JohnnyCanuck
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Joined: 10/23/2008
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quote:
ORIGINAL: LadyEllen
I seem to recall a time when it was said that we objected to such viewpoints and the policies that followed on from them to the extent that we sent thousands into battle to destroy them. Apparently, we failed to take the same robust action at home and continue to do so.
You should read more of pre-war American history.
Americans did not object to the persecution of the Jews, nor the persecution of the Poles, nor the crushing of Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Norway, Denamrk, Belgium, Holland nor France.
Nor did Americans object to the bombing of England, the destruction of the Balkans, the capture of Greece, the decimation of Ethiopia ...
In America it was business-as-usual.
Thanks to the America-Firsters, Roosevelt was promising to keep America out of foreign wars.
So there was no great moral outrage over what was happening in Europe. No concern for the loss of human rights. None of it was worth the loss of one American soldier, according to Americans.
It was not until Pearl Harbour that America got involved, and again, it was not over rights and freedom, it was revenge for those killed at Pearl.
It was only over time that the propaganda machine turned the war into an issue of morality (in war, propaganda uses whatever causes and reasons might inspire patriotism and investment in the war effort, truth is a vague and nebulous thing and not an issue).
A lot of people thought Hitler was a good guy: going after Jews, Communists, Homosexuals, etc...
Read Bill Shirer's "Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" and you will see frequent references to the "homosexual perversion" of various Nazi leaders.
America did not get into the war for the cause of freedom.
America has always flirted with fascism.
This is what comes from founding a country on slavery.
Read Horace Greeley's "The American Conflict" and the reason is clear: slavery gives rise to autocratic principles.
Manual labour is no longer fit work for a free man. It is only fit for a slave. Free men order others about. Society forms up along the lines of those who give orders and those who take them, with all free men seeking to be in the former group.
This is, of course, the basis for fascism: a master class and a slave class.
It is no coincidence that the slave-holding south broke away from the union almost as soon as an abolitionist-leaning president was elected. Until Lincoln the south had held power over the instruments of government.
Lincoln's election signalled a change in the demographics, making clear that the abolitionist north had finally achieved superior voting power over the south (bearing in mind the south's representation depended upon counting slaves, who could not vote, thuis weighting the southern vote disproportionately).
Note that even as recently as the sixties civil rights movements have been attacked with force by governments for holding peaceful demonstration demanding equal rights.
These governments were supported by the majority of Americans who voted for them.
The idea that Americans fight for rights and freedoms is a peculiarly American legend.
The rest of us see something very different.
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RE: Gay marriage - 
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What kittin said, with a fat hug thrown in for good measure. 
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