[saden1]

Originally Posted by JoeRedskin

I said 20th century. Yup, in the 19th Century, we ignored the words of our own Declaration and that proclamation "all men are created equal" and, as a practical matter, did exactly what the Nazis did which was to justify slavery, murder and war by dehumanizing all who weren't white, protestant, Europeans. Was it wrong? Yup. Did we as a nation shed blood and treasure to rectify these wrongs? Yup. Do we still spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year to try and repair some of the damage done? Yup.

Of course this nation was flawed in its origin and continues to be so and will always be so. What nation, made of humans, wasn't "born in sin"? Where on this earth is that not true? Where would the utopian nation you seem to think "defensible" exist? Would its utopian nature survive its expansion and application to 300,000,000 million people of diverse cultural backgrounds. When we find wrongs, we seek to change them. Just like individuals, sometimes the wrong is seen only in retrospect.

"Die in sin"? Most definitely. Just not anytime soon. Again, humans aren't timeless and nothing we create is either wheter it be monuments or governmental structures. The US we know will die eventually b/c it is made of imperfect and finite people. Perhaps the rust and decline has begun - perhaps not.

Indirect apologies? Deflection? Not sure what you mean here, I have an idea but before I respond, would like an actual clarification.

"Doesn't deserve defending"? So although individuals may redeem themselves, the societies of which they are part of cannot? As a nation, unlike the Nazis, Stalinists or Maoists, we have changed for the better and continue to do so. Other nations have done the same, but in terms of size, none have done so on the scale that the US has in its 200+ years of existence. From a small restrictive plutocracy of landed merchants and farmers, we have expanded, granted, and protected individual freedoms to more people than other country before us. I would agree that our government should not be blindly or unquestionally defended in all its actions (past or present), but the ideals set forth in our founding documents are most definitely deserving of defense. Failure to defend the structure - flawed though it may be - built on those ideals risks their loss entirely.

To emerge from the muck of tyranny and injustice, a nation and its people will inevitably get dirty.

To me every country has redeemable qualities. Clearly the German people have redeemed themselves as much as anyone can. Russia is a far cry from Stalin's USSR. Ditto for Mao's China. I mean, China is out there doing a lot of work in Africa to build their infrastructure while lending America money to wage it's wars. Granted a lot of China work in Africa is out of self-interest but a lot of good nonetheless.


What I mean by indirect apologies is the swiftness of response to basically point out how less faulty we are and how comparatively noble our system is. I would prefer we say "We fcked up. we should apologize and make up for it" rather than "Man, this is bad but it's not as bad as those Nazis who did the same shit at a much larger scale. Plus we're the nicest country in the world except those instances we weren't so nice." Let Americas body of work stand for itself and lets judge the good things and the bad things on their own merit without having to do addition and subtraction to mask the dump we just took with an air fresher and pretend our shit stinks but not that bad.

I can't honestly say America has transformed itself on larger scale, more rapidly and for the better compared to China, Korea, Japan, and Germany. Granted, those are homogeneous societies but unlike america they weren't built to be diverse. Have they improved their people's condition more so than United States has? On the subject of slavery I would have to find out when these respective countries abolish slavery and what that meant? Was the aftermath as bad as Jim Crow?