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Originally posted by ARTelevision
Yes. Every nation on earth has always operated and continues to operate on a basis of pragmatic self-interest.
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Prove it. What interest did outlawing slavery within the British Empire serve Britian? I guess it made the British feel morally superior in some small way.
However, if you define "pragmatic self interest" that broadly, your statement means basically nothing: it says countries do what they think is best.
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It's always fascinating to hear idealism though.
The problem with it is no one could ever run a country that way.
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You mean, run only off ideals? Bah, of course it wouldn't work.
At the same time, you try to run a nation without ideals, and I'll sell you the broklyn bridge.
Purely rational decision making doesn't work. Without ideals or emotions to decide how to weigh the various possibilities, you can spend forever listing features of a decision, and never reach a conclusion. It is like trying to do math without axioms: it just doesn't work.
Ideals are nessicarry to decide which of two alternatives are "best". And, quite often, some of those ideals are distilled long-term self interest.