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Entry: America: An Empire? Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/america_an_empire#12883 Post contents: If America were the country it claims to be, and if Americans were the people they claimed to be, in 1949 they would have inundated the Japanese with Christian missionaries, not cursed them with legal abortion. That fact says everything you need to know about America - a place that has never really believed any of the things that it ever loudly proclaimed. "We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men were created equal; that they were endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"... unless you're black, of course. After all, if we extended that idea to the darkies we might actually have to pay someone a market wage to pick our cotton, and we can't have that, can we? In fact, the only consistent principle in American life through the centuries has been the drive to dodge having to pay market price for the things we want, which is the one principle we pursue no matter what the cost. From "free" slave labor to "free" land stolen from the Indians or Mexico to the cheap labor of successive floods of immigrants which prevented the existing labor force from improving wages to the illusion of cheap gasoline, America has shown time and again that it will pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe in order to not have to pay going market rates for what it wants. I wouldn't say it's fair to accuse Nixon of "breaking his promise" to end the Vietnam War. He did - just slower than some would have liked (and faster than others would have liked). Let's not forget that though opposition to the war gets the attention in historical retrospect, there was a lot of vociferous support for it, too. He faced a pretty untenable position, and got out of it with as much grace as probably anyone could have. At least, anyone not armed with forty years of 20/20 hindsight. Sent at: 2009 01 07