Posted on 10/28/2001 10:45:12 AM PST by clee1
No, I don't think we should take on the world at once. We should state our case to the world, and support our case by all means at our disposal. We should stop supporting regimes antithical to our views.
BTW, how do you eat an elephant? -- One bite at a time.
AMERICAS IDEALS ARE OK FOR AMERICANS WHO ARE NOT SOCIALIST OR COMMUNIST BUT WE SHOULD NOT TRY TO PUSH OUR IDEALS ONTO ANY NATION THAT IS NOT WILLING FREELY TO LISTEN ........ THAT WOULD MAKE US NO BETTER THAN THE UNITED NATIONS AND IN SOME CASES IT COULD BE WORSE ....
SO I SAY IF THEY WANT TO BE FREE LET THEM WRITE THEIR OWN CONSTITUTION AND BILL OF RIGHTS OR SOME FACSIMILE OF THE DOCUMENT WITH THEIR OWN IDEALS OF WHAT THEIR FREEDOM INTERPRETS NOT OURS
ALTHOUGH I FIND YOUR IDEA INTERESTING IT WOULD NOT BE VIABLE TO TAKE OVER THE WORLD IN THE NAME AND IDEALS OF ANY COUNTRY OR NATION
AND A BUMP TO YA FOR FREE THINKING
Not so. Our biggest disadvantage is not being able to locate our enemies.
It's like the movie Jurassic Park. It ends with the implication that man has a truly formidable competitor now, the revived dinosaurs. That's ridiculous. To take care of that threat all we would require is bigger guns, (which we already have). I'd like to see a T-Rex eat an M1 tank!
On the other hand, a virus (like HIV or smallpox) is a true threat. Not because it is big and powerful, but because it is so small and inconspicuous we can't locate it.
Terrorists are viruses. The minute they are located, they are dead. The problem is that it is very difficult to locate them.
Luckily, they are much more like a cold virus than smallpox or Ebola. They have the ability to disrupt and inconvenience.our society. They do not presently have the ability to destroy it.
I appreciate your clarification and do agree with you.
Yes, yes... You are correct in the details. I'd hoped my point was sufficiently clear without having to get into a detailed discussion of the Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire.
Thanks for your reply.
For the vast majority of the inhabitants of the Empire, the disappearance of the Republic resulted in going from hundreds of insatiable thieves plundering them (the Roman Senate) to a single thief with a built-in incentive for keeping the Empire solvent (the Emperor). When they had good Emperors, it worked very well, much better for most than the Republic. They problem, of course, is that the character of the Emperor was pretty much a toss of the dice.
Whilst making an omlet, it is unfortunately necessary to crack some eggs.
Fine, but let's see how gungho you are for imperialism when it's your turn to have your eggs cracked.
That's what we were in a particular economic and historical setting. To think that freedom, strategic survival, and the maintenance of such an economic system are mutually compatible 225 years later is delusional.
There are lots of well-armed governments of nations of small farmers who would much rather be farming the fertile ground of Illinois and Kansas than, say, the useless scrublands of the Middle East or the crowded terraces of China.
We occupy the best piece of real estate on planet earth, and if you think others wouldn't overrun it but for their inability to do so ignores every bit of human history available.
Not to take steps against nations who aspire to destroy us, but have yet to encroach on our land is irresponsble. You assume that we would be left alone if not for our foreign policies. Now our land has been attacked, and the wolves are circling, and our need to manage the global free-for-all with both carrots and sticks is greater than ever.
Nuclear-tipped ICBMs will soon be the rule rather than the exception. We had better be proactive because the distance and low-tech weaponry of the past which have protected us are now part of another historical era.
Maybe if they had a few Jedi, things would have been different. All they had was Cicero. :)
If a draft is ever instituted, I'll be in line immediately. Where will you be? Chewin' on a buffalo wing, I'd imagine.
And if we withdraw to our present borders and allow the rest of the world to be taken over by inimical governments, someday we will face a war of the US against the rest of the world. I like the idea of isolationism, but isolationism in the world of today is just a form of extended suicide.
I believe this quote is from Lenin or Stalin. They broke millions of eggs, but somehow never quite got around to making a omlette for their people.
Breaking lots of eggs doesn't inherently cause an omlette to come into existence, although sometimes it is indeed necessary. Application of military force of itself is not a solution to a problem.
I don't know how you extrapolate from my sentence "a country of small farms" to the 18th century. We were a country of small farms up until World War 1. I don't know exactly what your political philosophy is other than a sort of knee jerk conservatism, but this developing imperium of one world consumerism isn't going to work. Eventually some islamic nationalist is going to explode a nuke inside Israel or inside the New York City to Washinton D.C corridor. Then we will neutron bomb Islamia, and then they release foot and mouth disease in Ames, Iowa, and then...etc. That is doom.
No, the Roman Empire (and the Republic before it) as well as the Greek Athenian republic were not perfect - not by a long shot. But they WERE better than the tribal warfare survival-of-the-fittest fudalism that prevailed before and after Rome.
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