Re: Democracy or Empire?

[Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Nestor:

>  > I think that the reason why a limited democracy helps build &
>>  maintain an empire is that the rulers can't afford to fight on two
>>  fronts, domestic & foreign, at the same time, as Machiavelli reminds
>>  us.  Hence the usefulness of the Democratic Party & liberal
>>  internationalism in America....
>>
>>  Yoshie
>
>But wasn't Cecil Rhodes who explained that imperialism is a matter
>of filling the
>stomach of the mobs so that a civil war between Disraeli's two
>Englands could be
>avoided?
>
>It is very usual that the most ardent imperialists are the most
>democratic leaders,
>in a social sense though not necessarily in a political sense,
>within their own
>countries. Ted Roosevelt is an example, and even in a backward
>country such as Spain
>by the 1900s you could find a Joaquín Costa...

Exactly.  And while main challengers to the Democratic Party &
liberal internationalism remain predominantly white &
college-educated, as in the Nader/Green crowd, many of whom have,
alas, a hankering for humanitarian imperialism of their own, the evil
empire will march on, unhindered by puny domestic oppositions (e.g.,
the IAC & Workers World Party; some serious religious lefties; etc.).
What is to be done?

Yoshie