Call me narrow minded but I recently have had a revelation, or something like that.
Every American should want the whole world to become America.
What!?! Blasphemy! [Insert some liberal curse here... I can't think of one right now.]
Hold on let me explain. First, I doubt anyone in America would disagree that we have the best country in the world. We do have the most freedoms of any people in the world (both personally and economically overall). That being said (or assumed for the sake of my argument) why would we not want everyone in the world to have our freedoms?
Why don't we want this? Because other countries are scared, and they try to influence what we think. You think not? If you are not on board with the United States of the World, why is that? Is it because you think that other countries are better? Doubtful.
Why is it?
I am not calling for all countries to become America, I am calling for all countries to give their people the freedoms of America. I do not want Iraq to become Texas, I want them to stay Iraq, but I want their people to be free to worship the way they want to, their women are given the same rights as the men, the masses have an opportunity to be educated.
I am also not advocating the spread of America through force. We can not free people through force, they must choose it themselves But we also can not stand by and let leaders that kill their own people rule. (How can we do that as humans?) This is a tricky situation, but in the end I am confident that people would choose to be free rather than be ruled by an iron fist.
So we Americans should not be ashamed of the idea the Iraq or the Arab world will become "The United States of Arab". This is the best outcome possible. The freedoms of America in the Arab world? That is a world to strive for, and to fight for.
Comments?
4 comments:
While I think that the freedoms that you point out are certainly good ones for countries to strive for, I'm not sure that I agree that America is the best country. I'm not even sure of what it means to be the "best country". There are other countries that appear to have more freedoms than even we do. For example, Switzerland has an excellent system in place that allows both men and women to take to parental leave on the birth of a child. They also have equivalent pay rates for men and women (something we also lack). Switzerland is also one of the few countries that has a true democracy.
There are still a large number of groups in the US that appear to lack some of the basic freedoms we take for granted. Homosexuals lack the freedom to marry. Poor people lack some the basic freedom of health care.
We deny other countries the freedoms that we would never let anyone take from us (the right to build weapons of defense or attack). We have a terrible knack for bombing other people's citizens (is that a thing that humans should do?). If we wanted to spread freedom, we should certainly not do it by removing democratically elected leaders from countries and replacing them with dictators (the Congo, Nicaragua, etc.).
I feel like our (and I mean the US in particular) environmental irresponsibility is essentially a blight on freedoms as well. We are removing the freedoms of our children and grand children to live in this world.
So while I agree with some of your sentiments I'm not sure I agree with your basic premise.
I still stand by my claim that America is the freest country in the world. I am considering both personal and commercial freedoms. You say that in Switzerland that men get days off for maternity leave, and that there are mandated equal pay. I will argue that these are actually reductions in freedoms. The reason I say that is because this is the government stepping in and saying that businesses must do this or that, this is not an improvement in freedoms.
Don't think that freedoms mean people can get whatever they want. Health care is not a freedom. A freedom is the ability for a person (or a person ran business) to be able to choose what to do. I think health care is important, and everyone should have it, but that should be the responsibility of the person not the government.
The more government programs does not mean more freedoms. And I hate to say it, but the freer a society is the more chance for people to fail. Why? Because if we are free to choose some people will choose unwisely, because they do not have the foresight to plan well. And in these cases of poor decisions it should not be the responsibility of the government to save these people but it should be the responsibility of their friends and family. (oh, I better stop, I'm getting off track.)
As for the freedom of marriage (which is also not really a freedom...this is debatable) why do gay people want to get married? So that they can live together? No, most of the time is so that they can benefit from programs set in place to help parents raise their children. There are some other benefits to marriage that i think gay people should be allowed to have (such as next of kin kind of things... but again this is getting off track).
As for overthrowing elected governments, I think that for the most part we don't do this. And i bet that in most cases where we do overthrow a government the elections are rigged. Heck Saddam was “elected” so was Castro and Kim el Jong, but they are rigged one way or another. (No Bush comments... if, if, if there was some rigging going on, it is nothing compared to the good ol' days a couple of decades ago.)
And i agree that we should not be killing innocents, but I think that we try our very hardest to minimize this. We often care more for the citizens in the “enemy” country than the leaders of the countries do.
No, really.
And i think that our environment responsibility is lacking in some cases, but it is way ahead of the average country in the world.
I am not saying that we should take over England, Japan, or the likes. But I can't see how making Iran, India, or China, “America” is a negative comment. The “insult” of saying that we are trying to make new states around the world, should not be viewed as an insult, we do have the best country, and maybe some day everyone around the would can be as lucky to live in such a good country as we do.
Well thank God! I feel so much better that discrimination is really a freedom. Whew! Imagine if I lived in one of those godforsaken countries that requires people to be treated as equals. God bless America's discrimination!
Really, the US was infringing on people's freedom when they toppled the Taliban... I mean don't they have the freedom to choose to degrade women?
Health care should not only be a freedom but a right. To me, this falls under the right to "life". Which is really a better use of money... killing off other countries leaders or saving the poor citizens of our own country? Lack of health care is not a bad choice. It's not like the poor people said... well shit I don't think I want to pay for health care today. I think I want to work a minnimum wage job doing grunt work for the rest of my life.
In the Congo, we overthrew a very popular and peace keeping leader. Why you might ask? Well it all has to do with diamonds. He had this crazy idea that because the diamonds were found in the Congo that they should get paid for it. For example, he thought that people in his country shouldn't starve to death when each diamond was worth several thousand dollars. Now you can see how the US viewed this as an infringement on their rights to pillage and plunder. So they got rid of him and replaced him with a cruel dicatator who followed what the US wanted.
As far as the environment... you can't really say it is far ahead of the "average country". We produce the majority of the green house gasses in the world. Countries in Africa? Not so much... South America? A tiny fraction of the waste we are spewing.
id say that "freedom" is subject to definition. id define other countries (namely more progressive european nations) as "more free" simply because more diversity is widely accepted. im also not sure i would measure the success or failure of a society by the freedoms they allow. interesting post, i dont think i agree tho
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