Jerry: You've set up the classic paper tiger, or is it a red herring,
   (or maybe straw dog?) to tear down.  Who here is claiming that "your
   kind can never be expected to know how to behave" etc.  I was just
   challenging a tone that I hear all over the place now that politics
   has gotten so raw-red-meat-y. That tone can be characterized as: "it's
   our country, we figured out how to be rich, powerful, and morally
   superior, why can't you?"  Pardon me if I unfairly lumped your comment
   in with that sort of despicable rhetoric.

    And you, as a historian, must know better than I do that saying that
   "we" have a respect for other cultures and know how to behave better
   then "them" is, at best, a complicated statement inviting challenge. I
   *do* mean who are "we" that are included in this "culture". And
   moreover, I also mean what is "better"?  I have a very hard time
   claiming any kind of moral superiority for "us" even defined narrowly,
   let alone the "us" that includes Pat Buchanan.  So, maybe I'm an
   unreformed relativist.

   Harruummph.

   Eric Siegel
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