From: joedees@bellsouth.net
Date: Mon Aug 12 2002 - 11:54:12 MDT
On 12 Aug 2002 at 9:39, Walpurgis wrote:
> Walpurgis dares to step into the bilious flood.... (having deleated
> most of it anyway)
>
> > I would have to contend that the US long has been and
> > remains, sometimes in spite of herself, the greatest single force
> > for democracy, human rights, progress and civilization in the
> > modern world.
>
> I don't understand why you think the US is the guardian of these
> laudable ideologies. It sounds like nationalism.
>
> Why? Because these ideologies that the US guards and promotes are only
> guarded and promoted by *certain groups* in the US. Not the whole on
> the US. The US certainly is not singular as you suggest. It is not
> alone. It is not unified.
>
> Certain groups and individuals across the world defend and develop
> these ideologies in theory and practice. They influence each other,
> communicate, form networks, power bases (or not). I'm sure you know
> your US history, and the kinds of non-US influences on US thought.
>
> Talk of an country (not just the US) is so much nonsense. None are
> homogenous, all are in constant internal struggle amongst different
> ideological groups.
>
> THe US is not the guardian of these laudable ideologies, *people* who
> believe in these ideologies are. It just so happens that currently,
> there are powerful groups in the US that are amongst these people. It
> is also the case that there are groups with different ideologies -
> different by degrees.
>
> This is why no one country should be lionised, and why nationalism is
> an irrational position. It is the global/historical network of
> ideas/action that one should align oneself with (if at all), and what
> one should consider a "force for xyz".
>
One should also acknowledge, as you do above, where the major
impetus for the expression of these ideals in action resides; namely,
powerful US groups (and indeed, perpetually in power, in the sense that
there is broad consensus, regardless of their minor disagreements on
details, between Democrats and Republicans as to the value and
efficacy of these ideals in national self-governance), who take
democracy and guaranteed US constitutional freedoms seriously as a
model to recommend to others who find their present governmental
circumstances less than satisfactory.
>
> Walpurgis
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> -------------------
>
> http://www.noumenal.net/exiles
>
> Beausoleil - we want to sink into the deepest places.
>
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