Im wondering if the Americans have a problem with arrogance. What I observe, when compared to other nations, is that they do not seem to learn from mistakes, and when they do something that is judged by the opinions of mankind - to use a phrase of the Founders - to be wrong - they keep repeating that they did not thing wrong. Im thinking now of the NSA in relation to their spying on individual leaders of Western nnations. This behavior makes me think that those in authority in the US are at risk of doing something simply because they CAN. Any good parent teachers a child that simply being able to do something does not make it right - and we can do all sorts of things that are morally/socially wrong and inappropriate. Ive seen this failure to admit mistakes in Vietnam, on the American right, in Iraq, on the American right, in South and Central America - again usually on the right - I have again seen this failure in humility in the attitude of the US when the Soviet Union fell, and have come to see 1989 as the high point in American history - the moment when the nation a a whole could have taken a higher road, but instead adoped the attitude of Clinton of simply monetizing that gain and Bush II of righteous superiority in our political-economic system. My new concern is that it is not just corporations that are amoral - but Americans in authority in general. The deep problem is not simply the fact of amorality - but that there would then be a deep contradiction between the self-image of the more conservative part of the nation - myself included - that the nation is essentially Christian culturally - and the reality that its behavior has nothing to do with Chrisitian values - but is in fact simply a society whose powerful citizens really care only about self-aggrandizement. My exceptions to this right now are President Obama and the new Pope - Pope Francis. We badly need single individuals in positions of high authority who ADMIT PUBLICALLY that their institututions make mistakes and are limited . Both Obama and the Pope have recently been doing just this.
Posted on: Sat, 02 Nov 2013 21:50:51 +0000
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