Quote:
|
Originally Posted by highthief
Conceited much?
Seriously, some people really overestimate the importance of the US in the world, as if the earth would stop spinning if the US took a different position.
|
This is true until there is a manmade or natural disaster anywhere in the world. Then, it's not that the United States is lacking influence; no, then it becomes there is no end to the malevolent, evil, bloodsucking reach of American fangs. An earthquake hits south Asia? Uncle Sam caused it. A hurricane hits the Gulf Coast? It's George Bush's fault. Islamofascists bomb London--yep, if not for the United States...
As historian Victor Davis Hanson recently wrote:
"The world does not hate the United States. Of course, it envies us. Precisely because it is privately impressed by our unparalleled success, it judges America by a utopian measure in which anything less than perfection is written off as failure. We risk everything, our critics abroad almost nothing. So the hope for our failures naturally gives reinforcement to the bleak reality of their inaction.
The Europeans expect our protection. The Mexicans risk their lives to get here. Indians and Japanese want closer relations. The old commonwealth appreciates our strength in defense of the West. Even the hostile Iranians, North Koreans, Cubans, Venezuelans, Chinese, and radical Islamists — despite the saber-rattling rhetoric — wonder whether we are naïve and idealistic rather than cruel and calculating. All this we rarely consider when we read of anti-Americanism in our major newspapers or hear another angry (and usually well-off) professor or journalist recite our sins.
The European way is not the answer, as we see from the farcical negotiations over Iran’s time bomb. Struggling with a small military, unsustainable entitlement promises, little real economic growth, high unemployment, falling birth rates, angry unassimilated minorities, and a suicidal policy of estrangement from its benefactor the United States, Europeans show already an 11th-hour change of heart as we see in the Netherlands, Denmark, Germany, and soon in France."
Soon the mad mullahs in Tehran will have the bomb. Who will the world look to for security when they threaten to use it? Canada? France? When the nutty little dictator in North Korea threatens Japan, or the tyrannical regime in Beijing invades Taiwan, who will receive the global 911 call for help?
One sure way to move past all the propaganda is to examine conditions on the ground. Let's use the Door Test. When the door is slung open which way do people move? For all immigrants worldwide the number one destination is the "anachronistic" United States. Even with the death penalty and private health care firmly in place, during the last 10 years twice the number of immigrants have chosen to come to the United States than to all the other western countries combined. This does not even account for the millions of illegal U.S. immigrants. Ask those millions why they came here and continue to die to get here. I suspect their view of the United States would not match your own.