Hi Matthew,
My intent was to pour some soothing balm on the arguement rather than
particularly address your point though it was partly in response to
the, in my opinion, agressive e-mails sent by you and Colin that I
wrote.
I think that calling someone pretentious (by implication) is unlikely
to engender reasonable debate or encourage them to listen to your
arguement. It's no big deal just a point.
I think there is a cultural difference between UK and US as between
all countries. In the US the flag is a powerful symbol, whilst the
Union Jack is more often associated with Fascists when used in non
military display. I believe Americans at school sing the national
anthem every morning or some such thing whereas we have plays about
Buddha, Jesus and Mohammed forming meaningful relationships or some
such (well OK...). I saw Bush inspecting some troops who were all
chanting USA, USA, USA... in a way you would never see UK troops or
people do (except at a football match). My point is that that
Americans are taught to proudly declare their faith in the virtues of
their country as something perfectly normal. We, who are
indoctrinated in a more subtle way, rankle at an assertion that by
default implies denigration, irrelevant of intent, of our own
glorious nation and respond to the perceived attack. The Americans
then feel attacked and respond in kind......
Once the knee jerk 'God created America first' (He's an Englishman,
by the way) is out the way we all seem to be able to have rational
discussion.
My bit for world understanding.
We already have a form of world government, oh ignorant ones (Whoops,
sorry couldn't help it, it just slipped out) and it is in all our
interests that it be so. In a hundred international forums, EU,
Nafta, Gatt, UN, G7, NATO.... laws and agreements are being made by
countries which are binding upon them. World government is not about
the residents of Naura forcing the the residents of the US to hop
around in a circle on the third Thursday of the month chanting, it is
about peace, trade, security and the prevention of events like 9/11.
It is about regulating the behaviour, by common consent, of our
relations with each other and the very small and fragile planet we
live on. That, and therefore that kind of world government I refer
to, seems to be completely in the interests of the American people.
Back to my very first point. The current US administration is made up
of people, who like many of the people contributing to this
discussion, do not agree with World Government and law as opposed to
the previous US administration, which I believe did. The attitude to
Kyoto, ABM treaty and numerous other things sent out the signal,
intended or not, that the US did not care what the rest of the world
thinks and that International agreements did not matter to them. What
is the point of having a treaty with a country that tears it up when
it doesn't suit it anymore.
I hope that the good that comes out of the evil that was 9/11 is that
Bush et al understand that this world is too small to be ignored or
indeed pushed around and they continue their engagement beyond the
current coalition. An angry man with access to a lot of fertilisier
is all it takes...
Clinton was a great American, if flawed, who helped a lot of people.
The support for America is slightly less muted because of him. Lot of
Americans hated Roosevelt, arguably your greatest president. You
criticise them, they complain. You compliment them, they complain...
Regards
Chris Courtiour
--- In mepbmlist@y..., "Matthew Riley" <matthew@m...> wrote:
Chris commented that he didn't "think it is pretentious to take
pride in your countries achievements and think the US has added a
long list of
good things to the world"
If you were referring to my earlier comment then you're taking it a
wee bit out of context. I objected to Bruce Raymond saying that USA
had contributed more to the rest of the world "than any other
civilisation" and made claim to being "the greatest nation state in
history".
Its all well and good being proud of one's own country but such
patriotic jingoism doesn't sit well with me - neither of Bruce's
claim would stand up to much in-depth analysis and are pretentious
(not to mention darned silly) in the extreme.
But yes this is not the place for such debates.... Good fun
though
ยทยทยท
Matthew
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