Off Topic — HabitableZone

Off Topic » in reply to Required Reading for the Anti-War crowd

Re: Required Reading
Fox — (archived)

They seemed so unruffled back in the days of the Cold War when totalitarian tyrannies were actually threatening to take over the planet. Why is America so much more frightening to such people than Soviet Russia was?

Back in the day, America's stated foreign policy included "self determination" for the other peoples of the world. That's been abrogated and replaced with "If you ain't with us, you're ag'in' us." It's not that American hegemony is more frightening; merely that it's as frightening, because it's hegemony.

This country spent a great deal, in money and rhetoric and human lives, in the effort to prove itself the antithesis of Soviet Russia. What's frightening is that we've stopped.

This perception, by the way, is no new thing, to the left or to anyone else. Since we're speaking of required reading... The Ugly American was published in 1958 (and made into a film in 1963.

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