Nathan, check out post #10 this thread, please.
Cheers!
Merry Christmas.
“What’s the long-term spiritual and moral benefit of that?
Unless we use freedom to make the world a better place for many...”
I’m going to reply to your post not as any self-proclaimed paradigm of conservatism nor, I hope, a naive idiot.
You/we cannot make the rest of the world, indeed, not even all of ourselves, happy, productive, fulfilled people. I would argue, that with some grotesque exceptions, we *have* made the world a better place. In some of those uglier cases, we made it pretty cruddy first. The discussion as to what we have done to make the world better and what we’ve done to make it worse also depends on what “better/worse” might mean. And how much of the historical chain we are expected to be responsible for. For example, “we” (actually more Britain) found and then developed oil in the mideast. In the case of Saudi Arabia, those resources were exploited, perhaps unfairly, but at this point in time the Saudis, at least the elite, are megabillionaires from this oil. Tremendous infrastructure improvements have been built in KSA, including the type of foolish excess we see in Dubai....and yet much of their population is underemployed and destitute. Our fault? Of course! In the case of Iran, British facilities were nationalized in the early 50’s, the Brits persuaded us to help overthrow the shah and install Pahlavi, who oppressed his people to the extent that the Iranian revolution came about in 1979, leading to the regime in place there now, whom we regard as a worldwide menace and who clearly finances terrorists working to kill our guys, right now, today. How much of either of these timelines are to be held responsible for? But that’s not the purpose of my reply, it’s just a rhetorical question.
We *have* made the world a better place for many, arguably, for more people than any other civilization or culture ever. By orders of magnitude. We did it by living the American model based upon the Constitution. We have provided more people with more wealth, more disease-curing drugs, more labor-saving devices, and yes, more American Idol-grade cultural putrefaction than any other source. A dirty litle secret is that we have also provided the *market* for many other countries to sell to. And where that market will go when we are capped and traded and taxed to bloody hell is a dynamic effect that isn’t being considered now. Without tallying all the negative and positive influences we have had upon the world in 234 years, I contend the balance is strongly to the positive side. Yet more than anything else, we have done it by providing a *model* of a society based upon law, not just a raw democracy. Like you, I’m seriously dismayed to see that being crassly overthrown at present.
As most of us probably believe and as I started out saying, we cannot directly create the nirvana we would like to see our fellow man live in. We cannot air-condition the mud hut of 0bama’s half-brother in Kenya without the availability of local power. We can, and we have developed and provided drugs and insecticides and nutritional things that have massively, massively improved the potentials of the people there. We’ve dug sewers and built hospitals and schools for some, but in many cases, when it looks like some modicum of organization starts to take root on that continent, a corrupt local leader emerges whose purpose is to steal the goods and avenge some goddam goat that the neighbor’s grandfather stole and then war breaks out and the hospitals are destroyed and looted. Naturally, that’s our fault, too. We cannot provide the Indonesian or the Tanzanian or the Tuvaluan a satisfying lifestyle until he himself has the idea for a product or service that he can market at a profit to his peers or to some export market, using that set of resources available to him. At present, I daresay, it appears we cannot even make this happen for our domestic population.
My point: Just like a badly depressed person in a group can be a real downer to the rest of the group, and a sparkplug of a person can light up a room; I believe our best course is to worry about ourselves right now, and try to get ourselves back to where we can be viewed as a model. I fanatically disagree that this is selfish. There is huge value in acting as a model, both for us and for the ROW, and we ought not to feel guilty about it. No, what we should feel guilty about is allowing our exceptional model to be trashed. Remember the Washington DC pictures of the aftermaths of the 0bama campaign rallies vs the teaparty rallies? Consider that as a metaphor. I do. It told me all I need to know about choice “A” and choice “B”.
Before take off the flight attendant **always** warns to the passenger to put the oxygen mask on his **own* face first before helping others.
It's a Maslow’s hierarchy of needs thing. The lower levels of needs, ( food, clothing, shelter) must be met first before we can reach our own levels of “self-actualization” or help others to reach theirs.
However...A spiritual revival is sorely needed. If we repair ourselves spiritually the materials things will begin to improve immediately. But...Again, it is a personal quest first before we can help others.
Nathan, check out post #10 this thread, please.
Cheers!
Merry Christmas.
Regards,
Raven6
Awesome reply-I wish I could write like that because it’s everything I had in my brain that refuses to come out thru my fingertips.
So-the only thing I can say is-”yeah-what he said”.
SZQ