You forgot to mention the red scare, the locking up of American citizens of Japanese descent after Pearl Harbor, etc. For the whole of this century, I believe we have done about the same thing, falling a little farther between economic and moral bubbles we've floated on since the great depression. The difference now is only that as nationalism is flagging, we are more ready to recognize this behavior.
I think a lot of it has to do with our own internal unrest. We have created a consumer culture that expects unsustainable growth, and thus we have a need to move from republic to empire. As we do so, we find the need of common enemies to justify it. We can not justify expansion for expansions sake, so instead we have wars on ideologies, "drugs", "terror" etc. We are no longer willing to sacrifice the physical as we did during WWII, rationing supplies for the effort, because the majority of the war is not physical. Instead, we sacrifice our liberties and free thought, as the wars are ideological.
I think the question needs to be expanded and not looked at from just a national perspective, but from a personal perspective of economics and what we want and what we are willing to do to get it. How long can this continue? Now project those beliefs, desires, and willingness to act onto an entire culture.
I'm not a qualified historian by any stretch, but I think we can find microcosmic sources of this type of action and examine them, or perhaps it's just me.
I think a lot of it has to do with our own internal unrest. We have created a consumer culture that expects unsustainable growth, and thus we have a need to move from republic to empire. As we do so, we find the need of common enemies to justify it. We can not justify expansion for expansions sake, so instead we have wars on ideologies, "drugs", "terror" etc. We are no longer willing to sacrifice the physical as we did during WWII, rationing supplies for the effort, because the majority of the war is not physical. Instead, we sacrifice our liberties and free thought, as the wars are ideological.
I think the question needs to be expanded and not looked at from just a national perspective, but from a personal perspective of economics and what we want and what we are willing to do to get it. How long can this continue? Now project those beliefs, desires, and willingness to act onto an entire culture.
I'm not a qualified historian by any stretch, but I think we can find microcosmic sources of this type of action and examine them, or perhaps it's just me.
-- James
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-- James
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