Quote Originally Posted by ganulv View Post
the American experiment was looked to
I can read French.
Can you point me at a francophone source, not suspicious of being partial to your view by birth, telling us that the colonists were an important and positive influence on the French Revolution? Or maybe a German one. Dutch? Spanish?

I suppose there are some, but I doubt they would provide substantial food for a list of the U.S.' good deeds.


To me, U.S. claims of being a big force for good always weep a lot of an U.S.-centric worldview.
U.S. claims of being a bigger force for good than ugly add an unhealthy dose of disrespect or ignorance concerning the damage done to this.


I don't think any country can really claim to be a huge force for good in the world. Especially not in the balance.
The ones which do almost no harm and some good tend to be small, such as Switzerland, Netherlands, Sweden, Norway - and the Dutch need to cope with their imperialism history just as the great powers have some graveyards of imperialism victims somewhere (including the U.S.).

Foreign policy is -save for diplomatic efforts of some envoys such as some odd Scandinavians or Luxembourg's pols in some places- generally a poor direction for looking at in search for good deeds.
Foreign policy is usually about gaming, being gamed or simply pursuing actual national interest (surprisingly rare).
Almost all good deeds in this area have a smell of hypocrisy because of their selectivity or are by-products of or cover for something else.


The stuff where one can really claim to have helped mankind advance is usually about ideas; philosophy and science mostly. That's overwhelmingly the product of individuals (hardly practical any more in many sciences) who either worked for profit or were employed to first and foremost bring forward their own country.


U.S. myths and illusions about being a force for good are really as childish as equivalent German myths and illusions a hundred years ago were.
(I'm often astonished how Americans still stick to conceptions and problems which European countries did shed between 120 and 20 year ago.)