Ethicalego (Kenneth Brooks) discusses current events from a critical thinking perspective rarely expressed elsewhere

Special Foreign alliances threaten the American Republic

By Kenneth Brooks

9/9/12

Why have we reasserted our power across the Pacific to stand up to China on behalf of American workers, but committed American resources to support the European Union's economic interests? Until the current economic crisis, the European Union strived to insert its monetary unit, the Euro, as the international currency in place of the U.S. dollar. This change would have degraded America's economy status, the value of the dollar and increased costs to American consumers.

So why is China the bad nation and Europe Union in need of protection? Like China, the European Union consists of a much larger population than the United States. Much of the chaos in Africa, Middle East, and Asia stem from centuries of European invasions and colonization. During the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Japan, and even the United States forced treaties on China that reduced much of the area to a colonial status. European colonizers Britain and Portugal only recently returned control of Hong Kong and Macau to the Republic of China in 1997 and 1999.

Colonization destroys the culture and natural socioeconomic and sociopolitical balance of power of an area. Thereafter, areas often experience periods of chaos and autocratic rule as people shift from colonialism to self-rule. Europeans were impartial in their destruction of societies and economies including those of European people and nations.

Historians place European WWI casualties in the range of 37 million- 16 million deaths and 20 million wounded. They place WWII world casualties about 40 million people. Nevertheless, after those wars European nations reasserted authority over colonized African and Asian areas often with the support of the USA. Seven decades later, American leaders try to foist a new form of colonialism on African and Asian people that struggle, often violently, to reestablish natural sociopolitical and socioeconomic institutions free of European and American values. We try this irrational upholding of past European imperialism at the potential destruction of our constitutional republic.

Article IV, Section 4 of the Constitution says, "The United States shall guarantee to every State in the Union a republican form of government, and shall protect each of them against invasion." President Obama and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney guarantee the defense of Israel as if it is the 51st state of the American Republic.

I can understand the commitment to stand by a friend in time of need. Nevertheless, no responsible family leaders give greater prominence for the security and economic welfare of a friend over the welfare of family. The 99 percent of law-abiding people living in low income areas of cities beset by crime would welcome Obama and Romney's assurance of safe neighborhoods for their families. Nevertheless, I did not read concern for them in Obama or Romney speeches.

Republican and Democrat national conventions are part of American cultural ritual for the selection of the national leader for the next four years. However, both political parties felt obliged to include concerns about the defense of Israel during this purely American sociopolitical ritual. All Americans should feel gravely concerned about the deterioration of our constitutional republican values that any foreign nation has this much influence over our government and both presidential candidates.

Rational American's should heed the founders' warnings about permanent foreign alliances.

"It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world... As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent Patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practise the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the Public Councils. Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences...constantly keeping in view, that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard."

-George Washington's Farewell Address, September 17, 1796

"The United States goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is a well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. If the United States took up all foreign affairs, it would become entangled in all the wars of interest and intrigue, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own soul." -President John Quincy Adams, son of John Adams.

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