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That depends on whom you ask. If you’re European, I’m sure you’d agree emphatically with this statement. If you’re a Chilean who lived under Pinochet you might
by ashtonkem 5y ago
That depends on whom you ask.
If you’re European, I’m sure you’d agree emphatically with this statement. If you’re a Chilean who lived under Pinochet you might have some reservations about that statement.
- FredPret 5y agoNo it doesn’t. It’s much better than past empires and current alternatives across the board. You bring up Pinochet - yes, terrible, every huge organization has egregious moral errors like that. But if you’re bringing up the worst things the US has done, then it still pales in comparison to China literally putting a million Muslims in concentration camps right now.
- sofixa 5y agoAre you sure? Let's see, just a bunch of the top of my head: * concentration camps for Asian-related ( including born in the Us to mixed Asian heritage) people during WWII * genocides against native Americans * sponsoring regimes like Pol Pot, Pinochet, Batista, etc * invasions with hundreds of thousands of casualties in Iraq and Afghanistan * illegal detainment and torture of people in Guantanamo and other black sites
- ashtonkem 5y agoRealizing that Carter had sided with the Khmer Rouge to check Vietnam despite knowing what they were up to was a stomach churning moment for me, personally.
- FredPret 5y agoAgain, I'm not saying the US is perfect or even good. I'm saying you have two separate moral measuring tapes here, one for the West, and one for the rest. Clearly the only current superpowers are the US and China. China's moral performance is absolutely shocking - from state-sponsored cannibalism (read up on the Cultural Revolution), CURRENT concentration camps, supporting North Korea. To most importantly, not feeling any shame about any of the above. If you want to compare the US to past superpowers, name an empire, and I'll name a list of atrocities that'll make Carter and the Khmer Rouge and Nixon and Pinochet look like a Sunday school lesson. The US isn't a little angel if seen in isolation. But in contrast to the alternatives it's just wonderful.
- ashtonkem 5y ago> I'm saying you have two separate moral measuring tapes here, one for the West, and one for the rest. I do not. Literally the first post I had in this thread said “better than China”. Please do not make up what I’m saying and argue against it. It is extremely annoying, and eventually I’ll come to the conclusion that you’re just acting in bad faith. My point is not that the US is worse than China, my point is that the definition of freedom isn’t relative; saying “we’re not as bad as China” is not the same as saying “we’ve protected freedom”. Such a relativistic view of human rights is exactly how you justify a lot of bad shit.
- FredPret 5y agoFair enough. My worry is that there are people would take the bad parts of the Western world / the US and use it to justify ruining or even overthrowing the whole thing.
- ashtonkem 5y agoAgain “it depends on who you ask”. It’s easy to rationalize away smaller massacres as being less bad than other atrocities, but literally all of us would be saying something different if it was our friends or family members who had been disappeared by Pinochet. This doesn’t make what China is doing okay, nor does China make our crimes matter less. That kind of morally relativistic thinking makes it way too easy to justify crimes against humanity.
- rootusrootus 5y ago> That depends on who you ask. We do have the luxury of debating this issue openly in the US, which is nice.
- ashtonkem 5y agoYes, and that’s a good thing. But we have not historically extended that courtesy to everyone.
- kiliantics 5y agoOr even people of color living in the US right now. The UN human rights commission has acknowledged this.