[jdavis703]

As someone whose family ancestors were kidnapped to the US and forced to engage in unpaid labor I have to say this country never cared about freedom and human rights. It's all part of the national story designed to make the occupants of this country view themselves as better than the rest of the world.

[0xfeba]

Yup. It's a facade. Especially during the Carter, Nixon, HW Bush, etc. eras, culminating in Bush Jr's "They hate us for our Freedoms" speech after 9/11.

No, they hate us for our overly zealous anti-communism that drove us to forcefully prop up dictatorships/extremist groups (Panama, Cuba, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda, etc.), and then vacate when things went sour.

Time and time, and time again we did this in the past 60 years, and it's just now coming back to bite us.

One of the few things I look forward to in a Trump administration is isolationism, but his cabinet is both extremely anti-communist and anti-Muslim, so it looks like it's just going to be Carter/Nixon/Truman bullshit all over again.

[Turing_Machine]

Communists of various stripes murdered somewhere around 100 million people in the last century.

What, exactly, counts as "overly zealous" in that context?

[lodi]

1) I'd like to see a breakdown of that number.

2) By the same simplistic reasoning, Americans killed 20-30 million [1] just by themselves. I'm not sure what the totals would look like after adding in the British, French, Dutch, etc. empires.

3) I'm almost certain that that 100 million figure includes revolutions caused as a direct result of imperial powers meddling in the affairs of local populations. E.g. Cambodia [2]. That's the part that's "overly zealous".

[1] http://www.globalresearch.ca/us-has-killed-more-than-20-mill...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_s...

[Turing_Machine]

"1) I'd like to see a breakdown of that number."

https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/20TH.HTM

PRC: ~77 million. USSR: ~62 million.

" By the same simplistic reasoning, Americans killed 20-30 million [1] just by themselves."

People dying as the result of enemy action in a war is not the same as them being murdered by their own government.

[rm_-rf_slash]

Counter-examples abound: the US actively suppressed democracy in Latin America and elsewhere when it didn't suit American business interests, hence Guatemala.

Likewise, a great number of deaths at the hand of Communist leaders were due to utter incompetence and mismanagement, such as in China's Cultural Revolution and Great Leap Forward.

My rule of thumb is that it's basically a bad thing when somebody dies who shouldn't have (if people were fair and compassionate).

[AnimalMuppet]

> My rule of thumb is that it's basically a bad thing when somebody dies who shouldn't have (if people were fair and compassionate).

OK. Then it's a worse thing when more people die who shouldn't have, right?

[rm_-rf_slash]

Entirely. In the vast histories of famines, for example, there were far more times where food was available and denied to the desperate, than there have been times where there has not been enough food for everybody.

During the food cost crisis that preceded the Arab Spring, I and everyone around me in comfortable America ate quite well. If we as a species cared for every human life, such suffering would have been avoided.

"And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’" -Matthew, 25:40

[Turing_Machine]

Please provide a "counter-example" where the United States murdered 100 million people.

Thanks.

[rm_-rf_slash]

Easy, the mass genocide of Native Americans long before and after the ink had dried on the Constitution.

You're welcome.

[Turing_Machine]

Sorry, not even close.

18 million would be on the high end for the estimated indigenous population of pre-Columbian North America. 90% of those were wiped out by imported diseases before the United States even existed. It would be quite a trick to murder 100 million people based on a starting population of only 1.8 million (not all of whom, or even most of whom, were killed, by any means).

It is not reasonable to blame the United States for things that happened before it existed.

Also, it is pretty much accepted nowadays that killing off indigenous people is a Bad Thing. Unfortunately, the same is not true of communism. There are still plenty of people who think it's a wonderful idea.

[dang]

> Easy [...] You're welcome.

Please don't treat divisive, inflammatory topics as mere ammunition for trivial internet arguments. That's a common pattern, and it makes discussion both uncivil and unsubstantive.

[0xfeba]

Sure. But the US doesn't care until it thinks it can use the opportunity to threaten the USSR/Russia. And "overzealous" (not sure how I managed to type overly zealous instead) means staging myopic, sometimes protracted wars or military action of dubious to no (or negative) benefit for the American people: Panama (because a corrupt dictator wasn't following orders anymore), Cambodia, Vietnam, and now Afghanistan, Iraq.

That is, it's all under guise of "fighting communism", or more specifically, the Russians, which could be believed if they were actually deterred by it and didn't just think the US was a war-hungry power bent on global domination. Well, in the few cases the military action was actually successful instead of turning out to be a national disgrace.

This all seems to trace back to Eisenhower's stiffing aid post-war to Russia and further by the Truman Doctrine. I say that Russia has never had an interest in invading the US, but our ballistic foreign policy has only emboldened them to replace us as the foremost world power.

[rubberstamp]

And how many have capitalists of various stripes killed in last century?

[Turing_Machine]

Not anything like 100 million.

Capitalists want live customers, not corpses.

[turar]

> No, they hate us for our overly zealous anti-communism that drove us to forcefully prop up dictatorships/extremist groups (Panama, Cuba, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, al Qaeda, etc.), and then vacate when things went sour.

I thought this contrast between death of Castro and Saudi Arabian king was an insightful example earlier this week: https://www.reddit.com/r/LateStageCapitalism/comments/5h2jf7...

[droopyEyelids]

Distorted exaggeration disrespects everyone. This country has struggled with issues of freedom and human rights, but it has made significant strides, and we should use them as an example of what to work for and what can be achieved.

[alexhawdon]

They aren't really 'human rights' until they are applied to all humans. They're merely 'American Rights'.

[mrgoldenbrown]

Did you just call slavery in the US a "distorted exaggeration"?

[rm_-rf_slash]

A Belgian writer once remarked to me that he was surprised when he moved to the United States. Compared to everywhere else, Americans were so angry at each other all the time.

He postulated that because America was founded on two great crimes - genocide and slavery - and was instilled with the myth that rugged individualism creates success, generations of Americans have been screwed out of the opportunity that they are led to believe is their own, all while blaming themselves for all their misfortune, or others for stealing their opportunity, hence the anger.

I don't know if that cultural trait will ever depart the American psyche.

[CWuestefeld]

As someone whose American ancestors fought in a war to free your ancestors, I think you're painting with far too broad a brush.

[andars]

That wasn't the purpose of the war. Here's Lincoln, 1862: "I would save the Union. … If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it."

[CWuestefeld]

That only tells us Lincoln's stated values. He doesn't get to dictate the motives of the entire country. I don't think you can legitimately claim that there wasn't a real ideological abolitionist movement, and that many people fought for it.