From: "Dave Coull" <coull2-AT-btinternet.com> Subject: RE: amerikan hegemony Date: Mon, 3 Mar 2003 09:11:01 -0000 Scott asked > Been to England lately? No, not recently. However, I do know that somewhere between a million and two million people (nobody is exactly sure) demonstrated in London against war recently. I do know that if anybody suggested that English schoolchildren should be required to recite a "pledge of allegiance to the flag" every day, they would be laughed at as some sort of lunatic. And yet I also know that precisely that act of madness does takes place every day in American schools, and is taken for granted as something "normal". > What I'd like to know is why saying "Sure, the US > gov't sucks, but it doesn't suck any more than any > in Europe." is supposed to be some sort of shocking > display of nationalism. What is wrong with saying that is that, far too often, the unspoken implication is "so I'm not going to do very much to oppose what 'my' government is doing to the rest of the world". I am not saying that is so in _your_ case, Scott, but I am quite sure that it is in others'. We are not having some interesting philosophical discussion about whether or not, in an abstract world, all nationalisms are equally repugnant. We are talking about whether, in a world with just one super-power which is throwing its weight around ever more aggressively, those citizens of that super-power who claim to be anarchists or libertarians or anti-authoritarians of some kind ought to take quite such a relaxed view of their _own_ Nationalism. > Yeah, it sucks, its foreign policy sucks, its domestic > policy sucks. But it's no worse than any other country > would be in its place (which is a point Carp has consistently > pointed out). Whether or not it is any worse than any other country would be "in its place" is not the point. No other country IS in its place. And this "we're no worse than anybody else would be in our place" can be, and I am quite sure _is_ , used as an excuse for inaction. Dave Coull
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