Stunning video

[GarySeven]

This video takes a long time to load. If nothing else, it encapsulates what the rest of the world thinks of us. Now, even if what the rest of the world thinks is fundamentally irrelevant to how we conduct foreign and domestic policy, there remains one fact that I think is not so irrelevant:

At no time in our history has the world ever had THIS view of the United States ...

http://www.knife-party.net/flash/barry.html

[Carolab]

1. Well, they DO matter

to US, to the PEOPLE!

[RoyGBiv]

2. Correction ...

What the world thinks of us is fundamentally relevant to how we conduct foreign and domestic policy.

Good video, btw. Refreshing to hear someone pronounce "al Qa'ida" correctly.

[TahitiNut]

5. Anyone who sells American products abroad should care.

It always amazes me ... Republicans say they care about trade. I guess they only want to sell armaments. :shrug:

[GarySeven]

6. I did say "even if" ...

and although I generally agree with the principle that "what the world thinks' matters, there are exceptions - for example: When the rest of the world is WRONG. The governments of Britain, France and the Soviet Union were wrong in their 1932-1938 assessment of Adolph Hitler. FDR took actions without the consent even of Congress because he, like Churchill, figured AH out early in the game.

Majorities of opinion are sometimes wrong. At one point in our history even Democrats subscribed to the notion that Black people and Native Americans were sub-human.

Having said all that, however, I don't think the viewpoints expressed in this video are all that off base. But that doesn't matter to me so much as the fact that never, in 230 years, has so much of the rest of the world put us in the same category as Herr Hitler or other despotic regimes. Were another nation so powerful as the United States, it is not inconceivable to me now that it could raise a coalition force and come over HERE to liberate US from a regime IT perceives as despotic. That idea was once inconceivable - but only so long as we existed as a force to oppose such ideas. Now that we have reserved the right to "liberate" other nations (if for no other reason than to continue to buy weapons systems the economy depends upon) then all bets are off. Heil Bush.

[RoyGBiv]

8. Glad you mentioned that ...

International pressure played no small part in the formation and continuance of anti-slavery societies and the building of anti-slavery sentiment that played a part in the formation of the Republican party. When push came to shove, international opinion on slavery played a part in our Civil War. England, especially, had every economic incentive to want to split American nation, but it held back its support of the Confederacy in part due to anti-slavery sentiment within the government and especially among the people of England.

As for FDR and Churchill, I disagree somewhat. They didn't really have Hitler figured out. Churchill was a German-o-phobe of long standing who never found a German he didn't hate. It really wouldn't have mattered to him who was in power in Germany as long as that leader had even the hint of the ability to engage in militarily offensive operations. And, what FDR figured out what simply that the US couldn't maintain its isolationist stance in the face of the war engulfing the world.

In any case, I get your point, but it is highly unlikely for a nation as powerful and with so many interests throughout the world as the US is to be in the right when all the rest of that world is wrong. Powerful nations tend to be on the slow end of facing off against injustice, in part because they are often the cause of it or at least assist it.

[GarySeven]

9. I'm not quite sure I agree ...

... with your assessment of the power of anti-slavery movements outside the U.S.; I believe the Republicans already had incorporated the more extremist abolitionist viewpoints in much the same way the modern party has swallowed the extremist Christian viewpoint (recall that Lincoln was a conspiracy theorist on the subject of "slave power.") Also, I suggest that the fact that most of the House of Lords (and Prince Albert) favored the Confederacy while the Commons favored the Union may have had something to do with the reluctance of the Britain to intervene politically. As for the "rest of the world" it would awkward for the Brits to build an alliance with Napoleon already playing games in this hemisphere and Tsar Alexander doing the same in the Ottoman Empire (and being a big wuss besides.) Your points on Churchill and FDR are well taken.

As for the power and interests of a nation making it blind to the essential morality of its own actions, that was precisely my point. Republics historically only live a few centuries and this is perhaps why.

[RoyGBiv]

10. Anti-Slavery Movements

I was offering a long-view interpretation. Without going into a dissertation on the subject ...

It is difficult to define the precise origins of anti-slavery sentiment, but it's much easier to determine that the United States lagged far behind the rest of the world. The anti-slavery societies that sprang up in the US, both religious and secular, in the last part of the 18th century and especially in the early parts of the 19th century were driven ideologically by European anti-slavery societies, again both religious and secular, that had been at work for decades. All the big-name abolitionists of the early 19th century had ties to prominent Europeans and sought both financial and moral support from them. (There was a recent study of this, but I forget the title at the moment.)

Similarly, it is difficult to determine exactly where or when the Republican party, as it came to be leading up to the Civil War, formed because it was actually the merging of various, smaller political parties that sprang up in the late 1840's and early 1850's. A date, place, and names can be applied, but what one sees as the ideological core of the party will result in a different application. Whatever the case, it is clear that at least some of this extended core had arisen out of the various anti-slavery movements that in turn had been in operation for several decades. Other interests took over the direction of the party in the wake of the failed 1856 Presidential election, but the anti-slavery core, in its various forms, remained.

In summary, again using the long-view, the influence of European anti-slavery societies played a part in the formation of anti-slavery sentiment and eventually the Republican party and finally the end of legal slavery in the US.

Sorry for the focus on something other than your original point, which I agree with in the main. This is just an interest of mine, so I tend to go off on a tangent when it gets introduced into a discussion.

[walldude]

3. Thanks for the link

great piece of video there. At least the PNAC is only fooling half of the Americans. Apparently the rest of the world are on to them as well as we are.

[fortyfeetunder]

4. Most DUers know this international opinion

But most Right Wing neocon wackos are clueless. More like the Ugly Americans.

[DS1]

7. Great composition

Very creative, this one is

[UdoKier]

11. Brilliant piece of work.

I was happy to see his showreel. It's nice to know that the corporatists are the ones bankrolling his personal political work! Hehe.

[Swamp Rat]

12. Awesome!

Thanks for the link.

[wingover]

13. Another Stunning Video. Mike Wallace On George Bush.

<http://www.freepressinternational.com/wallacebush.html>