Give back to society at least roughly the benefits you recieve from it; at the very least, enough to keep it from degenerating.
Incorrect. as mentioned, taxes are a legal obligation, and you most certainly have a moral obligation to help people. If you see someone drowning, and you have a rope at your feet, which action is moral :
1 : Throw him the rope and help him out.
2 : Walk away and let him die.
2 is the conservative, majority-American attitude, which is why I call Americans as a group amoral.
Fine, if I accept your attitude is moral, what’s the moral arguement against someone simply killing and robbing you ? If other peoples desires and survival doesn’t matter, then why should your life or property rights matter ?
Your attitude marks you at a literal enemy of humanity; someone who takes and takes and takes and never gives; who in fact sneers at the attitude that other people are anything but expendable. I’d hardly call that moral or civilized.
So, we can infer from the above that any actions or possessions that are equally shared by all people on the earth are immoral? That anything I earn through my labor is to be distributed to the rest of the world whether I wish it or not? What moral right does anyone else have to the fruits of my labor?
I willingly pay my taxes. Because I choose to live in this country, I follow its laws.
Option #3: Dive in and drown with him. This is the option you seem to propose when you insist that we give up our wealth to others. If the wealth of the world were evenly divided among the population of the planet, everybody would be poor, and there would be no way to get better. Many times, and in many ways, Option #1 is the greater cruelty. If he falls in the lake again, are we bound to throw him the rope again? What if the rope is being used to hold up a rock so we can get at the minerals underneath, so we can cure disease? What if this is the 500th time he has fallen into the lake? Sometimes the utilitarian action is to let him drown.
The fact that they, themselves contributed to “the fruits of your labor”, unless you used no tools, facilities, services, knowledge, or anything else that another human had a hand in, which is impossible.
Inaccurate, I believe, and irrelevant since I proposed no such thing.
You make my argument for me. Once again, if you take this attitude, what is your moral argument against someone killing you and taking everything you have ? Why shouldn’t some random guy slit your throat so he can feed his family ?
Your argument is the sort of thing I see from people who expect never to be on the wrong end of it. If you were drowning, I suspect you wouldn’t be so forgiving of someone who walked away from you.
And they were paid for their contributions to my labor. That ends that.
They are welcome to try. But you seem to see no difference between action and inaction. I do no forcibly take anything from anybody. I buy what I use and consume. This is entirely moral. Do you honestly equate “failing to give to the poor” with “murder and robbery?”
[/QUOTE]
Really ? So, have you paid off your parents for teaching you how to talk ? Remember, according to you they owe you nothing, and had a perfect right to leave you to starve. Have you paid off their friends, and your friends, and any and all people who gave any advice or help since the dawn of civilization ? We don’t live in a vacuum, you know.
Ah, the “tough guy” talk of someone who never expects to have to follow through.
I’m concerned with results.
By your own standards you do, since you benefit from taxes.
You say you owe no one’s life or desires any concern; that’s what I equate them with. You sound like the sort of person who’d cheerfully turn people over to some hypothetical secret police for cash, because after all, you don’t owe them anything.
Since your really talking about countries and international agreements , I would say that as for having one of the greater economies ,that the States , as well as a few other countries would pay a disproportionate amount more than their fair share, while other countries that have smaller GDP’s would pay less , and somewhere in the middle , most countries would fall.
Should and should’nt pay their fair share really dont come into this , as it would be a voluntary agreement ,where it makes sense, and the soverign right to not volunteer when its in the nations best interest not to do so.
Maybe I am talking about your particular mindset, but frankly you just put it more bluntly than any politician ever would. The wording you used , forcing people to pay their fair share ,and the use of force, is whats going to get peoples attention in a negative way, regardless of what you actually meant.
Some foreign talking head comes on American television and tells folks that from now on , a ten percent tax is going to be levied as a VAT, because as far as the UN is concerned , Americans are not paying their fair share. If Washington does not collect and pass on the tax to the appropriate UN agency , force will be used.
And where do you think we got so much money ? From the enslavement of the blacks and genocide of the Native Americans, to modern ecological devastation, sweatshops, child labor and the rest; it’s always been about exploitation. America is and always has been a predator nation; an exploiter and destroyer. How much do we owe for the damage we’ve caused the world ?
:dubious: Ummmm… if it’s voluntary, isn’t that precisely when “Should and shouldn’t pay their fair share” matters the most ?
What do you think the basis of society is ? Without the government holding a metaphorical knife at everybody’s throat society would eat itself. Society is based on coercian; the rule of law and all that.
America will sneer and kill people at random; what it always does. No one will question whether or not the demand is a just one; only a fool expects America to pay what it owes to anyone.
So in two hundred and some odd years , there is now a bill owing. Okay , I will play along , how about you take some time and tally it up a bit more detailed. I would not mind seeing the scope of the debt that the States owes , as maybe compared to other nations.
Um , this would have nothing to do with accountability with where the money goes and how its spent , is it. Otherwise , why would a nation withhold funds that it voluntarily agreed to pay.
Its the basis , but not the first option , I doubt that most of the world has the maturity to deal with problems first by going through the courts and lawyers before calling out the tanks.
America pays out a lot to various nations for goods and services , I assume you mean nebulous feel good monies to boot strap poor benighted nations into the same level of wealth, with UN apointed men of good character who would graciously make sure the monies got were they were supposed to go.
What about England? How much do they owe for the slaves they had and the atrocities of colonialism? What about France? What about China, who even now allows their people to be exploited by sweatshops?
I’m not saying you’re wrong, but in my opinion, the US holds equal guilt with the rest of the world. No nation is innocent-- enslavement and genocide go back as far as human history and still exist today. (Darfur, anyone?) Slavery stilll exists, too-- people are just not as open with it.
We won because we may have been a bit better at exploitation than other countries, or we had some advantages they didn’t, but I have no doubts whatsoever that any other people in our shoes would have done the exact same thing. Greed is human, not just American.
Should we probably lighten our impact? If only in self-interest, it would be something to consider. Should we try to do better in the future? Probably, for the same reason. Should we feel guilt at our wealth? No freaking way. Ditto how our ancestors got it. Cows eat grass. Should the cows feel guilty about this? Wolves eat rabbits. No guilt there. I refuse to apologise or feel the slightest twinge of guilt because my country 7 generations ago practiced a policy that modern civilization condemns. Every civilization on the planet, throughout history, has built itself upon the bones of the defeated and the sweat of the masses. That’s what the masses are there for. Yes, I would feel differently if I were working in a 3rd World seatshop, but you know…I’m not. Lucky little me.
If you look at the contributions of Western Civilization to the Human Condition, you will see that a signifigant portion of the population no longer faces an existance that is “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.” Do these conditions still exist? Yep. Will they always? Probably. Are people in general better off with the existance of the USA than without? Undoubtably.
Spike: *You won. All right? You came in and you killed them and you took their land. That’s what conquering nations do. It’s what Caesar did, and he’s not going around saying, “I came, I conquered, I felt really bad about it.” The history of the world isn’t people making friends. You had better weapons, and you massacred them. End of story. * -BtVS, “Pangs”
A statement of utter sociopathy; again, you make my argument for me. Your attitude is precisely what produced the bloody Communist revolutions and rebellions in the 20th century; after all, if the “masses” are really there only to be exploited, why shouldn’t they rise up and kill their oppressors ? In such a dog eat dog world, why not try to eat instead of being eaten ? Why should they show mercy towards the non “masses” ( a nice dehumanizing term BTW ), if nothing matters but who’s on top, and the loser exists to be fed upon ?
Once again, your philospohy is what I expect from someone who never expects to be on the short end of it.
Because every major policy iniative regarding international agreements , has enough scope that it would be a UN fiefdom , should it have been agreed to.
IF Kyoto was ratified , who would have been the oversight agency for the international side of the deal , and if it was not a UN agency , how fast could it have become one.
Simply put , if its not a bilateral agreement between two nations , then internationalism will have a UN bent.
AFAIK the majority of international agreements/organizations have little or nothing to do with the UN. The UN simply isn’t big or wealthy enough to be that important. The idea of the vast and evil UN overshadowing the world is nothing more than right wing fantasy.
Two questions you are asking here. Why am I singling you out? Because you are the one with a major ‘America is evil, everything it does is bad’ chip on your shoulder…fairly obvious.
Why is it ‘ok’ that if humanity is ‘evil’ then its ok if we are ‘evil’ too? Well, I suppose you could look at this question in a couple of different ways. First off, if a large majority of humans act in a certain way when in groups, well, perhaps then its not ‘evil’…its ‘normal’.
Secondly of course I didn’t try and wave away America’s past fuckups…translation: I never made that claim, you made it fom me. You seem to take it this way when anyone tries to point out that, yes, America did some bad things in the past. So has <insert nation you have a pet peeve against…I like to use Spain>.
Leaving aside your attempt (looks successful to me) to insult me while staying within the letter of the forum rules, my references were to the FIRST world war…thats the one they dragged us into. The other one they TRIED to drag us in but it was ultimately the Japanese that brought us on board…that and Hitler stupidly declaring war on us to force our hand.
As for the second world war, no, I don’t really feel it was America’s responsibility to hop into (at least not initially…which is when the Euro’s started trying to get us in) a SECOND purely European slaughter house…and one that THEY created through their idiotic policies following the first world war, coupled with attempts to appease Hitler after Germany started to feel its oats…and various side endevors like the Soviets making a devils pact to slice off a bit of Poland. Sure, using hindsight it makes sense for the US to have entered on multiple levels…one of which was helping to save some of those ‘inferior people’ you so snidingly refer too. Isn’t hindsight great? Looking at the actual history and keeping in mind that the majority of American’s didn’t WANT to hop in (granted this was changing even before Japan attacked) I’d have to go with…no, not our problem mon.
However to get to your dig, try and recall that the Europeans themselves didn’t get into the war to help out the poor unfortunates…they got into it because on Germany’s side they wanted to do what Germans do best…grab all the goodies and stomp down everyone in their way. On the allies side it was because they had essentially painted themselves into a corner and didn’t have a way out save surrender…the Germans essentially left them no choice. And on the quasi-allies side (a.k.a. Russia) they wanted to grab what goodies they could but ended up backstabbed and again had no option but surrender or fight to the death. None of these folks were fighting to protect anyone but themselves. Saving the few Jews and other ‘inferior peoples’ still alive by wars end was just a happy side benifit.
True…I didn’t mean to imply that ‘Europe’ thinks of itself as a conglomerate mass. I was using the term loosely. Sorry.
How do you disagree that (at least wrt the first world war) you forced us (well, ‘forced’ IS probably the wrong term…how does ‘leveraged us’ strike you? ) to abandon our isolationism? We were isolationist before WWI…we went back to being quasi-isolationist before WWII…and we even attempted to stand down our military except for occupation duty AFTER WWII (Korea kind of was the last straw…and that wasn’t even the Europeans who did it! :p).
As for what we got out of it…well, that was kind of an unintended consequence, ehe? I seriously doubt that any (either European or Ameican) figured that if the US was brought in that would make us THE worlds superpower. Sort of like I doubt the Germans intended to make Russia a major superpower by invading them.
As for the last, thats certainly true. After two major world wars (and that little dust up in Korea after we tried again to stand down) the US came out of its shell…with a vengence. And after sending our boys into war with shitty equipment and poor training we learned another lesson as well…never again (well, to date anyway) would we start a war with a second (or third…or hell, I think we were ranked something like 30th militarily before WWI) class military. This has also had several far reaching but unintended consequences (some bad, some…not so bad). There is even a law or some such to that effect…
No, that would just mean a large majority of humanity is evil, which I don’t believe. If that was true we’d have never gotten past the hunter-gatherer stage; we’d be too busy slaughtering and torturing each other. To use a simple example, how long could a city last if the majority of the population were arsonists ? How long if most were murderers ? The cops can’t be everywhere at all times, after all.
For that matter, if humanity is so awful, why should Americans care about other Americans, or their own families, for that matter. You and those with similar arguments don’t sound to me like they’re arguing against internationalism; you sound like you are arguing for species suicide. After all, if we’re that evil, the universe is better off without us.
No, it was an honest question. Judging from his other statements, silenus ( for example ) might very well have said “Sure !” to the same question.
OK.
We did blockade Japan’s oil, and were in it’s way in general IIRC.
Hey, its seemingly YOUR gross characterization here…I was just pointing that out. For myself I don’t see ‘evil’ in the same light you appearently do.
Humanity is what it is. I’m not the one seemingly having trouble coming to grips with reality here. We are neither saints nor angels…but something in between for the most part.
BTW, I’M not the one argueing against internationalism…I was merely answering the OP as to why American’s are a bit distrustful of it, especially when its used as a euphemism for ‘what Europe wants’. Were I to make an arguement either for or against internationalism it would be that the US approach internationalism on its own terms…and on terms that are benificial to the US. Just like every other nation. (I know, that makes us ‘evil’, right? )
Fair enough. I misinterpereted your question then. Apologies.
Thats true…we did. The core question you need to be asking is WHY we had an embargo against Japan though. And if you think that it would have been better (not just for the US) had we done nothing.
I never said it did old boy. But the converse is also true. None of which makes America WORSE either. We are what we are…the good with the bad.
