> >
> > Firstly, Nathan, you and I, anyway, are patriots if not (I hope)
>national
> > chauvinists, so the answer is, for us, a great deal, even if not for
>Yoshie.
>
>That may be true but my lefty form of patriotism has more to do with the
>ideals embodied in theory if not always in practice in our institutions,
>not
>in the particular blood and soil of its peoples.
Yes, that's why I said patriotism and not national chauvinism.
For the same reason I can
>welcome essentially open borders without a qualm where nationalists see a
>threat to "national sovereignty",
I'm in favor of them too.
I similarly don't take
>"self-determination" seriously outside the democratic context of a right of
>a people to choose their representatives.
Oh, I see, so a people who lack this ability are fair game for liberation by one who has it? And why were you making fun of Yoshie for talking about the White Man's Burden ? Your version isn't racist--it's culturalist. The Civilized Democratic World has the right, even the duty, to bring Enlightenment and Freedom to the oppressed masses living in darkness.
So when a people such as the
>Iraqis lack that basic right, issues of sovereignty are pretty irrelevant
>in
>my view. Other issues such as the general preference for non-violent over
>violent methods of change play a strong factor.
You knwo, it seems to me that the Russians under Stalin, talk about lackinga nt shred of democracy, saw things a bit different when invaded by Hitler--they still call that conflict The Great Patriotic war. Be that as it may. You caricature my point, which is not National Sovereignty Above All, as you are misrepresenting it, but, to put it on a bumber sticker, Don't Trust Uncle Sam! US Out Of Everywhere! I would be suspicious of a democratic socialist society that sought to impose freedom by force on despoitc countries far aay that posed it no threat. I wouldn't trust the US to bring democracy and freedom to anywhere, anytime.
>We aren't talking about the relative merits of parliamentary versus
>Presidential systems, or even of the more debateable issue of "peoples
>democracy" in Cuba versus corporate-perverted democracy in the US. Iraq
>lacks even a hint of democratic institutions
OK, and that makes it OK to go to war with them?
and I find the "let them settle
>it themselves" argument ridiculous, when one side dominates the state and
>military apparatus and butchers those who dissent.
So you'd trust the world's imperialist hyperpower, which dominates the globe militarily,a nd butchers those who dissert,a nd which just announced, lest there be any doubt, that it would nefver tolerate any competitors?
Should the French have
>stayed out of our "internal" war with Britain, a far more debateable issue
>of internal injustice?
I have no strong opinions about that--haven't thought it through. Britian was at least a credibile threat to France, and they had been intermitently at more or less even odds of war.
Should domestic abuse in families be settled by
>themselves?
>
Totally irrelevant, familes are not sovereign entities.
>There are lots of good arguments on the danger of the US acting
>unilaterally
>as world cop, but that is an issue of checks and balances on power.
So why not start with these, eh? Knock off the White Man's Burden Crap, that's rhetoric from five generations back, and not any better this time around.
jks
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