I often tell the story of hearing a film at the Dtate Dept in 1970 when we thought we were going back to South America but went to Sotuheast Asia. It was supposed to be funny but noted ‘95% of the world is foreigners’. I have never forgotten how insignificant our number s are, this how much we can learn. It has drawn me to this field as a result. Thank you again.
Exactamundo. I go nuts when I hear us pressing states,only recently trying true limits on military power within their ‘prior experiences, to use the military in ways that will only reinforce their fundamental tensions as if we aren’t increasingly acting the same way. We certainly take our ‘exceptionalism’ more strongly than we realise without realizing its inherent contradictions within a participatory system.
By noting below that "Americans customarily thank military veterans for the freedoms they enjoy, but should be aware that most democracies that fail do so because of internal causes, such as violation of democratic norms, institutional weaknesses, high inter-group animosity, sharp domestic conflicts, subversion, or failure to deliver, not because of foreign invasion," I am referring to challenges to democracy that we face within the USA today, not to Third World countries.
Americans customarily thank military veterans for the freedoms they enjoy, but should be aware that most democracies that fail do so because of internal causes, such as violation of democratic norms, institutional weaknesses, high inter-group animosity, sharp domestic conflicts, subversion, or failure to deliver, not because of foreign invasion.
Thank you for the mention, the kind words, and the recommendation, Cynthia.
The United States accounts for less than 5% of the world’s population. Our society can learn a lot from the rest of the human race, including that democracy must be valued, cultured, and practiced by a society to survive in that society. Reason-based democracy is not the standard or default way of governing in human history; authoritarianism and autocracy are. Vladimir Putin is closer to the “norm” in the broad sweep of human history than are the leaders that we Americans are used to. The “(Moral) Arc of History,” the concept that human rights, reason, and democracy will inevitably prevail as humanity “progresses,” is wishful ethnocentric thinking. Wayne Selcher
I often tell the story of hearing a film at the Dtate Dept in 1970 when we thought we were going back to South America but went to Sotuheast Asia. It was supposed to be funny but noted ‘95% of the world is foreigners’. I have never forgotten how insignificant our number s are, this how much we can learn. It has drawn me to this field as a result. Thank you again.
Agree 100%, Wayne
Exactamundo. I go nuts when I hear us pressing states,only recently trying true limits on military power within their ‘prior experiences, to use the military in ways that will only reinforce their fundamental tensions as if we aren’t increasingly acting the same way. We certainly take our ‘exceptionalism’ more strongly than we realise without realizing its inherent contradictions within a participatory system.
By noting below that "Americans customarily thank military veterans for the freedoms they enjoy, but should be aware that most democracies that fail do so because of internal causes, such as violation of democratic norms, institutional weaknesses, high inter-group animosity, sharp domestic conflicts, subversion, or failure to deliver, not because of foreign invasion," I am referring to challenges to democracy that we face within the USA today, not to Third World countries.
Americans customarily thank military veterans for the freedoms they enjoy, but should be aware that most democracies that fail do so because of internal causes, such as violation of democratic norms, institutional weaknesses, high inter-group animosity, sharp domestic conflicts, subversion, or failure to deliver, not because of foreign invasion.
Thank you for the mention, the kind words, and the recommendation, Cynthia.
The United States accounts for less than 5% of the world’s population. Our society can learn a lot from the rest of the human race, including that democracy must be valued, cultured, and practiced by a society to survive in that society. Reason-based democracy is not the standard or default way of governing in human history; authoritarianism and autocracy are. Vladimir Putin is closer to the “norm” in the broad sweep of human history than are the leaders that we Americans are used to. The “(Moral) Arc of History,” the concept that human rights, reason, and democracy will inevitably prevail as humanity “progresses,” is wishful ethnocentric thinking. Wayne Selcher