Commie Propaganda

On the way home from school today I listened to 90.7 KPFK and was amazed at the argument I heard by a featured guest. This guy argued, among other things, that the US Embassy's all around the world were doing a disservice to countries when they were involved in building schools, wells for water, or other type of infrastructure projects to help assist the countries development. He argued that while on a small scale, these projects helped, in the long run, they distracted talented citizens from making structural reforms. The projects enlist the young intelligencia of the home countries, keep them occupied and focused on short-term projects, instead of looking at larger structural problems (IE: The United States) and making reforms. WHAT?!?

Apparently, he thinks the only worthwhile occupation for a young smart person is to be an anti-American, anti-globalization, anti-modernization activist. Why should someone waste their talent and energy making sure their community has clean water, decent textbooks, a community center, or paved roads? God forbid.

And since when is the US Embassy hiring all the intelligent folks in a single country? I'd like to see some numbers, but somehow I imagine there are intelligent, talented folks in every single country around the world that don't work as "puppets" of the US Embassy or government. Just a guess.

The left wing agenda has been hijacked by absurdists. To me, the basic difference between the right and left is this: the left believes that WE, meaning Americans (and one can extend it to the whole world), have more in common than we do in opposition....meaning that all people, regardless of race, class, gender, fundamentally have similar wants and needs. We need safety. We want fairness and justice and opportunity.

The right, on the other hand, thinks we are all fundamentally different. In order to safeguard our differences, we must protect ourselves and our interests and expect everyone to do the same. We don't shoot guns at other people because we will either be arrested or shot back.

Now I like to believe in the left, but I think the right has something valuable to offer when dealing with tyrants and bully's. The hijacked left does not understand that...and so much so, that not only does it not recognize a threat when it is right in the face (ie terrorism) but it goes so far as to find an alternative bully/threat that is at worst a big clumbsy buearacracy subject to manipulation as are all buearacracies- the US government. I cannot fathom what the world would look like without the United States. I don't understand why people think in absense of US power, the world would suddenly sink into a delightful harmony without any injustice, without any reason to crave power, or desire to murder thy neighbor. The US played "isolationist" from it's inception - what happened around the rest of the world? The French Revolution, including the reign of terror. Napolean tried to conquer Europe. Fast forward to the 20th century and Europe nearly tried to kill itself in WWI. The Turks committed the Armenian genocide. WWII featured the Nazi's-nough said and the Japanese raping and pillaging China and Korea and the Phillipines. Stalinist Russia. Pol Pot. Idi Amin. Mussolini. Saddam Hussein. I wish I knew more history, but it seems to me the world is not a delightful place and I hardly think that building wells in other countries qualifies as a transgression of an imperial power seeking Empire.....(and remind me what's so wrong with an Empire anyway? If it brings peace, prosperity, freedom, and opportunity...isn't that better than nationalism? Am I crazy about this?)

The knee jerk reaction from the hijackers of the left are: look at all the horrible things America has done, killed the Native Americans, enslaved the African Americans, Japanese Internments, HUAC, etc etc... and these are all truly bad things. But I think the major difference is that while America gets it wrong sometimes, we try to correct it. And this is not a left or right thing, we all, as American's have a sense of fairness and justice. We were wrong about slavery and we abolished it. Not only that, but racism persisted and we've nearly licked that problem - just look at the progress in 50 years. Look at the diversity of our best Universities. No other country has our diversity and our acceptance of other cultures. Little is said about inter-African slavery, which still exists. Little is said about the caste system in India that existed before the British, little is said about Korean comfort women for the Japanese.

Whatever. I don't want to be associated with people who are so deluded to think the US government is the cause of most of the world problems. For some reason, they've taken what started as a healthy dose of self-examination and self-criticism and turned it into a self-hatred and condescention towards other Americans and the rest of the responsible world. It's too bad they've taken a good thing (the left) and morphed it into something so utterly wrong and pathetic.