Quote Originally Posted by Bob's World View Post
I do not believe America needs to go out and make the world more like us. I do believe, however, that America needs to act in accordance with our own principles when we go out into the world, with the firm belief that any rights we hold for ourselves we grant equally to others.
Two sets of quotations from Joseph Heller's Catch 22 come to mind.
Yossarian says,
Quote Originally Posted by Catch 22
“From now on I'm thinking only of me.”
Major Danby replied indulgently with a superior smile: “But, Yossarian, suppose everyone felt that way?”
“Then,” said Yossarian, “I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?”
Yossarian also says, to Major Major Major Major this time,
Quote Originally Posted by Catch 22
"Let someone else get killed!"
"Suppose everyone on our side felt that way?"
"Well then I'd certainly be a damned fool to feel any other way, wouldn't I?"
What if America's principles are just wrong? The origins of the Declaration's claims to life, liberty, and happiness are found in John Locke, who also happened to believe that the world had a surplus of natural resources. His predecessor, Thomas Hobbes thought that the world was characterized by a scarcity of resources. Hobbes had a different view of the nature of human interrelationships as a result--this view spawned a duty to seek peace rather than a right to accumulate property; it also denied a right of revolution. Early Chinese philosophers tended to have two different views of human nature. As a result, we get stuff like Confucianism on one hand, and the Legalism of Han Fei Tzu on the other--which is right?

Rather than trying to force America's principles on others, maybe America ought to review the bidding and try adopting those held by much of the rest of the civilized world.

Some of the "rights" Americans seem to hold for themselves cannot be universally applied. For example, Americans seem to believe they have a right to as much of the world's natural resources as they want. (Sound like John Locke?) The rest of the world seems to resent that (sound like Thomas Hobbes). IMHO this perception may well be the primary reason that the US is so widely disliked around the rest of the world for it paints Americans as a "do as I say, not as I do" group of folks.