Our way of life versus them? Who is really right?

Howdy-ho folks.

Got to thinking today about the way we treat peple both close and far, expecially on the forums (talking from a US standpoint).
It seems that we quite often like to talk about ME countries, and getting them to change. Getting them to be "tolerant" and accept our ways of living (we often cite that we accept their ways of living when they come here, so they should accept ours if we go there).

Then I start thinking about the democrat/republican issues.
Righties will smack talk the lefties and so on so forth. Generally, the lefties are all about "more rights", to which the righties reply "liberal hippies, get real".

I'm just curious as to why most think that the ME needs to get up to par with us, in terms of rights etc, but why we assume we are perfect now and no real room for growth or change on our own soil.


Me, I think we just like sticking our nose where it doesn't belong. We are still stuck on "an eye for an eye" mentality and just can't help ourselves. BTW, I'm republican, if you are gonna make personal attacks or assumptions about this post (which is another usual for the forums )

 

We're right because God is on our side.

 

Left or Right?

 

I think righties are more interested in rights. The thing is, the rights the two sides emphasize are different.

We aren't perfect. We've lost rights from our beginnings as a country, and we've gained more. Of course we can do better. That said, we could also do a whole lot worse.

If you take the assumptions of the Declaration of Independence, then of course we have to oppose the policies of most of the Middle East. We as the American people have proclaimed certain rights as being extremely important, and basically speaking, any government that denies those rights, we should deem illegitimate.



Declaration of Independence

 

Right, I would assume. Left is evil.

 

That's where God is needed then!

 

Hmm... Very good point.

 

Catch any fish while out trolling?

I got news for ya son...GOD is on nobody's side.
Know why?
Bet ya don't...do ya...

Because YOUR GOD and the Islam GOD...

wait for it...lol

IS THE SAME FRIGGIN' GOD!!!!

 

Blasphemy!

 

Now I know yer a simple troll.

Have a nice day...

 

As was mentioned. The lefties are as much about denying rights as granting them. Just different rights.

For example second amendment rights.

The right does like calling them hippies though.

In case you haven't noticed, there is vitually nobody who thinks we are perfect now. Certainly not on these forums. Everybody wants to change something about America and its leadership.

I think that depends on what you're refering to. Most of our wars have very specific concrete reasons.

But if you're talking about putting pressures on other countries to improve their human rights and whatnot that's different.

I think we do feel like we ought to do something if we see human rights being denied and whatnot. But from a higher level, I think we perceive countries like that as being much more likely to be trouble for us.

I'm finding those are important in getting engaged in a discussion. I need to work on getting my posts shorter and with more references to Nazis and the sort of personal attacks that skate past the mods.

 

Thanks for the replies so far folks.

I do hate this. Being on the right side, I think such name calling gives us a bad name. Then again I think the racists that are on our side give us a bad name. All walks of life on either side.

True, I guess I didn't word it right. Oh well. I think what I'm getting at is "the route to perfection". Whilst we bicker about what should be added/removed on our own soil, we will demand that what we are still bickering about is generally accepted the world over. If we install what we have elsewhere, I get that we are saying "it's much better than what you had".... at least, we determine it is better and I'll hope the people it affects do to, but I'm never really sure in some countries. Anyway, if we do install what we have, perhaps they will just bicker as much as we do... or worse, considering they haven't had time to develop into what we have.

Sorry, just doing a brain dump now.

Well, tricky isn't it.. because whatever our specific reason is, we always want to leave the democracy mark when we leave.. .why wouldn't we, it would be in our interests as well.

Hmmmn, I think that I'm not addressing this correctly. I wasn't wanting to get bogged down in ME chatter so much, but rather internal bickering.

So long as you still engage and don't get derailed!

 

The nation is founded on the idea that human rights derive from something other than the government, which implies that all humans are deserving of them regardless of their governments and social systems.

In this way, the right and left isn't divided down the middle.
Some on the right believe we have an optimal system and want it to spread.
Liberals may be just as zealous to spread rights, but seeing the nation as a work in progress will focus more on fixing their own country.

I don't see either side as inconsistent.
If you believe your system is the pinnacle and the rights involved belong to all, it makes sense to go about spreading the system by whatever means.
If you believe the work is in progress it makes sense both to focus on improvement and on spreading more general rights elsewhere (because obviously a conservative democracy allows for more rights than an authoritarian country, right or left).

Likewise it's not inconsistent for people to believe we need to focus on ourselves and that it's not for us to decide what's best for all.

I'm a liberal and I believe certain basic rights should be universal. I also believe it's impossible for us to spread them by power alone and that we should focus more on improving our system so that it compares well against, say, the Chinese state-capitalist model.

 

The key to foreign intervention is in knowing where to draw the line between justice and realism. If you have any sense of justice in you and you're in a position of power, you understand that you have a moral obligation to help out the smaller, the weaker, and the suffering (even liberals understand this which is why they misapply it to class warfare). But you also have to understand that some cultures are a lot more primitive than others and as a result, there is only so much humanity they will be able to sustain.

Forcing western style democracy and values on a savage nation is like staging an intervention for a drug addict; it will be little more than a band aid fix that will not remedy much long term unless the addict truly wants the change you're offering.

 

Not Correct. If you would actually do some research you'd learn that the name "Allah" is the name of a moon god. Their prophet just took bits and pieces of various religions and put them together to make his own.

 

How does the concentartaion camp at Guantanama and the assassination of suspects - including now American citizens - fit with all the talk about 'freedom'?

 

It's about strategic advantage, economic prostitution, and/or oil/resources.
　
The rest of the official BS is a smoke screen.

 

I think it's technically more like God is on everybody's side. So the right-wing Christians are like, "God, help us to smite the blasphemous Muslims!" And God's like, Okay. And then the right-wing Muslims are like, "God, help us to smite the blasphemous Christians!" And God's like, Okay.

End result: everybody gets smote.

 

Old rhyme:

To God th'embattled nations sing and shout,
'Gott straffe Englandt' and 'God save the King',
God this, God that, and God the other thing,
'Good God', says God, 'I'll have my work cut out!'

 

It makes me think that, if God is truly omnipotent, then God must be working in the fifth dimension or higher. If you've got all possible alternative timelines to work with, then God can say that in some timelines the blue hats are winning and in other timelines the red hats are winning. Not His fault that we're not living in the timelines we say we want to live in. We've probably got sixth-dimensional flippers that could paddle the currents between timelines and get us there. We just don't exercise them.

But the reason that the right-wingers on one side can never seem to truly wipe out the right-wingers on the other side is that if they did that, they wouldn't have anyone to smite. And I don't think they're about the winning. They're about the smiting. It's like those people that just enjoy playing Monopoly so much that they'll float other players just to keep the game going.

I'm not sure that's how right-wingers would describe it, though. But that's how their way of life looks to me.

But that's right-wingers, not necessarily conservatives. Shouldn't conservatives be anti-war? War isn't very conservative. In some ways it's like the opposite of conservative.

 

Well said.

 

That's true of Judaism and Christianity as well.

Really good book: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_God

 

Thank you , I agree 100%
I am a republican as well.
I live in the middle east and have been wondering about this topic for quite a bit of time.

The founding fathers adhered to a doctrine of "self determination" not democracy, not monarchy, not a representational republic. Somehow that concept has been lost over the years.

It is interesting to note that if it had not been for the arabs, the wisdom of Greece, which is the foundation of " western " civilization would have been lost.

 

Actually, the term ALLAH is used by the Copts as well. It is the arabic name for God.

 

It is a fabulous book.