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Countries don't have values. Countries have interests. If the US had to wait until every country it dealt with lived up to the same level of democracy and civil

Countries don't have values. Countries have interests. If the US had to wait until every country it dealt with lived up to the same level of democracy and civil rights that it reserves for its own citizens, we would have no allies outside of Europe.

Razengan 11y ago
And Japan.
dukoid 11y ago
The West certainly should help the ones that show the desire to improve. That's different from making the worst offenders the biggest allies though.
- atmosx 11y ago
  > The West certainly should help the ones that show the desire to improve. That's different from making the worst offenders the biggest allies though. No shit. The ancient Athenians invented democracy but I believe the US has made exporting democracy all around the world a vocation. So many successes: Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Morocco. As a European I would like to ask to stop exporting democracy for at least a decade, the world needs a break, really.
  - clavalle 11y ago
    Oh, ok. We'll go ahead and save ourselves enough cash to cover the GDP of your country, then, and ramp down our military in your neck of the woods. You don't mind defending your own democracy from the likes of Vladamir Putin et. al. right? You missed a few countries on your list a bit closer to home.
    - spdustin 11y ago
      Sarcasm doesn't help. I'm an American, born and raised, and I'm frankly sick and tired that the xenophobic nonsense that the more vocal of us seeks to propagate has influenced foreign opinion of all Americans. I cannot tell you how embarrassed I've been, when on foreign soil, finding myself correcting (or worse sometimes, agreeing with) their notions of what life in America is like, because life in America is different for all of us. Homogenous isn't a word that would even occur to me to describe "the American way of life". With that kind of sarcasm, you can hardly blame them. It's incendiary speech, and you do not speak for all Americans, so kindly stop using hateful and sarcastic language while sounding like you do speak for all of us. You're free to share your own brand of "'Merica" with whomever you please, but you do not speak on my behalf. Additionally, thinly veiled threats of violence, no matter how cloaked in sarcasm they may be, betray a lack of grace under pressure, and a deeper resentment than is unhealthy to be left ignored. And GP: you don't speak for all of the EU (or of Europe) either. I'm sure you meant the former because most of the rest of Europe's populace doesn't seem to give two shits about us because they have their own problems back at home.
      - jessaustin 11y ago
        I've had the problem you describe when residing abroad, and it is frustrating, but I think you're off-target here. Parent comment seems pretty focused on the financing and accomplishments of various military activities. If you want to blame someone for encouraging false assumptions of homogeneity, Hollywood is a better target.
      - atmosx 11y ago
        The EU is deteriorating a bit like 1939. I hope I'm wrong but radicalism and xenophobia is raising all over Europe and it's scary. I'm not talking for all Europeans nor I believe that the majority of Europeans cares about what happens in the US, Russia or China. But they should. We live in a globalised world and our actions have repercussions elsewhere. If US voters[1] favour a candidate that is less prone to warfare maybe, just MAYBE, the influx of refugees will stop. Same goes for Europeans leaders. Sadly I don't see that happening. [1] The GOP candidate is a question mark regarding his external policy and we all saw how reckless H. Clinton is in Libya. I'm not sure if there's any chance for an external policy change for the better in the US right now.
      - themartorana 11y ago
        Sarcasm isn't meant to help. That doesn't mean it has no place. The fact is, a large number of the people and governments that criticize the US are propped up by the US financially, militarily, or both. This doesn't invalidate either point or opinion, but it does reintroduce complexity where points are boiled down to one-liners, absolutes, and sound bites.
      - clavalle 11y ago
        I was referring to the idea that American adventures abroad don't do much to 'export democracy' as evidenced by a handful of failures. But that 'analysis' ignores the bulk of the last century where, in fact, American intervention did a great deal to export and defend Democracy in places like France, Spain, Italy, Germany and more recently places like Bosnia and our very costly presence protecting Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. I am no fan of the Bush Doctrine and the foreign policy blunders of the last twenty years but it is more than a little misleading to suggest the United States hasn't done anything to safeguard and spread democracy in the world. I would love to ramp that role back since it is such an eye wateringly expensive policy to maintain and we could use that money for our own infrastructure and domestic projects like universal healthcare and fighting poverty -- but we're still tied up in those engagements and playing the Superpower Defender. And xenophobia? Where did that come from? I didn't mean for my comment to come off as hateful, just exasperated. I would love it if the US would stop sticking our nose in everyone's business. Reallocation of those resources would be wonderful. But I am a realist and I understand that you just can't stop posing a credible threat to potentially bad actors without risking peace or someone stepping up and bearing more of that cost.
    - sydneysider 11y ago
      lol, what hogwash drivle is this?
      - jessaustin 11y ago
        It's possible that parent comment referred to such democracies as Germany, Italy, etc.
      - dang 11y ago
        Your comments regularly break the HN guidelines. If you keep doing this, we will ban your account, so please re-read them and abide by them. That means posting civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html The following explains what we're after in more detail. Please (re-)read it too. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
        deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
        sydneysider 11y ago
        And parent hasn't broken any guidelines by posting garbage? Rather biased. Go ahead, ban my account, fascist pricks
throwawaz6729 11y ago
>Countries don't have values This is correct in an extremely narrow sense, in the same narrow sense that "there is no such thing as a country." This is because countries are political abstractions, and do not exist as a physical entity, like say, a chair, or a pomegranate. If we understand "country" to instead refer to the group of people who organize under that system, then you are completely mistaken that "countries don't have values." You can see this for yourself right now. If it's not too cold, you could strip naked and take a walk in your town for an hour or two. As you are almost in a country where this is against the local values, you will very likely be asked to dress, or even arrested. But why? You said "countries don't have values, countries have interests." So whose "interests" is it for a man (or woman I guess) not to be naked? Well, right, the people living there. This is just one example of how you can easily see that there are certainly values that are represented by the population, municipality, country, etc. it's kind of silly to argue that there are no such values. I've just given one example, but I could easily list dozens if you don't find it convincing (just ask me to).
- TheLogothete 11y ago
  Values don't play any role in politics[1]. It's just the way it is. Whether this is good or bad is debatable and depends on the circumstance. [1]Except in the rarest of occasions. edit: they also serve as a means to pretend and extort, too, but that's besides the point.
  - throwawaz6729 11y ago
    >Values don't play any role in politics I'm at a complete loss as to why you would write that, to me this is like reading "Politicians don't have any role in defining laws" or something - like, we must be using some completely different definitions for you to write that, it's not even disagreement, I clearly have no idea what you have in mind. Does your definition of value match this (second definition): https://www.google.com/search?q=define+value https://www.google.com/search?q=define+value like, I literally don't understand why you would write that unless we're just really misreading each other due to wildly different definitions of what you're talking about. If your definition of value doesn't match the above, then what definition are you using?
return0 11y ago
Countries have land. Interests come from values. Values come from people.

Razengan 11y ago

And Japan.

dukoid 11y ago

The West certainly should help the ones that show the desire to improve. That's different from making the worst offenders the biggest allies though.

atmosx 11y ago
> The West certainly should help the ones that show the desire to improve. That's different from making the worst offenders the biggest allies though. No shit. The ancient Athenians invented democracy but I believe the US has made exporting democracy all around the world a vocation. So many successes: Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Morocco. As a European I would like to ask to stop exporting democracy for at least a decade, the world needs a break, really.
- clavalle 11y ago
  Oh, ok. We'll go ahead and save ourselves enough cash to cover the GDP of your country, then, and ramp down our military in your neck of the woods. You don't mind defending your own democracy from the likes of Vladamir Putin et. al. right? You missed a few countries on your list a bit closer to home.
  - spdustin 11y ago
    Sarcasm doesn't help. I'm an American, born and raised, and I'm frankly sick and tired that the xenophobic nonsense that the more vocal of us seeks to propagate has influenced foreign opinion of all Americans. I cannot tell you how embarrassed I've been, when on foreign soil, finding myself correcting (or worse sometimes, agreeing with) their notions of what life in America is like, because life in America is different for all of us. Homogenous isn't a word that would even occur to me to describe "the American way of life". With that kind of sarcasm, you can hardly blame them. It's incendiary speech, and you do not speak for all Americans, so kindly stop using hateful and sarcastic language while sounding like you do speak for all of us. You're free to share your own brand of "'Merica" with whomever you please, but you do not speak on my behalf. Additionally, thinly veiled threats of violence, no matter how cloaked in sarcasm they may be, betray a lack of grace under pressure, and a deeper resentment than is unhealthy to be left ignored. And GP: you don't speak for all of the EU (or of Europe) either. I'm sure you meant the former because most of the rest of Europe's populace doesn't seem to give two shits about us because they have their own problems back at home.
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      I've had the problem you describe when residing abroad, and it is frustrating, but I think you're off-target here. Parent comment seems pretty focused on the financing and accomplishments of various military activities. If you want to blame someone for encouraging false assumptions of homogeneity, Hollywood is a better target.
    - atmosx 11y ago
      The EU is deteriorating a bit like 1939. I hope I'm wrong but radicalism and xenophobia is raising all over Europe and it's scary. I'm not talking for all Europeans nor I believe that the majority of Europeans cares about what happens in the US, Russia or China. But they should. We live in a globalised world and our actions have repercussions elsewhere. If US voters[1] favour a candidate that is less prone to warfare maybe, just MAYBE, the influx of refugees will stop. Same goes for Europeans leaders. Sadly I don't see that happening. [1] The GOP candidate is a question mark regarding his external policy and we all saw how reckless H. Clinton is in Libya. I'm not sure if there's any chance for an external policy change for the better in the US right now.
    - themartorana 11y ago
      Sarcasm isn't meant to help. That doesn't mean it has no place. The fact is, a large number of the people and governments that criticize the US are propped up by the US financially, militarily, or both. This doesn't invalidate either point or opinion, but it does reintroduce complexity where points are boiled down to one-liners, absolutes, and sound bites.
    - clavalle 11y ago
      I was referring to the idea that American adventures abroad don't do much to 'export democracy' as evidenced by a handful of failures. But that 'analysis' ignores the bulk of the last century where, in fact, American intervention did a great deal to export and defend Democracy in places like France, Spain, Italy, Germany and more recently places like Bosnia and our very costly presence protecting Japan, South Korea, and Taiwan. I am no fan of the Bush Doctrine and the foreign policy blunders of the last twenty years but it is more than a little misleading to suggest the United States hasn't done anything to safeguard and spread democracy in the world. I would love to ramp that role back since it is such an eye wateringly expensive policy to maintain and we could use that money for our own infrastructure and domestic projects like universal healthcare and fighting poverty -- but we're still tied up in those engagements and playing the Superpower Defender. And xenophobia? Where did that come from? I didn't mean for my comment to come off as hateful, just exasperated. I would love it if the US would stop sticking our nose in everyone's business. Reallocation of those resources would be wonderful. But I am a realist and I understand that you just can't stop posing a credible threat to potentially bad actors without risking peace or someone stepping up and bearing more of that cost.
  - sydneysider 11y ago
    lol, what hogwash drivle is this?
    - jessaustin 11y ago
      It's possible that parent comment referred to such democracies as Germany, Italy, etc.
    - dang 11y ago
      Your comments regularly break the HN guidelines. If you keep doing this, we will ban your account, so please re-read them and abide by them. That means posting civilly and substantively, or not at all. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html The following explains what we're after in more detail. Please (re-)read it too. https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
      - deleted 11y ago
        [deleted]
      - sydneysider 11y ago
        And parent hasn't broken any guidelines by posting garbage? Rather biased. Go ahead, ban my account, fascist pricks

throwawaz6729 11y ago

>Countries don't have values This is correct in an extremely narrow sense, in the same narrow sense that "there is no such thing as a country." This is because countries are political abstractions, and do not exist as a physical entity, like say, a chair, or a pomegranate. If we understand "country" to instead refer to the group of people who organize under that system, then you are completely mistaken that "countries don't have values." You can see this for yourself right now. If it's not too cold, you could strip naked and take a walk in your town for an hour or two. As you are almost in a country where this is against the local values, you will very likely be asked to dress, or even arrested. But why? You said "countries don't have values, countries have interests." So whose "interests" is it for a man (or woman I guess) not to be naked? Well, right, the people living there. This is just one example of how you can easily see that there are certainly values that are represented by the population, municipality, country, etc. it's kind of silly to argue that there are no such values. I've just given one example, but I could easily list dozens if you don't find it convincing (just ask me to).

TheLogothete 11y ago
Values don't play any role in politics[1]. It's just the way it is. Whether this is good or bad is debatable and depends on the circumstance. [1]Except in the rarest of occasions. edit: they also serve as a means to pretend and extort, too, but that's besides the point.
- throwawaz6729 11y ago
  >Values don't play any role in politics I'm at a complete loss as to why you would write that, to me this is like reading "Politicians don't have any role in defining laws" or something - like, we must be using some completely different definitions for you to write that, it's not even disagreement, I clearly have no idea what you have in mind. Does your definition of value match this (second definition): https://www.google.com/search?q=define+value https://www.google.com/search?q=define+value like, I literally don't understand why you would write that unless we're just really misreading each other due to wildly different definitions of what you're talking about. If your definition of value doesn't match the above, then what definition are you using?

return0 11y ago

Countries have land. Interests come from values. Values come from people.