On Sat, 4 May 2002 03:46:15 +0200, Kaj Haulrich <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Makes me sad, Lyvim. What happened to "the land of the free" ?
>
> We europeans (well, most of us) have great admiration for the United States
> of America. Mostly because you kicked the oppressors out, wrote a brand new
> Constitution - and took it seriously !
>
> What you describe here makes me doubt : is USA becoming "Europized" ? -
> Reverting to feudalism, pseudo-democracy, corruption, fraud and mob-rule ?
>
> If so, where can we find hope ?
This seems to be some sort of cycle. England once thought itself as the freest
and most democratic nation on earth, with an instilled duty to hold back the
tides of despotism (with their old enemy France being the main target of this).
They believed this right up to the American Revolution. So what had happened?
The 'revolutionary' zeal that had taken England through a civil war only a
century earlier had died down, and people had become more conservative. There
was little interest in England of promoting democracy in the colonies. While
there were some prominent members of parliament, most notably the Prime Minister
Pitt (the Elder), who _did_ want parliamentary representation for the Americans,
they were greatly outnumbered by the conservatives (IIRC, Pitt resigned because
he didn't get it).
At the same time, that revolutionary fervour that had to that stage been seen as
distinctly "English" had been transported to the American colonies. It is this
that fuelled the American Revolution, just as it had fuelled the English civil
wars of the years preceding it. So you might say that the Americans were more
'English' than the English.
Now, fast-forward to today. The actions of the US governmental bodies seems no
different in principle from the English government of the 1780s. The
circumstances are very similar: both are/were well-established bodies and both
are/were the major world powers of their day. From their point of view, they
have far more to gain by being conservative and preserving the status quo.
As an Irani cleric (who now opposes the established theocracy) once said, "Power
is like water. If it does not flow it becomes stagnant."
--
Sridhar Dhanapalan
"I'll bet you $5 USD (and these days,
that's about a gadzillion Euros) that this explains it."
-- Linus Torvalds
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