We're watching Meet the Press this morning, and they've got the author of "The Case for Democracy" on talking about Bush's apparent plan to impose democracy on the Middle East.
At one point, someone mentioned a quote from John Quincy Adams:
quote:"[America] goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own."
This is an ideal that I have always been immensely proud to be a part of. I am saddened to see it so quickly forgotten.
Posted by Storm Saxon (Member # 3101) on :
Well, unless you're communist, anyway. Or evil.
Posted by Mabus (Member # 6320) on :
America was an isolationist nation for a long time. That's not in question. And I think most historians would agree that for much of our existence, we had an excuse--we weren't powerful enough to get involved in the affairs of the European empires; we'd have been creamed.
Now that America is powerful, we have a responsibility to do good in the world beyond our borders. It's just a question of how.
Posted by Zeugma (Member # 6636) on :
I'm not sure that I agree we have a responsibility to help less powerful nations, but I do believe that we should help when we can.
While I know that a lot of what we're doing in the Middle East now is under the banner of goodwill; helping those poor stupid Iraqis discover that our way of doing things is so much better than theirs, it's getting harder and harder to argue that what we're doing isn't imperialism.
How many Iranians are we going to have to kill before they figure out how superior we are?