Apocryphal has it that there is an ancient Chinese curse: may you live in interesting times.

The United States is no longer a leader among nations.

Is there something - anything - positive in this? — Banno

You can enjoy the wonderful decadence of the decline of the US then, Banno.

Yet should we remind ourselves that Oswald Spengler wrote his Decline of the West in 1918-1922, a hundred years ago?

Yup, and it all may be irrelevant given that American and Russian nukes can destroy the entire planet in about 30 minutes, and it could happen at any moment, by mistake. — Hippyhead

In truth, it is great that a huge amount of the Cold War build up of nukes were indeed destroyed and both the US and Russia have now only a fraction of the number of warheads that they had. India and Pakistan, Israel and North Korea don't have anywhere near these numbers of nuclear weapons. Perhaps they are smarter than the US and the Soviet Union were. Only Ukraine might be a country that really is disappointed about giving away it's nuclear arsenal as likely Putin wouldn't have dared to annex Crimea if Ukraine would have had nuclear weapons.



Many of the Russian nukes were used as nuclear power plant fuel for American cities (see Megatons for Megawatts Program). That is one of the happier notes coming out of the Cold War which the media naturally has totally forgotten to write about, because it tells that politicians can indeed sometimes do the right thing.

The Gulf States have plenty of money for making nukes. They have not tried to match Israel. Because they are not afraid of Israel. Because Israel is not a psychopathic dictatorship. — Hippyhead

And they do not think that Israel is a threat to them. But then again, Israel can with impunity bomb both Syria and Lebanon as they don't have a nuclear deterrence, while both Jordan and Egypt have peace agreements with Israel and do monitor that no third parties will make for example rocket attacks into Israel from their grounds.

In fact, now you have an unholy alliance between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Both Israel and the US hope that the Saudi's won't acquire nuclear weapons. That would be a genuine possibility if Iran say that it will have nukes.

Talk about Machiavellian politics.

On the other hand, if so, Sadam was the quintessential man bringing a knife to a gun fight - he just didn't know it. Arguably he should have. — tim wood

He didn't have a gun anymore.

Actually there was a great article about this in Foreign Policy. The fact was that Saddam was lying to his own people (meaning his regime) that he did have an ongoing WMD program when he didn't. it was basically for him a way to be in power. In a real tragicomedy, Saddam uphold the idea of having WMD program and the Bush administration neocons eagerly took that to be reality. Saddam Hussein, just like your typical dictator, was far more afraid of a coup attempt from within of his own state and army than an invasion of the US. In a similar fashion Ghaddafi was far more worried of his own armed forces staging a coup than the Western powers attacking him after he had made peace with the West (sort of).

c. Containment was an unsustainable mechanism. Obama was determined to avoid another mid-east war, Trump wants to bring all the troops home, American voters are fed up with the whole subject etc. — Hippyhead

The US is withdrawing from the Middle East, yes.

That is one reason why now everybody is fighting for their piece of the pie.

Did you notice how your claim that "there was no threat" ignores the threat Saddam continued to pose to the Iraqi people? — Hippyhead

Same threat posed by the North Korean dictatorship to it's people. How many have died there because of famine, I should ask.

The Iranians are riding the edge of having a bomb. And there appears to be little we can do about it. Even Obama's treaty only delayed the inevitable. So why should we assume Saddam and his sons would never have done the same? — Hippyhead

To be blunt: countries that think Israel is an enemy to them will seek to have nuclear weapons to have a miltary balance with Israel. Syria had it's own nuclear program (WMD program) and Israel dealt with it with it's Operation Outside the Box, I should remind people here. What is there to see?

Just look at Gaddafi. He tried, but his dictatorship simply wasn't able to go through with a nuclear program. Making nuclear weapons is still a thing that not every country can do. Which btw tells how unequal First World and Third World countries are.

I didn't put that much thought into my insult. — Judaka

Fair enough, judaka.

History is paraphrased for convenience, to be used in arguments or positions in a way that makes the argument or position stronger. If you're focusing on the quality of the racial group's "intellect and spirit" then we need to create a narrative that supports this. The governments of Germany and Japan went from their respective ideologies to modern Western democracy. If this transition is to be held up as a template that Iraq should follow then logically we need to talk about what exactly happened in post-war Germany and Japan and whether Iraq could economically, politically, geopoliticaly, culturally, geographically do something similar. — Judaka

Or refer to the story of Carthage.

You see, Carthage did surrender to Rome and did adapt to it's lesser role as a peaceful city and got rid of it's "imperialism" just as post-war Germany and Japan did. But unlike the US, Rome wouldn't tolerate even that and finally destroyed the city.

So the real question is if Iraq is a similar country, capable of after an invasion getting it's shit up together and transforming to a better state. Well, Iraq has had a lot of problems and after personally meeting Iraqis I do believe that Iraqis think of themselves as Iraqis, there's all the problems of the Sunni / Shia divide, the Kurds being in the north and the various tribal elements. Yet as said himself, there really is the idea of Iraq. Still, that's a lot to ask from any people.

I have this idea that he was a threat to murder the Bushes. No evidence. — tim wood

I've heard the same thing that there was a botched attempt to whack father Bush. Well, that might not be the reason to get into a quagmire that your vice president called a quagmire a decade before.

Here's an open question.
What distinguishes the "scientific" modern history of the
US,Russia and North korea?
Is the implication US history is more "scientific" and honest than Russia and North korea?
A huge amount of assumptions go into this kind of thinking.
Let's see a case for this myth of objective history. — Asif

Asif, you can spot the agenda of those who are in power.

Simple as that.

I don't believe it is a belief in destiny or karma, I believe it is an issue of how framing can create nonsensical causal arguments. — Judaka

Neither do I, but I gather that a Philosophy Forum isn't representative of what people on average think about these issues.

the case with forum clown tim wood — Judaka

Clowns know they are playing the role of a clown. I never think of people here representing their views as clowns.

The narrative can only be created in hindsight and if we look at tim's successful "defeated people" doing well, again, the intricate details of the recovery of Japan and Germany are overlooked in favour of a narrative which will never be able to predict the success of future peoples because its nonsense but as an explanation for what happened within the simplistic framing it makes sense, it's business as usual. — Judaka

Sorry, I lost your argument. Could you put this in another way?

You could add into the examples Germany and Japan of "defeated people that rose up" Carthage, but then again, Rome finally destroyed it's rival city.

And, as usual, you completely ignored that if Saddam (or his sons) were still in power today they would most likely be engaged in a nuclear arms race with the Iranians, which would in turn then expand to include a number of other countries in the region. — Hippyhead

As usual, I don't ignore it.

I do agree with this, especially as this is speculation of all alternative history, surely Iraq would have a similar WMD project as North Korea especially if there wasn't the Kuwait debacle. It is doubtful after Desert Storm that WMD project would have been successful as US President would have the ability to do similar preventive strikes as president Clinton did in Desert Fox. And then the project was as non-existent as the Libyan nuclear weapons project was from the start.

I also agree the American occupation was incompetent and led to a great deal of suffering. But there are outcomes worse than that which were, so far at least, avoided by the invasion. — Hippyhead

Yet the bottom line is that Saddam's Iraq was utterly incapable of posing a threat after Desert Storm at any of it's neighbors. With the exclusion zones and the UN sanctions, there was no threat.

Iraq is a real tragedy of a nation. Worse than Argentina. I remember that in my history book from the 70's it was said that perhaps Iraq would be a country that would become part of the first World in the future.

The present history of Iraq is sad story.
.

It's certainly true that Saddam didn't have WMD, and that such reports may have been blatant lies, or at least manipulative bendings of the known facts. This is a reasonable claim which the critics are justified in making. — Hippyhead

Which was the main argument for the invasion btw. And now thoroughly shown not to be true: the last remnants of Saddam Hussein's WMD project were destroyed during Clinton's strike Operation Desert Fox.

But then the critics almost never go on to consider what the WMD situation would be today if Saddam had remained in power. — Hippyhead

Perhaps Iraq would have had it's civil war like Syria during the Arab Spring. That's the likely outcome. Saddam's WMD program had all but collapsed. The only real threat would have been if Saddam hadn't invaded Kuwait. Then his armed forces would have been intact and hadn't faced basically the Western coalition that still had the Cold War armies intact to be deployed to Saudi Arabia.

Western critics of the 2003 invasion are also typically guilty of the most blatant forms of moral hypocrisy. — Hippyhead

Not actually, what they did was to anticipate the mess that following the invasion would cause. Yet at the time very many believed the "mushroom cloud" propaganda and still would believe that Bush just got bad intel, if it wasn't for Trump. Bush the elder that heeded the advice of his Arab coalition partners: they did not want to march on Baghdad when they had the chance in 1991.

Just please listen to Dick Cheney making the case in 1994 just why didn't the US march into Baghdad after the Iraqi army was defeated during the 100 hours of land war during Operation Desert Storm:



Nothing is more convincing just why invading Iraq was a bad idea and would lead to a quagmire. Did Saddam Hussein kill a huge amount of people? Yes.

Official American Republican academic history. — Asif

Lol.

That's funny.

Do you really think Iraqi history will paint the Americans as liberators and totally justified in invading iraq? — Asif

Will any history paint the 2003 invasion on those lines?

I think that when you investigate how power functions, the types of narratives that tim wood is peddling start to fall apart. I think it is due to a lack of appreciation for how oppressive power can be, how centralised it can be and well, pretty much always is. Perhaps within some childish view of democracy, an American can see themselves as part of the winning team but within the middle east, we're talking theocracies, dictatorships and monarchies, it is really astonishing to listen to people who give power and responsibility to groups that include all various components of society - like racial groups or as citizens of a nation, or just people who live in the region! — Judaka

Perhaps it's that people genuinely believe in destiny and karma. Hence if some area has a lots of conflicts, it's seen as it's the fault of the people. The racist explanation comes easily to mind that the problems perpetuate from the people themselves.

Yet this is totally fictitious. It's obvious that North Koreans and South Koreans are the same people with similar background and culture and were divided just like the Germans at the end of WW2 and now totally different outcomes. If North Korea would have unified the peninsula in 1950, people would say that Koreans simply are prone to authoritarian rule and dictatorship. They simply wouldn't believe that there could be a South Korea with K-pop and Samsung.

Because the history from 60 years ago is full of propaganda. So 600 years is gonna be even worse. — Asif

Not likely, if the history profession is done using the scientific method as usually now is done.

And political discourse uses only the few issues that have links to the present, but typically ignore absolutely everything else. So I don't buy your argument that history is all propaganda.

But at the same time I’m not sure of what Clinton’s response to the virus would have been, or how she would have been viewed/portrayed by those who oppose her. — Pinprick

Obama administration did deal with things like ebola outbreaks, so you can extrapolate from there. And the relationship Hillary Clinton has with Republicans is obvious and likely wouldn't have changed.

Why I asked this is simply because:

a) I believe that the vitriolic juxtaposition and the divisive polarization would also continue under a Hillary Clinton presidency. This isn't just about Trump, even if he makes things worse. If you think how little the Hillary scandals were, the missing emails or Benghazi, how about then a scandal like Jeffrey Epstein, a sex ring organizer with ties to the ex-president husband of the sitting president getting killed in prison when on suicide watch? Just one example.

b) How do you think the relations would have gone with Hillary Clinton and the republican governors? You think that would have been a great team effort everybody?

Let's look at what the Trump administration did do: it poured trillions of dollars into the economy without a blink of the eye and the democrats came along with this. Steve Mnuchin did do something (and now it's the Republicans dragging their feet). Think of this situation when a democratic administration and with the opposition being the Republicans. Would they play ball?

The unfortunate thing is that except if the country is under a terrorist attack, there's not unity that the two ruling parties will show to each other because they know that if the other fails, then the other will have the next administration. That's the logic behind all the vitriol and non-existent bi-partisanship.

It comes down to even issues like fighting a pandemic.

What do y'all think? — darthbarracuda

What you depict and what and tell means that the US would have failed in it's pandemic response even without the absolute inability of Trump (which made it an absolute fail).

Because really, under a Hillary Clinton administration, would things have been so much better? Would your co-workers would have different attitudes? The last President that could have made Americans act as the government wants would have been Eisenhower.

600 years! Before the first gulf invasion iraq had one of the highest GDPs in the middle east.
Your attitude is invalid. You've swallowed a bogus history. — Asif

What is so wrong about thinking history in a longer scale than the typical American?

If something that happened 60 years ago is important, why not something that happened 600 years? Augustusea just reflects a very common way for people in the Middle East to think.

For example, when Dubya Bush once accidentally (or out of ignorance) referred after 9/11 to go on a crusade, you bet that came the punch line of Al Qaeda back then.

It's not a question, I'm rebutting your suggestion that it's ludicrous for a non-human to own anything — Isaac

Totally wrong.

What I have said that there cannot be a legal person without any people attached to it, starting from, oh I guess, that in the first place it's a contract is made by people.

A company can own a sofa. Yet a sofa cannot own a company. Trusts, associations, pension funds, all have some person behind them that is responsible. A stock company has those that own it's stock who have limited liability. What is so difficult in understanding this?

I think Isaac we can advance from this onward.

So I guess here's your point and correct me if I'm wrong:

Why not? Ownership of, and responsibilty for, a thing are two different legal states. In a trust, the benefactor owns it, the trustees are responsible for it. — Isaac

So is your question about if ownership and responsibility would divided too in a stock company?

If so, what do you see as the benefit of this?

we seem to be caught between Iranian imperialism and the western one,
one tries to impose its theocratic system upon us, the other doesnt give two shit just wants their military here, seems like an endless situation, what are your thoughts? — Augustusea

Augustusea,

It is great that you start looking at the problem from these two actors, not the very typical viewpoint of Westerners criticizing their own governments and thus rather having unintentionally a condescending attitude towards people living in the Middle East (as if they don't have their own agendas in the conflict).

I think the Shia / Sunni divide and the various sides taken by Middle Eastern actors is important. And the fact that some of the Gulf Cooperation Council members have nearly gone to war with each other. The term Shia crescent coined by king Abdullah of Jordan in 2004 gives one narrative the conflict, but the issue really hasn't been of Iran trying to conquer the Shia crescent. More like Iran simply has getting involved in countries like Iraq, Syria and Lebanon (and Yemen). Likely because, well, it supposed to be revolutionary and offence might be the best defence, as they say.

I would compare the events now in the Middle East to the Spanish Civil war, where Spain obviously had it's huge domestic problems which after a failed coup ended up in a bloody civil war, but then at the time you also had countries extremely eager to get involved with the civil war (with Italy and Germany on one side and Soviet Union on the other). There presence of these powers made the fight very ideological which spawn then people like George Orwell to volunteer for the fight, and something similar you see happening now in the Middle East. Syria and Yemen, or in fact Iraq, might be seen as pieces on the chess board to be won or lost.

I think that behind all of the turmoil is that not only has the Cold War ended, but also the US lead alliance has fallen into total disarray as the US train wreck of a foreign policy has reached the train wreck stage. The US could hold it together when your ex-leader Saddam Hussein decided to solve the finance problem after a ruinous war with Iran by annexing a small rich neighbor Kuwait. Then even Syria joined as an ally the US lead coalition. Then the final train wreck happened with the 2003 war. And why I call this a trainwreck is that at first the Middle East started with the Baghdad pact and SEATO, with Iraq, Iran, Turkey and Pakistan being all allies. It seems like in the Middle East US allies tend to become it's worst enemies, apart from Israel.

Now you have in Libya supposed allies of the US being at different sides. As Egypt has it's own problems and Iraq as you know is a mess, Saudi Arabia and Iran try to compete which one is top of the hill if the US really would leave the area.

You didn't ask me where it happened, you asked me where it was possible. — Isaac

Where is it possible?

Do notice that animal rights have started from a totally different category. For example in the US in the 19th Century the starting point was that the freedom from pain and suffering was allowed for all animals. If we are worried about the state of the environment, species becoming extinct, preserving the state of the flora and fauna, we don't think about these issues by thinking of property rights of animals (or plants). Not even Milton Friedman did.

That's my point, not yours. That a legal fiction (an association) can own something. You were disputing that. — Isaac

This is becoming quite ridiculous as you aren't even listening to what I say.

Apart from earlier reminding that non-profit entities like associations exist and not all are profit seeking, what I've tried to say that all these legal persons are basically contracts made by actual physical people, for some reason or another. Associations, trusts, companies, corporations are all basically vessels for living people to organize various kinds of activities.

Yet if we assume that there isn't any physical person behind a legal person like a corporation, trust or association, then we have a problem. If you assume a sofa can be the owner of a corporation, then there is no link of the responsibility to any human being. An association has it's members, a trust has it's board, even a nation has behind it people. You do understand the difference between an association and a stock company. Because if you argue that in a stock company those owning the stock don't matter, well, then you have to create totally new legal binds (to physical humans) that matter and then it would be logical to designate this new framework with a different name.

Any country. — Isaac

Cat's don't own anything in any country!

Firstly, they don't just get to freely decide what to do with the car. They can't, for example, just keep it for personal use, that's embezzlement. — Isaac

Finally you get my point. But yes, associations can own cars and then the members of the association can use them as by the associations rules.

The association owns the car. People have the responsibility for it. — Isaac

Correct. And then also direct ownership comes with responsibility too.

Let's say a law exists that says the legal owner of my car is my cat. Another law exists which says that the legal responsibility for anything the cat does with that car lies with me, — Isaac

In what country is you think that possible? Animals are not legal persons and cannot directly own property, at least for now. (You could argue that surely wild animals are at least stakeholders, that should have "rights", but that's a bit different.)

An association may own a car, but the responsibility lies on the administration and if the members of the association decide to terminate the association, they decide what do with the car. You see, in every form of contract, be it an association or a trust, there are in the end human beings behind it.

If you don't have any humans behind a legal person, most likely that is a vehicle to avoid personal responsibility, like tax evasion.

You are.

What on Earth don't you understand in that ownership and responsibility do go hand in hand?

No, ownership is itself just a legal status with purely legal implications (none of this 'natural rights' bullshit). It can be legally assigned to a sofa just as well as to a person - If a company owns assets and a CEO has a legal right to assign them, then there's nothing surprising or philosophically problematic about it. — Isaac

Actually there is a lot of problems with this outrageous idea, and it's quite peculiar that you don't notice it yourself.

So let's have this Isaac's company, which is owned by a sofa. If the company breaks the laws, doesn't pay it workers (including the CEO), does take orders and money from customers, but doesn't delivery anything and still manages to destroy the environment, you think a judge will believe that the sofa did it all, the sofa stole the money? Let's put the sofa in jail, so it cannot break the laws anymore. What any judge would likely determine is that the company is just a shell company for some physical person to avoid contract responsibilities like paying salaries, embezzling customers and to avoid the consequences of breaking the law.

A sofa owning something is simply absurd, so you likely you haven't thought this to it's end.

Referring to ad hominem attacks now, Banno? I did refer to that article and gave quotes from it.

Well, you didn't ask my opinion, but about Friedman's article and Steve Dennings criticism of that article (see ). This is the most typical criticism hurled at Friedman: that economists like Friedman cannot fathom anything else but profits and greed as the sole mover of people.

I personally don't like so much the monetarist from the Chicago school, but view the (Denning) criticism very simplistic. But then again, a lot of the theories Friedman puts out are simple and should not taken literally to explain everything in economics. Of course there are the people who take literally a simple mathematical model given in economics as somehow as equivalent to theories in physics, which is totally absurd.

Likely not. Real estate prices are quite high around the White House, so nobody will use there the real estate as a storage space for fertilizer.

But there is an equivalent of thousand times more than 2,700 tonnes of high explosives targeted at the White House that can explode above in just 20 minutes or so.

So instead of addressing the actual article you choose to pretend it is other than it is? — Banno

As Milton Friedman wrote in his paper about the issue:

When I hear businessmen speak eloquently about the "social responsibilities of business in a free-enterprise system," I am reminded of the wonderful line about the Frenchman who
discovered at the age of 70 that he had been speaking prose all his life.

And if you would have read the article further, Milton Friedman continues:

A group of persons might establish a corporation for an eleemosynary purpose--for example, a hospital or a school. The manager of such a corporation will not have money profit as his objectives but the rendering of certain services.

So I do stick to my view on this. (And the above makes the counter point to the argument that you and uphold that Friedman see's profit making the only reason for corporations).

Why not? — Isaac

Ok. Now I'll stop responding to this topic.

There's far more philosophical debate in arguing if pet animals or wildlife can own something than non-living objects.

Homeowner. Property owner?

Indeed. — Isaac

Thanks for being sincere.

His argument is that the company is a legal fiction and so doesn't own the assets it appears on paper to own. — Isaac

Well, pieces of paper cannot own anything.

All of which conservative flag-waiving is aimed only at excusing sociopathic CEOs when they drive workers, the environment and social structures into the ground to increase their bonuses. — Isaac

...Which itself is the typical narrative based on stereotypes hauled against economists, especially the Chicago school.

There is a level of dishonesty in effective social interaction because if we were all 100% truthful some nasty things would be said. — Benj96

How you interact and what you say and do to other people is the only thing you are known for. People cannot know what you actually think. So what dishonesty you are talking about? As BitterCrank explain from Freud (just as an example) the id is quite hidden.

So let's say that you absolutely hate a person and think that the person is such a danger to the environment that you contemplate murdering the person. As you don't want to get to jail and ruin your life and reputation as being a murderer, you hide your plan and actual become the closest friend to the person. And just when are going to do the perfect murder, you are suddenly hit by a car when walking over the street and die. And in your funeral the most tears are shed by the person you planning on killing and nobody knew of your sinister plan, just that you were very nice and for some reason a close friend to that annoying person. But perhaps it was just your niceness, they fathom.

Above all, stay away from social scientists and philosophers - they are all psychopaths. — unenlightened

Great advice on a Philosophy forum.

The small clip clearly shows how totally clueless Trump is.

It's no wonder why so many that have had to try to explain Trump issues have said he is a moron.

But oh well, some Americans are OK with this.

After all, rich people cannot be morons, right? :smirk:

The Friedman article argues that the sole aim of a corporation is to make a profit; that they ought have no other goal.

That is the bone of contention here. — Banno

More likely Friedman is arguing that companies should not be obliged by the government to have other goals, like being actors that have to deal with inflation (especially when inflation doesn't happen because of them, but is a monetary phenomenon). Yet if their actions have externalities (like they produce pollution), naturally they have to oblige with the laws.

The insistence of seeing this as a racial issue, as a race problem than a class problem simply makes things worse.

With class we can do something about it (as class doesn't mean caste): there is social mobility. We also understand the importance of fair wealth distribution especially through wage income. Promoting race to be the most important issue is not only an accusation racism, but also something people cannot do anything about once we start categorizing them by race. And even if in the case of the US there is a valid point in reminding that discrimination under law ended just 60 years ago or so, the narrative then is fixated in things like racial quotas, compensations based on family heritage, promotion of various issues through the lens of race. Treating people as individuals is seen as naivety or some kind of disguised racism itself.

Coming from country were people of color make 1,34% of the population, has no history of slavery and colonization, I can still observe similar societal problems than are discussed in the US narrative. It's not white privilege (as the vast majority of people are "white"), it's simple upper class and upper middle class privilege. It's not only that the wealthy have even here better schools, better services, better job opportunities, it's also things like lifestyle and attitudes. Your family background, your parents education and income does matter. Crime goes in hand with this: those who commit crimes in Finland, half of them have an income below 10 000 euros, whereas the average income is 29 500 euros. Many of those who commit crimes come from families that have been on welfare for a long time. Both the political left and right do understand and agree on the problem even if they obviously differ just on what would be the cure.

And in the end, the insistence on race and white privilege simply divides poor people by race and creates tension inside a group that has so much in common to fight for. It genuinely benefits those prospering from the present when people are divided by another way than being rich or poor.

Or we simply are letting them drive the car as driving the car seems to be "racist and white privilege". Hence many will eagerly let anybody to drive the car as not to be viewed as racists.

But yes, sometimes these issues become literally crazy:

Teaching the Pythagorean Theorem or pi in geometry class perpetuates white privilege by giving the “perception that mathematics was largely developed by Greeks and other Europeans.”

That’s what Rochelle Gutierrez argues in her new anthology for math teachers, “Building Support for Scholarly Practices in Mathematics Methods.”

The University of Illinois professor says teachers must become more aware of the “politics that mathematics brings” to society. “On many levels, mathematics itself operates as Whiteness,” Ms. Gutierrez writes in the book, reported Campus Reform. “Who gets credit for doing and developing mathematics, who is capable in mathematics, and who is seen as part of the mathematical community is generally viewed as White.”

Mathematics also perpetuates white privilege because the economy places a high value on abstract reasoning.

(See article)

My point is you cannot reform what is intrinsically Authoritarian and ruthless and so the real philosophers who see through this focus on individual freedom and truth. — Asif

I agree. People who believe that the existing forms of power and control are the only ones will have difficulties in thinking that things could be different.

It’s true. The melting-pot vs multicultural society is an interesting dichotomy. I have trouble identifying as Canadian despite my citizenship, no matter how much hockey or maple syrup I imbibe.

But out of respect for the OP we should return to the topic if you can think of any way to swing it in that direction. — NOS4A2

We can do that, NOS4A2.

Because we both aren't Americans, but do understand how important for Americans is the belief in the US: the belief in their constitution and the freedoms on what their country stands and what it means to themselves. And those ideals in my view do stand for anti-authoritarianism, for freedoms of the individual.

(After all, it's just a revolt against taxes that has made you separate. If a British king would and his administration would have played their cards better, "the 14th Colony" of Nova Scotia might be part of the large North American state now part a Commonwealth and you would living with your southern neighbors in the same country with a post stamps depicting Queen Elisabeth II. Totally possible in a not so alternate reality, in my view. Yeah, there wouldn't be any US, just a Canada and Mexico on it's border at the south.)

Yet if Americans see themselves as beacon of Freedom, they surely have to have self criticism to be open about slavery and discrimination and things like that they indeed have supported authoritarian regimes. Unfortunately if that criticism is the only thing mentioned, then it is easy portray the American experiment to be a lie and really just as authoritarian as other countries.

I'm suggesting these people considered "philosophers" great or otherwise are really Authoritarian rhethoricians and politic sophists concerned with ruling and dictating to society.
Real philosophers are concerned only with individual and Real Freedom. — Asif

Well, don't blame Machiavelli for writing things as they were with power in his time. He made his most famous book for a genuine Prince, not the public. If someone correctly writes about an issue, it then really is about that issue.

We never should forget the time and place where these smart people lived and observed the World around them. They could not anticipate a totally different World that we now live in. So when you say "real philosophers are concerned only with individual and Real Freedom", notice you are talking from the viewpoint of today. Two or three hundreds years from now people might disagree with you just what philosophers ought to be concerned with now. With their hindsight of this century and the next one, they could make a convincing case why you are wrong.

It is especially the philosopher types who fall for it. They are the first ones. Not all, but some.

You only have to sprinkle a bit of a benign ideology, refer to a good sounding cause, and their all for it. It is this certain type of philosopher that absolutely loves and cherishes authorities and authoritarianism.

Perhaps these certain type of "philosophers" hope that they are now living at a crucial point of time where something extremely important is happening and that the society will change dramatically, if they will participate in giving the correct push. And of course, as they are participating in this great endeavor, it makes them important. Hence especially philosophers can opt for the radical change, so away totally with the old!

Just ask yourself, how many great philosophers have been taken as a cornerstone of an ideology of an political movement that has tried to radically transform the society and that in the end has utterly failed with only ending up just killing a mass of people on the way? We surely don't hold the actual philosophers responsible themselves, but surely someone has had to take the cause very seriously.

That's why it's so important to divide the people into hating each other.

Divide et impera.