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Jun. 30, 2007
"Patriotism is the mask that covers the most glaring of inconsistencies."
That's my favorite line from the great book, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. Patriotism nauseates me, because it's always been just an excuse to murder other groups of people. In honor of Independence Day--that most patriotic of holidays--I write this account explaining how the U.S. (supposedly the greatest country on earth, depending on one's interpetation of the word great) has been on the wrong side of most of its wars throughout history. The American Revolution was an unnecessary blood bath. Look at Canada--independent without resorting to war. Two-thirds of American colonists either didn't care who won the Revolutionary War, or favored remaining under British control. If the Americans had accepted the Stamp Act of 1765, the much harsher Townshend Act would've never come into existence as a replacement. The Stamp Act was a reasonable tax. It was expected to bring in 60,000 pounds annually, while the cost of maintaining British troops for protection against the French, the Spanish, and the Indians was 350,000 pounds. England had just spent a fortune vanquishing the French and Indians, so big slaveholding land-barons could be safe and prosperous. A tiny tax seems a small price to pay, by modern standards. The crooked barons who ruled that society wanted local control, and they conned enough of the populace into fighting this ridiculous war, thus creating the United States. The invasion of Mexico during 1846 was an obvious war of aggression. The U.S. simply took a big chunk of another country without provocation. The Civil War started because half of the U.S. considered the election of Lincoln an insult. Southerners insisted slavery was morally justified, and they couldn't tolerate Lincoln, the first president who morally rejected slavery, though he had no intention of outlawing the practice. Nevertheless, his election insulted the slave-based culture of the South, and therefore they demanded independence, leading to another unnecessary war. The Spanish-American War was an open-and-shut case of imperialism. The U.S. attacked and took Spanish colonies after fabricating an incident (accusing Spain for the loss of the USS Maine, which sank due to its crew's own negligence). The United States entered World War I because the munitions industry bribed politicans into it. After the war, Congress investigated and confirmed this little known fact. The U.S. was not threatened by Germany, and Germany justifiably sank American vessels shipping arms to England and France. If it wasn't for U.S. entry into World War I, Germany would have prevailed, and there would have been no World War II--and no holocaust. Blame America for two of the biggest humanitarian disasters of the twentieth century. The U.S. overreached during the Korean War and threatened China's sovereignty, prolonging that war by two years when the Chinese understandably crossed the Yalu River and gave the U.S. a severe whipping. The U.S. had no business becoming involved in the Vietnamese Civil War. The amount of bombs dropped on civilians was psychopathically obscene, nothing short of criminal. The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution was another clear example of a fabricated excuse along the lines of "taxation without representation," "Remember the Alamo," "Remember the Maine," and "Remember the Lusitania." Now add "Weapons of Mass Destruction." The U.S. sent 150,000 troops all the way across the world to invade a poor country of brown-skinned people, who were no threat to us. Happy July 4th. ------------ About the author Mark Gelbart: My book, Talk Radio, is a black comedy about a radio talk show host who gets kidnapped and psychologically tortured by a loser. http://www.authorsden.com/marksgelbart Email: agelbart@aol.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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