[DOWNLOAD] "Current American Polity (Comments)" by Modern Age # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Current American Polity (Comments)
- Author : Modern Age
- Release Date : January 01, 2004
- Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines,Books,Professional & Technical,Education,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 164 KB
Description
INRECENT YEARS a heated debate has erupted about American foreign policy and about what moral purpose should inform our conduct of international relations. While analysts Robert Kagan, Michael Mandelbaum, and Stephen Schwartz insist the United States should use its power, where possible, on behalf of "democracy," other commentators have rejected this approach. James Kurth, Andrew Bacevich, Walter McDougall, and now Professor Claes Ryn all deplore an approach to international affairs that views the world as little more than a laboratory for American social engineers. Although none of these critics believes that the American polity can be brought back to where it was a century ago, they insist that the empire which has come into our hands must not be treated as some sort of modernist theocracy. It is foolish to imagine that those political forms we happen to prefer for ourselves should become the basis for international crusades. These critics presumably winced when President Bush, in an address to the National Endowment for Democracy, insisted that America remain active in the Middle East until women in that region achieve full political and social equality. After all, until the second decade of the twentieth century, most constitutional governments, including our own, did not grant women the vote. Should America then have been forcibly occupied by a more enlightened power until we conformed to a later model of "democracy"? Or should Europeans have invaded America in the early nineteenth century so as to abolish slavery? And once America introduces gay unions, will it become incumbent upon us to impose that policy on other countries as integral to "universal" justice?