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Re: [OM] Nathan's PAD 22/5/2010: battle of ideas on the T (was)

Subject: Re: [OM] Nathan's PAD 22/5/2010: battle of ideas on the T (was)
From: Bob Whitmire <bwhitmire@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Thu, 27 May 2010 10:05:00 -0400
On May 27, 2010, at 7:50 AM, Brian Swale wrote:

> What he wrote enabled me to make sense of what seemed to me to be the
> persistent meddling (very often violent) of one country in the  
> affairs of so
> many countries all around the world.

I wonder if Chomsky mentioned a particular bend in U.S. history toward  
the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries where a huge  
political firestorm erupted and continued for many years concerning  
the role of the U.S. in the world. There was a faction that cleaved to  
an old notion that this new nation rather than following in the  
footsteps of the Old World powers from which it sprang, should become  
a, for lack of a better word, beacon for a new, more stable and  
peaceful way of doing things. Interestingly, it was the Republican  
party which held this view the strongest. The other view, more  
memorably put forth by such luminaries as Teddy Roosevelt and Henry  
Cabot Lodge, was that the emergent U.S. should take its rightful place  
as a power, and meddle where meddling was "necessary"; that is, take  
the Old World point of view and simply do it better. (You might recall  
the Spanish-American War, and the subsequent unpleasantness in the  
Philippine Islands.) Sadly (second post in a day using that word), the  
Roosevelts and Lodges won the argument and we wound up with a  
president named McKinley instead of one named Thomas B. Reed.

Barbara Tuchman's The Proud Tower gives a fascinating, well documented  
and rather objective account of this period as part of a larger  
history of the world between 1880 and 1914. Highly recommended.

I don't think any of them ever picked up anything made by Olympus.  
Well, Tuchman might have. <g>

--Bob Whitmire
www.bobwhitmire.com


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