Admiral McRaven made the following quote this week on America’s role in the world.
We are not the most powerful nation in the world because of our aircraft carriers, our economy, or our seat at the United Nations Security Council. We are the most powerful nation in the world because we try to be the good guys. We are the most powerful nation in the world because our ideals of universal freedom and equality have been backed up by our belief that we were champions of justice, the protectors of the less fortunate.
John Kasich
McRaven is better than the flag-thumpers, but he misses the point entirely. Flag-thumpers decry anything that besmirches the flag, treating it like it is what made and makes America great. It isn’t, and neither is the incorrect notion that what makes America great is some inherent desire to do good in the world. America does good things in the world, and for its citizens, when we adhere to the values that are presented in the Constitution, and pretty much only then. Those values weren’t first designed in the Constitution, it just lays them out and demands that we adhere to them. And it does so in a legal format.
America has done many things in the world, some good and some bad. You don’t have to look far to see the bad. Start with WWII, where many American corporations worked hand-in-hand with Hitler, ignoring his beast-like behavior. GM, Ford, and IBM, to name a few. The Bushes got rich banking for the Nazis. Disney loved Hitler. That Americans are capable of setting aside the American notion of doing good, in the name of power and profit, runs through our history, start to finish.
The Middle East and Central America aren’t disasters because of some undefined flaw in the character of the folks in those areas; they are disasters because the West has repeatedly invaded those regions in search of land and natural resources. Our greed, not our good nature, has made these regions into areas where poverty, dictators, and militaries make the lives of regular folks horrible. We are especially culpable in Central America. Go look up Smedley Butler, the general who led our marches through Central America. He was frank about his role there and why he was asked to do what he did. Dole and Standard Oil of America needed the bounty of those regions, and he was sent there to secure those resources.
Ignoring that America does often pursue good ends in the world would be equally misleading. We do. But we don’t do it because of some unwritten moral character that America has. We do it because our Constitution lays out a set of values that describe how people should be treated, whether American or not. It is that document that makes us great; and it does so by taking our most cherished moral values and translating them into law.
All countries have good and bad people, and typically, the folks who accrue the most money tend to be the ones who are least likely to act in good faith concerning our Constitution. When you place greed and the acquisition of wealth over your morals, it is very corrupting.
What has kept the rich in America from universally flexing their greed muscles on the rest of the world is our Constitution. The Constitution presents values and rules that prevent the powerful from abusing the rest of us, both here and in the world at large. Its design was so good that many other countries and bodies (the UN, for example) have followed its principles in laying out their own rules of governance.
This is why the Trump administration is such a threat. At every turn, they ignore the Constitution and its precepts. And it is why the rest of us need to ignore the flag-waving, the general notion that American's are better than other folks, and focus on this document and the preservation of its values.
It has become an easy discussion to say that the rules of the past have failed us, leading to the point where we are today. That is incorrect. It is ignoring the Constitution or attempting to interpret it in such a way that it favors the rich and powerful that has led us to our current situation. The values laid out therein are universal, they apply to all human beings, and they should be pursued by those who think they are important, no matter what the powerful would like. Whether the recipients are Americans, Kurds, or immigrants, illegal or not; whether the recipients are Christians, Muslims, Jews, Buddhists or Hindu; whether the recipients are Black, white, yellow or brown; or whether the recipients are gay, straight, trans, or bisexual.
Sunday, Oct 20, 2019 · 10:18:55 PM +00:00 · lyleoross
Elwood Dowd has graciously pointed out that the quote in this piece was Admiral McRaven. A closer look confirmed that for me. Whoops. I’m going to fix the article but please note that I incorrectly attributed the quote to Kasich.