[lit-ideas] Simon's World
- From: "Lawrence Helm" <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Sun, 7 May 2006 11:05:34 -0700
Simon's world
It's just an accident that the entire West developed Liberal Democracy
patterned after America. It could have been something else and it would
have worked just as well - probably better. Development is the key here.
Not Democracy.
If America wants to spread democracy, why shame on America. Just because
the most successful societies in the world have been more or less like
America's doesn't give America any right to start wanting other nations to
be like them. Nations ought to be able to be whatever they like as long as
they are like us Europeans. The US should mind its own business and just
breath in and breath out like we do.
What gives the US the right to spread freedom? Freedom's not all it's
cracked up to be. Who says people want to be free? A few dissident
Soviets, a Harvard professor of Japanese ancestry? Who cares what they
think? People just want to be left alone. I mean what did Saddam Hussein
ever do to you Americans, really? Kuwait and Iraq used to be contiguous
before the borders got messed up (I can't recall how that happened); so
Saddam was just trying to fix things. America had no right to attack
Saddam. And why wouldn't Saddam shoot at all those planes flying over day
in and day out? All he wanted to do was get his country back together. It
was a vicious lie to think he was going to harm those Kurds or those Shiites
in the South just because they sympathized with the American troops in 1991.
Those Iraqis were minding their own business more or less and you Americans
invaded them. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves. But oh no, no shame
in Washington DC. In 2003 you did it again. All worried and excited that
Saddam might be intending to harm someone. So what if he wanted to
eventually get WMDs. Who doesn't want them? Yeah he had a few from time to
time, but he got rid of them before you Americans showed up. I guess the
joke was on you now wasn't it?
You think you are indispensable to World Security. What arrogance. We
could get along just fine without you. Just go back into one of your
Isolationist modes and leave the rest of us alone. We can get along without
you just fine. I mean, just look at the media news. Didn't we get along
without you before you started throwing your weight around? You messed
things up in WWI. You pretended you had something to do with helping out in
WWII but it was really the Russians that won that war. And the Cold War was
a fiction - pure baloney so you could pump up your arms industry.
And this War on terror? I mean really, a few comic-looking peasants
wandering around the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan with AK-47s? Who
are you trying to kid? You can't really expect the rest of us to take your
war on terror seriously? This is way too droll for sophisticated Europeans.
There is no such thing as Human Nature. We have eliminated War and are
practicing peace. You are just getting in the way of our sunlight. Please,
just move out of the way and leave us alone.
Simon's World - described by Lawrence
_____
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx]
On Behalf Of Simon Ward
Sent: Sunday, May 07, 2006 10:23 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Helm's World
Lawrence,
I get the feeling you like your world with a passion.
In comparison, the Cold War was boring boring boring. Nothing ever happened
because the two principals didn't dare start slugging it out with each
other. But in Helm's world, a world where the US is the biggest bully
around, it means nothing to square up to a young pretender and whip his ass.
Of course, there are a few other big guys around who you know also possess a
cracking right hook, and those you treat with caution. Liberal democracy,
state socialist, old fashioned client dictatoriship, if they've got a heft
right hook, best leave them be.
But the rest?
What worries me Lawrence is that you seem to want Huntington to be right.
You want to have enemies and you want to have the resulting wars. You want
not just to possess military might, you want to be able to use it as well.
How many more are there like you?
Simon
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