You miss my point -- first time it's happened. It's not that the USA is always at fault, it's that in most every situation, the one complaining about some problem needs to look hard at themselves before assigning blame.

If one was so smart, why did one allow oneself to be injured by the miscreant in question? Why was one so foolish as to allow the person to get involved with one?

Granted, it's often not that simple, but my point is, most people want to blame someone else.

The old fable about some people looking intently for something under a street light is an interesting one. A guy comes up, and asks what they're looking for. When told, he begins to help looking. After a while, he asks, "where did you lose it?" The owner says, "in my shed." The guy says, "Then why are you looking out here?!" They say, "the light is much better out here."

People want to look where it's easy to look. It's hard to look at oneself. -- Obi wan cmac

**EDIT** No wait, "Hard to look at oneself it is."

You assume that people who disagree with you lack introspection. Would you not agree that there's another possibility?

B

Of course. But what I say is not invalid.

Try to prove otherwise instead of merely casting aspersions.

What, assuming that people lack introspection is NOT insulting?

B

Assuming?! Our Aklimical buddy distills everything down to a sort of Reptilian brain self-interest.

I think there's more going on in life than that. He accuses me of self loathing. What utter tripe. A clear lack of introspection on that topic, IMO.

Has the official face of the US or even many of its citizens ever accepted blame or responsibility for anything? I mean beyond a sort of John Edwards answer:

Q: What is your greatest fault, America?

A: I have not been resolute enough in spreading freedom and democracy to the world.

Any answer to my question about how one might respond to one's son or daughter who answered every single bit of direction or criticism with:

"Oh so you want to always blame me first, huh?!"

Good discussion so far but lets not escalate it.

We all know Aklim's line of reasoning.

"Assuming?! Our Aklimical buddy distills everything down to a sort of Reptilian brain self-interest"

IMHO kind of a cheap shot.

Of that list . . . which country did the US plant the seeds of democracy, which presumes that there was no democracy there before? Certainly not India or Pakistan, which was omitted; the Greeks were wisely not mentioned next to Turkey in the list; South Africa was a democracy, it was just a democracy for a certain part of the country; Latin America . . . yes, a shinning example of US sponsored democracy, with Cuba, Panama, El Salvador, Nicaragua . . . Vietnam . . . . .

It was not meant as a cheap shot. It's a way of describing the most basic instincts of survival. The term is used in academia:

http://www.crystalinks.com/reptilianbrain.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reptilian_brain

Of course people watch out for themselves. They used to do it with a vengeance in the lands that our forefathers migrated from. Royals getting and staying rich while the peasants stayed in their place, generation after generation.

A lot of the reason our country was a step up from that, IMO, is that we began to explore models for allowing people to empower themselves, things like public education and perhaps Amish style barn raising-like community interest projects that enabled the community to lift themselves up by their collective bootstraps.

What, you don't think Aklim's posts to me aren't a bit insulting? I do, but it doesn't bother me.

Furthermore, this post, which led up to it was a bit off the mark I thought:

I don't assume that about eveyone who disagrees with me, my remark was directed at that specific aspect of Aklim's POV. I was trying to explain my thinking. Aklim's thinking doesn't go there, as far as I can tell, and I was trying to explain the basis for my position.

Care to take a shot at defining him?

Tom W

We are taking care of ours. We aren't giving them money because we like them. It is usually to buy some influence so they do something we want for us.

You seem to look at yourself then stop there and assign blame.

If you'lll notice what I wrote, I said that I didn't care who planted the seed. Do you know why I said that? I said it because I don't think democracy is like a biological organism -- it has no parental units. It has a sort of evolution, if history is analogous in any way to that function of biology.

If there was a parental unit, would we say that English colonial despotism was the parent of American representative democracy? I wouldn't. Rather, I would say that our society is the evolving historical product of European enlightenment, which was the beneficiary of ... etc.

Now getting to specifics, is Panama a democracy? Is El Salvador a democracy? Is Nicaragua a democracy?

Cuba and Vietnam are not and we failed to "see it through" in both cases.

I'll just bet you will agree with me that there are multiple lessons to be learned from every historical event.

B

I'm sure you'd like to think that people have stepped up. I'm just saying that it is all still based in self interest. Or are you saying that we have achieved altruism?

.

Stop and watch.

This is a trailer for a movie that is out.

Taxi To The Dark Side

It is about the subject of torture in this war.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in5OhVNCokc&feature=related

The story mostly follows a taxi driver that was taken into custody, tortured and dies 5 days later.

Dueling vids.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-4307552688411396797&q=9%2F11+video&total=24952&start=0&num=20&so=0&type=search&plindex=0