Reply #14: great essay, but I would call it the gap between Bush Republicans

[hfojvt]

and American ideals.

"If America's record is better than that of most countries — and it is — it's because of our system: our tradition of openness, and checks and balances.

Yet Mr. Bush, despite all his talk of good and evil, doesn't believe in that system." Paul Krugman

Also, I question your insertion of Vietnam into a history of American imperialism. First, because Kennedy started our involvment in Vietnam and second, because it was similar to Korea, and perhaps WWI. You might say Germany was a threat to us, even though a large plurality of our nation has German ancestry, but we made it a threat by being allies with the British - our former enemies. We entered WWI in part because the Germans sunk the Lusitania and got in the way of the war profits American businesses were making selling arms to England.

Because of our involvement in Korea, today tens of millions of Koreans do not live under the rule of Kim Jong. Was North Vietnam never as bad as North Korea? Would South Vietnamese have been better off if there was still a South Vietnam today?

Anyway, to talk so much about our imperialistic history tends to make the Bush junta look like less of an abberation, when really it is the imperialism and Bush which could be seen as the abberations, when the government of the people gets turned into the government of the rich. Bush's base - the haves and the have-mores.

Plus, Carter was elected in 1976, not 1980.