Intro

"Religion and good morals are the only solid foundation of public liberty and happiness."

--Samuel Adams, letter to John Trumbull, 16 October 1778

Why is helping people live free from a dictator cultural imperialism? Why is letting girls go to school consider forcing our will on other people. Ok so it is a little, but hasn't every dominant country done this all through history? But America has done it without taking the lands it conquered. No other nation has done this.
America could have occupied Japan, made it a province. That's what Rome or England would have done, that's what Russia has done. America could have setup a US government in Iraq. If you really think about it, they could have kept Germany. But while we have spread the value of freedom, we have done so in a way that returned those lands to its people. Germany and Japan are doing ok now. The French and the EU seem to have benefited from our sacrifice. Its time we stop teaching Americans to feel guilty for making great sacrifices for the world and having in some pride again that while others couldn't, we stood up for what was right and those that could not defend themselves.

While going forward I have no intention of making my blog one that is merely reactive to comments received that are meant to be purely inflammatory or reactionary themselves, I am going to make the exception for this one comment.

A few items:

1) The comment was posted partly in jest by a friend of mine, but it has highlighted the need for me to spell out definitions of the concepts and words I use in my blog. Cultural imperialism has an actual definition, and I fully intend to define the concepts and terms I use going forward to prevent the kind of reactionary comments that were included in his response. I want to minimize misunderstandings both in others' interpretations of my content so no energy is wasted reacting to something that is clearly not relevant to the original intent of a given post.

2) My intent in the next few months will be to lay down historical context for making more progressive and interesting observations with the hope of educating those reading my blog to minimize the risk of misunderstandings.

3) For all the government agencies that may scan these blogs that scan for hot words like Hamas, I want to make it clear a am patriot and support this country and want to see us continue to improve. My point about Hamas was meant to point out that democracy for democracy's sake may not bring about an end that is best - Hamas is obviously a terrorist organization that was elected through the democratic process. This was my point - democracy in and of itself may not bring about results that are in-line with promoting our own national interest or those of our allies.

Thanks,

Andrew