You are, however, quite welcome to come to erroneous conclusions based on your perceptions of what I might think.
Quote Originally Posted by blueblood View Post
But they never claimed to be the beacon of democracy. Going by your logic, even Hitler wasn't wrong. He hated Jews, so he killed 6 million of them.
We are a beacon of democracy -- just a tarnished and imperfect model.

With respect to Hitler, yes, he did that -- and if you think that was in his or his nations interest, you, not I, have a rather strange sense of what a national interest happens to be...

We the US have done, do and will likely do a lot of stupid things for all sorts of good and bad reasons but that beacon foolishness is really only spouted by politicians (in uniform and not in uniform) who know better but are too political to be honest. Still, disregarding them, take the bad and the good we've done over the years and one gets a better average than one does for most nations. We do some harm fairly often, much not out of malice but because we're big and clumsy. We also do some good and most of us are comfortable with the fact that we do more good than harm. Not many nations can say that though there will be more that can do so in the future, the world's changing. For now, over the last 220 years, I can't think of anyone else that comes close. Can you?
PS: Nazi Germany was a democracy and Hitler was an elected leader.
True and broadly irrelevant. Democracy and elections are important but do little to tell one how nations might behave. What can be a determinant are the continuum of a nations interests over many years. The US only has two long term. We do want free commerce and we do not tolerate threats or potential threats for very long.