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  • Globalism

    Globalism means different things to different people. The election in Britain may be seen - in part - as a rejection of globalism (Brexit).

    In the US, IMO, globalism means placing the welfare of the world ahead of the welfare of the country. The idea sounds lofty and laudable on the face of it (which is about as deep as progressives think things through) but is not sustainable. Because from the US vantage point, globalism means sending US tax dollars overseas to benefit others, and not US citizens. When it becomes more and more difficult to retain middle class status in this country, it is simply outrageous to see millions and billions of US tax dollars being sent elsewhere.

    The idea that what benefits the world benefits the US is not true, except in some Pollyanna reality where gratitude reigns. It doesn't. When the US supports one faction in a foreign country it creates an enemy of its opposition. And then it just cascades from there (especially if there are several factions in play).

    Globalism has been tried by the US since the 1940s, and in even greater earnest since the Gulf War. It is a major reason the US is sinking into incredible debt, and the wars it produces are killing our children soldiers and those of other countries. I hope in 2020, everyone here will consider the globalist stance of the congressional candidates in their states and districts.

  • #2
    I do think the United States is too deeply involved in foreign affairs though at the same time I think an abrupt withdrawal from world affairs would be irresponsible given that our government's actions have had an effect on various areas of destabilization. It would be like creating a mess and suddenly leaving without trying to pick it up.

    I would like to push back on one part: From a Christian perspective, I do think that the overall welfare of the world is more important than the welfare of the US. We have brothers in Christ all around the world and I don't see any justification for claiming that the good of a persecuted brother in China (China is cracking down on religious freedom, recently banning the Bible) does not outweigh the good of a random non-Christian living in the US.
    "I am not angered that the Moral Majority boys campaign against abortion. I am angry when the same men who say, "Save OUR children" bellow "Build more and bigger bombers." That's right! Blast the children in other nations into eternity, or limbless misery as they lay crippled from "OUR" bombers! This does not jell." - Leonard Ravenhill

    Comment


    • #3
      Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
      I do think the United States is too deeply involved in foreign affairs though at the same time I think an abrupt withdrawal from world affairs would be irresponsible given that our government's actions have had an effect on various areas of destabilization. It would be like creating a mess and suddenly leaving without trying to pick it up.
      As far as destabilization, I suppose it depends on the details. We've been in Afghanistan going on 19 years and it isn't getting more stable, and it wasn't stable before we went in. Once Bin Laden was located and was iced we should have pulled out of there. We never should have gone into Iraq or Syria and our prolonged presence isn't justified now. This, however, doesn't address simple financial aspects.

      Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
      I would like to push back on one part: From a Christian perspective, I do think that the overall welfare of the world is more important than the welfare of the US. We have brothers in Christ all around the world and I don't see any justification for claiming that the good of a persecuted brother in China (China is cracking down on religious freedom, recently banning the Bible) does not outweigh the good of a random non-Christian living in the US.
      The globalism I am speaking of includes the failed policy of 'democracy building', supporting rebels (often just lesser of evils in a quagmire), and paying extortion (like $2.5 billion per year to Israel and Egypt so long as they don't fight each other). I don't believe your example of Chinese persecution of Christians qualifies. There are things we can do in trading practices or sanctions to persuade unsavory governments to behave better.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
        I would like to push back on one part: From a Christian perspective, I do think that the overall welfare of the world is more important than the welfare of the US. We have brothers in Christ all around the world and I don't see any justification for claiming that the good of a persecuted brother in China (China is cracking down on religious freedom, recently banning the Bible) does not outweigh the good of a random non-Christian living in the US.
        KingsGambit, crusader?
        Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

        Comment


        • #5
          Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
          I would like to push back on one part: From a Christian perspective, I do think that the overall welfare of the world is more important than the welfare of the US. We have brothers in Christ all around the world and I don't see any justification for claiming that the good of a persecuted brother in China (China is cracking down on religious freedom, recently banning the Bible) does not outweigh the good of a random non-Christian living in the US.
          The justification on a foreign policy level is that the US is a secular country with secular policy. Your hypothetical perspective requires entertaining the idea of a (right wing) Christian theocracy.
          Remember that you are dust and to dust you shall return.

          Comment


          • #6
            Originally posted by demi-conservative View Post
            The justification on a foreign policy level is that the US is a secular country with secular policy. Your hypothetical perspective requires entertaining the idea of a (right wing) Christian theocracy.
            It also entertains the idea US actually does it for humanitarian reasons as opposed to reasons that benefit smaller interest groups.

            Comment


            • #7
              Originally posted by Ronson View Post
              it is simply outrageous to see millions and billions of US tax dollars being sent elsewhere.
              It is interesting to see US conservatives get increasingly wound up about foreign aid, yet US foreign aid is actually at pretty low levels compared to what it used to be:



              Compared to other OECD countries, the US doesn't even make the top-givers list:



              The US is about 23rd in foreign aid given per capita, behind Slovenia and Greece.

              And when in 2015 Obama redirected 2% of the money that the US gives in foreign aid, to climate related assistance funds, the conservatives worked themselves into a tizzy, imagining that the US treasury doors were being flung open and the rest of the world was looting it or something.

              It's worth noting that the US's massive foreign aid toward Germany and Japan in the wake of WWII was a huge positive for the US. It successfully turned enemies of the US into long-time allies who today remain extremely productive and friendly countries and economies.

              Today, foreign aid money mostly goes to 3rd world countries, and has succeeded in massively improving quality of life in those countries. This has positive effects for the developed world that range from less likelihood of pandemics breaking out from those nations to kill people in the West due to more healthy living conditions in those nations, less chance of wars breaking out that would require troops from the West fighting and dying due to greater stability in those nations, a lower total environmental burden on the earth due to increasing life expectancies and access to contraception in those nations meaning they don't need/want to have as many children meaning the total earth population is now trending toward stabilizing rather than exponentially increasing.
              "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
              "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
              "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

              Comment


              • #8
                Originally posted by Starlight View Post

                Today, foreign aid money mostly goes to 3rd world countries, and has succeeded in massively improving quality of life in those countries. This has positive effects for the developed world that range from less likelihood of pandemics breaking out from those nations to kill people in the West due to more healthy living conditions in those nations, less chance of wars breaking out that would require troops from the West fighting and dying due to greater stability in those nations, a lower total environmental burden on the earth due to increasing life expectancies and access to contraception in those nations meaning they don't need/want to have as many children meaning the total earth population is now trending toward stabilizing rather than exponentially increasing.
                Um... source?

                And this is a neocon talking point they use to justify foreign intervention. Wouldn't it actually benefit a leftist socialist more to argue that that money should be focused on domestic social programs instead? I don't get that.

                Comment


                • #9
                  Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
                  I would like to push back on one part: From a Christian perspective, I do think that the overall welfare of the world is more important than the welfare of the US. We have brothers in Christ all around the world and I don't see any justification for claiming that the good of a persecuted brother in China (China is cracking down on religious freedom, recently banning the Bible) does not outweigh the good of a random non-Christian living in the US.
                  Out of curiosity, would you be in favor of putting the needs of others ahead of that of your own family?
                  Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                  But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                  Than a fool in the eyes of God


                  From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                  Comment


                  • #10
                    Originally posted by Ronson View Post
                    The globalism I am speaking of includes the failed policy of 'democracy building', supporting rebels (often just lesser of evils in a quagmire)
                    Your 'globalism' seems to have a strange definition. It seems to vary between meaning being involved, at all, in the world, and meaning specific policies that the US has intermittently pursued.

                    You mention 'democracy building' for example. That's been a bit of an on-again off-again idea that the US has occasionally tinkered with over the years. But far and away above that would be the number of times the US has done democracy un-building in the form of instigating coups against, and overthrows of, democratically elected governments. Those are different things, and its important not to lump them into the same category.

                    Looking through the 20th century, some of the stand-out low-lights of that were the US overthrowing democratically elected governments in central america in the 1920s to further the profits of US banana companies (where the term "Banana Republic" meaning unstable country comes from), the US waging a massive war in Vietnam and the surrounding region for basically no good reason and whose original incident (Gulf of Tonkin incident) was a lie, the overthrow of a democratic government in Iran because the US didn't like the Iranian government thinking that they owned the oil in their own ground rather than US oil companies and the eventual replacement of Iran's government by extremist Muslims as a result, Reagan's unflinching support for terrorist forces in Nicaragua loyal to the previous dictator against the democratically elected government and his insistence on supplying the terrorists with weapons to help them wage war against the democratically elected government even if it meant going directly against congress and seeking to fund this program by selling weapons to the now-hostile extremist Iranian government, etc. Not that the situation in the 21st century has been a whole lot better, with Bush's unprovoked attack on Iraq being the stand-out, and the resultant foreseeable and predicted (by numerous people including Bernie Sanders) collapse of that nation and formation of ISIS.
                    "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                    "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                    "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                    Comment


                    • #11
                      Originally posted by KingsGambit View Post
                      I do think the United States is too deeply involved in foreign affairs though at the same time I think an abrupt withdrawal from world affairs would be irresponsible given that our government's actions have had an effect on various areas of destabilization. It would be like creating a mess and suddenly leaving without trying to pick it up.

                      I would like to push back on one part: From a Christian perspective, I do think that the overall welfare of the world is more important than the welfare of the US. We have brothers in Christ all around the world and I don't see any justification for claiming that the good of a persecuted brother in China (China is cracking down on religious freedom, recently banning the Bible) does not outweigh the good of a random non-Christian living in the US.
                      Not to mention that what the U.S. does with its tax dollars around the world is not altogether altruistic. More often than not what we do by means of aid is in our own interests as well. Take the military aid for Ukraine for instance.

                      Comment


                      • #12
                        Originally posted by seanD View Post
                        And this is a neocon talking point they use to justify foreign intervention.
                        Foreign aid [dollars] is not foreign [military] intervention. The neocons favor the 2nd one and are ambivalent about the 1st one, I favor the 1st one and despise the 2nd one.

                        Wouldn't it actually benefit a leftist socialist more to argue that that money should be focused on domestic social programs instead?
                        The amount countries spend on foreign aid is so negligible it would make almost no difference at all to any social program.

                        The question is essentially, "is it worth redirecting 1% of the total domestic social program budget to foreign aid, and bullying other developed countries into doing the same, so we don't have to fight as many wars?" When you do foreign aid spending you can point to it and bully other developed countries into matching your spending, so then your own spend gets multiplied by 10 or 20 or 30 as other countries match it, so you are essentially getting a lot more for your buck than your own spend.

                        If you're really concerned about money in these sorts of amounts, the place to go after it is enforcement of the tax laws against tax evaders. The amount the rich illegally evade in taxes is orders of magnitude more than foreign aid. Money spent on the IRS's tax enforcement units tends to pay for itself 6-12 times over in terms of recouping vastly more in taxes from people who weren't paying it than it costs to fund such enforcement. Unfortunately, despite this, the Republicans have deliberately made cuts to spending on tax enforcement, I assume at the request of their billionaire donors.
                        "I hate him passionately", he's "a demonic force" - Tucker Carlson, in private, on Donald Trump
                        "Every line of serious work that I have written since 1936 has been written, directly or indirectly, against totalitarianism and for democratic socialism" - George Orwell
                        "[Capitalism] as it exists today is, in my opinion, the real source of evils. I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy" - Albert Einstein

                        Comment


                        • #13
                          Originally posted by Starlight View Post
                          Foreign aid [dollars] is not foreign [military] intervention. The neocons favor the 2nd one and are ambivalent about the 1st one, I favor the 1st one and despise the 2nd one.

                          The amount countries spend on foreign aid is so negligible it would make almost no difference at all to any social program.

                          The question is essentially, "is it worth redirecting 1% of the total domestic social program budget to foreign aid, and bullying other developed countries into doing the same, so we don't have to fight as many wars?" When you do foreign aid spending you can point to it and bully other developed countries into matching your spending, so then your own spend gets multiplied by 10 or 20 or 30 as other countries match it, so you are essentially getting a lot more for your buck than your own spend.

                          If you're really concerned about money in these sorts of amounts, the place to go after it is enforcement of the tax laws against tax evaders. The amount the rich illegally evade in taxes is orders of magnitude more than foreign aid. Money spent on the IRS's tax enforcement units tends to pay for itself 6-12 times over in terms of recouping vastly more in taxes from people who weren't paying it than it costs to fund such enforcement. Unfortunately, despite this, the Republicans have deliberately made cuts to spending on tax enforcement, I assume at the request of their billionaire donors.
                          Your first statement couldn't be any further from the truth. Foreign aid is OFTEN interchangeable with regime change campaigns of which the neocons vehemently push for. Examples would be foreign aid guised as "humanitarian aid" that actually funds and arms "rebels" in Libya and Syria to fight evil dictators for the purpose of regime change in those countries. Or foreign aid that funds and arms the Saudis' onslaught in Yemen (isn't that a current leftist outrage issue?). And you act like 50 billion (of course that's what's officially accounted for) is peanuts.

                          Comment


                          • #14
                            Originally posted by Mountain Man View Post
                            Out of curiosity, would you be in favor of putting the needs of others ahead of that of your own family?
                            I know where you’re going with this. Out of curiosity, do you put the needs of your well-fed family with roofs over their head over those who, out of no fault of their own, were forced into the refugee lifestyle?

                            Comment


                            • #15
                              Originally posted by whag View Post
                              I know where you’re going with this. Out of curiosity, do you put the needs of your well-fed family with roofs over their head over those who, out of no fault of their own, were forced into the refugee lifestyle?
                              Yes. I don't put the needs of anybody over the needs of my family.
                              Some may call me foolish, and some may call me odd
                              But I'd rather be a fool in the eyes of man
                              Than a fool in the eyes of God


                              From "Fools Gold" by Petra

                              Comment

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