Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
Lanny, one of the tenets of a small-c conservative political science is an emphasis on the continuity of ideas. Millenarian ideas influence what Edmund Burke called the social fabric. Cultural knowledge or mythos, which profoundly affects the very roots of world-views. The Founding Fathers, definitely not all of them, thought America was a new opportunity to fundamentally change the way human beings behaved. This sort of thinking does not bring with it pluralism or pragmatics, but a fanatical endeavour to progress or change, regardless of incremental reform.
I think you see this reflected in American foreign policy. The notion that American ideals are able to inject themselves into foreign countries, regardless of their own cultural traditions, and completely transform the people of that society into something "new". That's not to say American ideas are bad, America is better as a conservative nation. One that sees the value and beauty of the ideas that it helped coax along through the world's troubled times, but also respectful of the Western cultural tradition that brought them to us.
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Okay, we're in 2008, not 1778. A lot has changed, especially in the last 60 years. Our increased knowledge has cast millenarianism aside. All sane individuals will acknowledge that some massive event is not going to come along and change the way we all think. I'm pretty sure that anyone who believed that has had their hopes dashed when 2000 came and went (and we're still here) and 9/11 did nothing to alter the collective consciousness. In fact, I'd say it made things much worse and we're more divided than ever.
America is better as a liberal nation. That is when the world has been most trusting of her and believed most in her values. The founding fathers were liberals and their liberal beliefs are still there in the National Archives for all to read. This is what inspires people and makes them believe in America. This is wat makes people believe that America will alter its foreign policy. Little do they know that American power is entrenched with the conservatives, and this is why they should be afraid of what she has to offer. Until the Wilsonian beliefs are
fully embraced again I think we're kidding ourselves about the spread of American democracy.