Havent read after 3rd page, what surprises me is the Israel, USA was the first one to approve the nation of Israel as far as i know and most of them have negative opinions about USA, it is to be expected i guess after all years
I reckon part of the reason your budget is incredibly high is because your military isn't about defence its about offence (force projection), so that you are capable of conducting a basic war anywhere in the world even without any friendly bases to fly from. As you say this is about covering every possibility, but I don't think we would ever pursue such a high level of offensive capability. A european defence force would probably focus on defence (crazy i know). The other reason i reckon you spend so much on defence is because from the little i know of it, I think the DoD spends craploads unnecessarily (as a government run body i'm sure you'll agree )
The inference then would be that Americans should care what the worlds thinks of them insofar as it concerns their ability to survive and replicate.
America should just abide by objective, unchanging values. I think they're collectively called a Constitution.
The question that should instead be asked, then, is should the United States follow their Constitution. Depending on your opinion of the Constitution, the answer should be apparent; and this question would be irrelevant, to the extent that morality is only concerned (see paragraph 1).
Last edited by Acumen; 07-08-2008 at 04:21 AM.
Humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the hands of science three great outrages upon its naive self-love: the discovery that our world is merely a speck in a vast universe, that we merely descended from lesser animals, and that our conscious minds sometimes lie to their very selves about our actions.
I think you should not care about what the world thinks of you, but you should care about your own standards and do what is right - and what you know to be right.
You should not start a war that is not justifed ("false evidence" as they call it - which means LIE), you should not bomb everywhere in the world for economic interests justifying it with "Terrorism".
I am also concerned about the restriction of all kinds of freedoms and privacy, just to "fight terror". The problem with fighting an invisible enemy on an unlimited territory for an unlimited amount of time is: You can do ANYTHING and justify it with "fighting terror".
See it as my 2 cents.
I strongly hope the future will bring better developments and better policy from the world's leading country.
Certainly...do you think there isn't?
Why should we assume a de facto posture of empathy with people/groups/countries/entities who will continually, habitually and willfully misinterpret any "value" statement, depending on their own whims or wants?
Here, now:
Language should be (and usually is) easily read and weighted, however, given the multiple burdens of also withstanding "vagueness", "variable reality", and preconceived "assumptions", inherent or otherwise, I don't wonder why the consumers of such language aren't held to even the lowest standards by their international brethren.
Definitions are, these days, largely in the ear of the "beholder", and those who seem confused most often are by-and-large in opposition to the U.S., especially when by their opposition they run the "risk" of an incoming president's, um.......largesse.
Obama carries the promise of much greater foreign aid/development bucks than W., if for no other reason than he (inherently, as a democrat) promises to do even the dumb things "better than the current (Bush, Republican) administration did".
You know it's troo.
"Researchers have already cast much darkness on the subject, and if they continue their investigations, we shall soon know nothing at all about it."
-Mark Twain
A virtue is objectified when a group of people make it so. Virtue does originate in the mind of an individual, so is in essence subjective; but after it is divulged from the individual and enforced by a democracy or an oligarchy, or any other form of collective, it is then stripped of its subjectivity and is placed firmly into the objective reality of every single individual in that society.
Humanity has in the course of time had to endure from the hands of science three great outrages upon its naive self-love: the discovery that our world is merely a speck in a vast universe, that we merely descended from lesser animals, and that our conscious minds sometimes lie to their very selves about our actions.
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