU that I altered my argument because my argument was incompletely stated. *sigh*
So, I was sloppy, but could you please trust me when I say that I was never talking about Afghanistan?

Okay, let's see what you have said:

Sander, stop being Idealistic.

let's see what I said:
Blah, blah, blah.......okay, I will.

Now, can we finish it.

_____________________________

Next up:
DarkCorps:

Yes change is constant

I know that you actually mean something different with this, but this is quite the paradox.

Now, DarkCorps, I have to disagree with you here. I do think that peace is possible, if nations were willing to work with it. With the current world, it may not be possible, but by slowly making steps, maybe some time we will get there. With people like George Bush, though, we will not.
Even in Civilization this is apparent, I have gone through every game once or twice(not winning, but gone through) without ever going to war, or with only one or two small wars. And those games were on the hihgest/higher difficulty levels.
But it is not realistic to think that this could happen in the current world. Maybe in the future.
The problem is that all nations want power, and often power comes either by helping your allies/friends with armed conflict or support of armed conflict, or by going into armed conflict, defending or attacking. Usually attacking.
Before World War 1 and during the INterbellum(time between WW1 and 2), several countries became neutral in the hope of being left alone. It worked, up to a certain point. Remaining neutral worked in the sense that you didn't declare war upon someone, but it didn't work because you had no allies, and thus no back-up. When someone like Hitler then comes into play, there is less of a problem for him to attack your country than when you had had a large country by your side. Ie. neutrality works up to a point, the point being whether you are desirable for other countries or not(This is obviously shown by Switzerland, noone really has an interest in the country, so they remain(ed) very neutral and did not get involved in any of the World Wars).
Which is why I support neutrality. A lot of countries could actually throw away their army without much trouble on the international war grid(Although then you'd have a jobs problem. That could be partially countered by more money coming free, but not entirely. But we're talking about international and not domestic politics here), because invading a country is seen as bad overall, and when you are a small country, an army will not help much to defend you from the attacks of other countries. Which is why I think Denmark did the smart thing when they were invaded by Germany-they just said "come on in, we can't stop you anyway, so we're not going to waste any lives".
But since there are things such as the NATO and the UN, and domestic problems, countries do not get rid of their armies. It could cost them the support of countries like the UN if they couldn't help in peace- and invasion missions.
So instead countries do good with their forces. Peace-keeping, restoration and other things like that.

Small interesting fact: The chance of getting into the Army(land forces) in the Netherlands are roughly 100 in 5000(vacancies and people wanting to join), and in the Air Force it's about 1 in a thousand(I don't have the numbers here, but that was about the chance).

Now, this little debate is getting more interesting because we have a prototype realist here, now. Hehehehe.

And as such the realist is arguing that the world is a terrible place and we must act like it. I must most certainly disagree here. Here comes the idealist:

If you keep acting like the realist, and keep on acting like this world is a bad bad place then how will it ever change? Not, you say? Wow, what pessimism. While completely throwing out your weapons and acting like it is a time of peace and fellowship would be stupid, but that does not mean that you need to act as if the world is absolutely the other way around.
One of the more hateful examples of this would be Chili, where the elected communist president was overthrown by a military coup which was, IIRC, supported by the USA. Why? Because they didn't want more communists. So instead of having a communist/socialist system in Chili, from which everyone had benefited, they now had a military dictator who oppressed and murdered. But he wasn't communist, so that was definately better, wasn't it?
Well, from the point of view of the USA it was. From the point of view of the Chileans it wasn't. Did the USA do the moral thing? Nope. Definately not. Did they do the realistic? Sadly, they did. And that's the part I hate, and that's the part where I think it should change.
It was realistic of the USA to not want to have a communist/socialist government there. But it was certailny not necessary. You could argue that it was for the better, after all, there was the Soviet Union, the biggest threat to the west in existance......not. The weapons of war made sure that there would never be a direct war, ever, because, according to the official opinion of the US military an government, a Strangelove scenario was impossible. And there was the remote change that a Chilean Socialist goverment would somehow support Stalin, while making the people better...which would result in....what? Communist Chili?? I think that the people in Chili would've been better suited to answer such a situation if it would ever happen...

Imperialism in itself is not supposed to be suited for a world which is based upon principals of peace, freedom and freely chosen government forms(not forced democracy). But it is still here in several ways. Should this change? Yes. I think it should. Is it realistic for me to expect it to change? This would have to be judged per case, actually. But eventually, I hope this world will come to it's senses and see that this is not good.

Small thing about the EU: I don't think that the EU will actually be led by the larger countries. At least not if the Netherlands can do anything about it.. which remains the question.

 

[DarkCorp]

Yes neutrality sounds good. But let me ask you this. What would happen if the United States were to be totally neutral to soviet expansion. The soviets want Argentina, give it to them. They want the Panama Canal, give it to them. They want Brazil, give it to them. So lets say the Soviet Union had the entire S. American continent under their control. So lets see, they have the Middle East cause the americans did nothing, S America, Cuba, China, Japan, Korea, etc

Now imagine if a war of attrition was fought, who would win? MAD would be useless due to the fact that the soviets cover much more ground, and hence, have more ground they could afford to lose. The U.S. would have to attack soviet missile silo's and government strongholds in S. America, Japan, China, Europe, The Middle East, get my drift. War is only avoided when countries decide the consequential losses would be un-acceptable.

"Remaining neutral worked in the sense that you didn't declare war upon someone, but it didn't work because you had no allies, and thus no back-up"......................Sander

It also dpends on other countries keeping their word. Obviously the germans didn't like to keep their word. Sometimes it isn't always about allies. The germans only had a pact with the japanese and the russians so they could focus their efforts on europe and england. It was proved correct when germany thought they had europe conquered, they went and attacked the soviet union. They win there, the'll fuck over japan. In essence, the germans just kept their later enemies tranquilized.

As you said, in order to have total peace, every country would have to adopt an optimistic look on the world and just remain neutral. That means the United States would have to rely on the good will of the middle east to not restrict oil to the highest bidder. That would mean that the communists could be held on their word, that they won't go attacking someone else. The middle east would have to promise to not hate anyone who refuses to follow Islam.

Again, if it hasn't been clear already, when one country lives it up, another is bound to suffer in some way. I believe my above posts have brought that to light.

 

[John Uskglass]

I really have an attention problem. Ill just say that Imperialisim is not evil, and that social darwinisim is not evil, that certain societies are better then others.......bladabladablada, my attention is bad.

 

[welsh]

I sympathize with you, CC, even if I don't agree with what you say.

Sander and Darkcorp- both of you are making some sloppy arguments about some very erroneous views of the world, even if the core of both of you are making sense.

Ok Darkcorp's position seems to be that if you are a powerful country you can't play neutral for long. IN an anarchical world, one cannot trust the good will of others, so you have to be able to resort to self-help. While perhaps many nations possess good wil and lack aggressive intensions, at least a few do. The way to make war avoidable is by making the costs of war too high to bear.

This is basically the realist (as an International Relations theory championed by Morganthau, Thompson and Waltz) argument and a theory behind deterrence and US intervention in the middle east. Incidently this is a Hobbesian world view.

Sander's argument is more about idealism, that you can't have imperialism in a world based on human rights, peace etc. One should trust to the good nature of citizens and push for the furtherance of those norms. Essentially this is both a liberal and a Kantian view. The world, through trade and sharing becomes a more peaceful place. Add a constructivist notion, it is possible that rational people can construct a better world.

The strength of Darkcorp's argument is that it's generally been held up over time, mostly because we have seen the emergence of powerful countries that pursued policies of conquest. The counter argument that the world has changed can be countered with,"Hey they thought that was true in the past as well."

On the other hand Sander's point does have some merit though, although perhaps not as much as he would wish. The idea is that the sovereign state system is changing, has become more peaceful and there is a greater consensus on what is "correct" and wrong. Darkcorp might respond that this is only due to the existence of a powerful hegemon that set out those "rules of the game" and the presence of nuclear weapons that keeps war between great powers off the table.

Now, with regard to Chili- Had Allende come to power it is believed that his policies would have caused incrediable economic pain to Chili, setting it back on the developmental ladder and perhaps causing more deaths due to economic deprivation (poor hospitals, public services, etc) than under repression. Furthermore, Allende was threatening to nationalize US assets which would have hurt US companies.

Counter position- the people of CHili had the right to choose their government as they saw fit and the US didn't have the right to intervene on behalf their economic and strategic interests.

Maybe, let's compare this to another case. which I offer as an example of a middle ground between Darkcorp's dark pessimism and Sander's dream-like idealism. True, deterrence works but so does active internationalism to construct a better world. One can trust the rationality of individuals to come to a better understanding and perhaps avoid conflict. While anarchy may exist, the dangers of it can be overcome.

- South Africa and the end of apartheid. For years it seemed that the ANC and the goverment of South Africa (SF) would resolve their political differences through violence. Violent resistance had been part of ANC methods as had been the violence of SF government forces. However the strategy of the Botha government had not proved successful in the end and the de Klerk undertook a new strategy of negotiated compromise.

The problem was this- while the South Africans controlled the political system, they also had assurances that their economic system would survive. THe problem was that, because of sanctions and diplomatic pressures, they were not getting the return on that economy they would have hoped. However transferring power to the ANC, which had an agenda of transferring ownership from whites to blacks and nationalizing the major firms, would mean the loss of their economic power.

The problem was resolved when the ANC was convinced of the danger of their economic plan. Had the ANC nationalized than South Africa would suffer capital flight and the economy would be ruined. Such a result would cause significant problems for the new black leadership. In contrast, preserving the economic system would allow SF the economic resources to begin to dismantle the apartheid system and improve the lot of black South Africans.

What if, in Chili, Allende had been convinced that his economic plan was going to be a disaster. In hindsight we know that many politicans elected from left wing parties do not socialize their economies. In fact had Allende gone through with nationalizing the copper mines, similar actions elsewhere has not ruined the profits of many of the mineral companies but actually reduced their costs in maintenance while expanding their power in marketing.

 

[OnTheBounce]

I really have an attention problem. Ill just say that Imperialisim is not evil, and that social darwinisim is not evil, that certain societies are better then others.......bladabladablada, my attention is bad.

The problem w/an idea of a "better" society is basically that there are going to have be criteria selected before the process of definition can even begin. Furthermore, one will find that this question will yield the same result as Biology, in that whatever characteristics may be a virtue which aid in an organism's/species'/individual's/society's survival and propagation today may very well be a vice that hinders it tomorrow, only to be a virtue again the day after.

The problem w/systems like Social Darwinism is that they are heavily rooted in the 19th Century notion of progress toward an Absolute (like that in Hegelian thought), which has been shown to be a bankrupt way of thinking. It just isn't so.

To use a military example, in the near future we may very well see a shift to energy weapons on the battlefield. When this happens, armor like the Chobham found on the most advanced tanks today will be practically useless as the fast moving neutrons of particle projectors will have no problem defeating something designed against chemical and kinetic energy. Then, after counter-measures have been taken against PP and Laser weapons if someone suddenly starts using kinetic energy weapons the types of armor that are designed to deal w/radiation will be extremely vulnerable to what would be considered archaic weapons. Progress isn't linear, and so there is no progress toward an Absolute.

The other problem w/this sort of thinking is that civilization is -- to bring T. H. Huxley into it -- "Man's protest against Nature." Naturalistic arguments for things like Social Darwinism invariably rely on a statement grounded in actuality (x is y), but overlook the basic Human characteristic of thinking in normative terms (x ought to be y). This is what led primitive humans to live in caves rather than roaming the plains. It then led them to rely less on actuality and start building its own dwellings, to plant crops instead of relying in serrendipity or providence for fooed, etc., etc.

The fact that one civilization can dominate another does not mean that it ought to. Of course, there's still the issue of what we ought to do in general, but that's a different topic altogether.

Also, I think that one of the basic problems confronting us is that people tend to subscribe to a type of Fallacy of Bifurcation (i.e. that something has to be one of two things, no other options exist). We tend to look at things as though the only two choices confronting us are to be either Morlocks or Eloi, that there is no middle ground. I favor the middle ground, although by that I mean the Aristotelean Golden Mean which means inclining toward one extreme or the other, as the situation dictates.

Cheers,

OTB

 

[John Uskglass]

Wow. Great post. I am rethinking my view of social darwinisim.

 

[John Uskglass]

Also, I managed to read all of it.

 

[welsh]

This goes back to the issue of religion and politics-



--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

January 8, 2004
OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR
One Nation, Under Secularism
By SUSAN JACOBY

n Campaign 2004, secularism has become a dirty word. Democrats, particularly Howard Dean, are being warned that they do not have a chance of winning the presidential election unless they adopt a posture of religious "me-tooism" in an effort to convince voters that their politics are grounded in values just as sacred as those proclaimed by President Bush.

On one level, the impulse to capitalize on the religiosity of Americans can be seen as transparently, and at times comically, opportunistic. Late last year, Ed Kilgore, policy director of the Democratic Leadership Council, earnestly advised his party's candidates to invoke "God's green earth" in supporting stronger environmental laws. Mr. Dean, the candidate stuck with the label (or libel) of being the most secularist Democratic aspirant, seems to be heeding the advice to get religion. He recently informed an Iowa audience that he prays daily, and in New Hampshire last week, he demonstrated his ecumenism by using the Muslim expression "inshallah," which means God willing.

On a deeper level, the notion that elected officials should employ a religious rationale for policy decisions is rooted in the misconception, promulgated by the Christian right, that the American government was founded on divine authority rather than human reason. When I lecture on college campuses, students frequently express surprise at being told that the framers of the Constitution deliberately omitted any mention of God in order to assign supreme governmental power to "We the People."

Dismissing this inconvenient fact, some on the religious right have suggested that divine omnipotence was considered a given in the 1780's — that the framers had no need to acknowledge God in the Constitution because his dominion was as self-evident as the rising and setting of the sun. Yet isn't it absurd to suppose that men as precise in their use of language as Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton and James Madison would absentmindedly have failed to insert God into the nation's founding document? In fact, they represented a majority of citizens who wished not only to free religion from government interference but government from religious interference.

This deep sentiment was expressed in letters to newspapers during the debate over ratification of the Constitution. One Massachusetts correspondent, signing himself "Elihu," summed up the secular case by praising the authors of the Constitution as men who "come to us in the plain language of common sense, and propose to our understanding a system of government, as the invention of mere human wisdom; no deity comes down to dictate it, nor even a God in a dream to propose any part of it."

The 18th-century public's understanding of the Constitution as a secular document can perhaps best be gauged by the reaction of religious conservatives at the time. For example, the Rev. John M. Mason, a fire-breathing New York City minister, denounced the absence of God in the preamble as "an omission which no pretext whatever can palliate." He warned that "we will have every reason to tremble, lest the governor of the universe, who will not be treated with indignity by a people more than individuals, overturn from its foundations the fabric we have been rearing and crush us to atoms in the wreck." But unlike many conservatives today, Mason acknowledged — even as he deplored — the Constitution's uncompromising secularism.

Americans tend to minimize not only the secular convictions of the founders, but also the secularist contribution to later social reform movements. One of the most common misconceptions is that organized religion deserves nearly all of the credit for 19th-century abolitionism and the 20th-century civil rights movement. While religion certainly played a role in both, many people fail to distinguish between personal faith and religious institutions.

Abolitionists like William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator, and the Quaker Lucretia Mott, also a women's rights crusader, denounced the many mainstream Northern religious leaders who, in the 1830's and 40's, refused to condemn slavery.

In return, Garrison and Mott were castigated as infidels and sometimes as atheists — a common tactic used by those who do not recognize any form of faith but their own. Garrison, strongly influenced by his freethinking predecessor Thomas Paine, observed that one need only be a decent human being — not a believer in the Bible or any creed — to discern the evil of slavery.

During the 20th-century civil rights struggle, the movement's strongest moral leaders emerged from Southern black churches. But the moral message of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. obviously ran counter to the religious rationales for segregation preached in many white churches in the south.

In addition, Dr. King welcomed the help of nonreligious allies like Stanley Levison, his friend and lawyer, and the outspoken labor leader A. Philip Randolph. Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman, murdered in Mississippi in the summer of 1964, were nonobservant Jews who died not in the name of religion but because of their secular humanist commitment to racial justice.

Many politicians today, including President Bush, use the civil rights leadership of African-American ministers as an argument in favor of "faith-based" government financing. But those ministers were free to pursue their moral vision within American society precisely because they were independent of both government money and government control. Government officials, by contrast, have a very different constitutionally mandated obligation — to devise public policies based not on religious interests but on a secular concept of public good.

When President Lyndon B. Johnson proposed the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and declared, in his memorable Texas twang, "We shall overcome," he was articulating a moral position that could and did command the respect of citizens of any or no religion.

That is real leadership. Not a scintilla of bravery is required for a candidate, whether Democratic or Republican, to take refuge in religion. But it would take genuine courage to stand up and tell voters that elected officials cannot and should not depend on divine instructions to reconcile the competing interests and passions of human beings.

Abraham Lincoln, whose spiritual beliefs were so elusive that both atheists and the devoutly religious have tried to claim him as their own, spoke eloquently on this point during his long period of deliberation before issuing the Emancipation Proclamation.

"I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the divine will," he told a group of ministers in September 1862. "I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed that he would reveal it directly to me. . . . These are not, however, the days of miracles. . . . I must study the plain, physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible, and learn what appears to be wise and right."

Today, many voters, of many religious beliefs, might well be receptive to a candidate who forthrightly declares that his vision of social justice will be determined by the "plain, physical facts of the case" on humanity's green and fragile earth. But that would take an inspirational leader who glories in the nation's secular heritage and is not afraid to say so.

Susan Jacoby, author of the forthcoming "Freethinkers: A History of American Secularism," is director of the Center for Inquiry-Metro New York