Being the sole super-power makes a nation conservative

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

Musing about how socially regressive we are compared to some other first-world nations I found myself wondering, "Just how liberal is a sole super-power likely to be?"

When you have a role--whether sought or stumbled into--as the world's keeper of order then your national character is informed by the conceptual primacy of order. (order in military and diplomatic situations and, probably most importantly, maintaining global financial order.)

Other nations grow coffee, host banks, have white beaches, excel in mechanical engineering... whatever. We maintain order. That's our gig. (Even when we sow chaos it's in the name of order.)

Maintaining order is a conservative value. That doesn't mean liberals crave disorder. I mean conservative value as in the classic, basic "the French revolution sucks" conservatism... tendency toward order and the coercion that entails, reverence of tradition and religion, avoidance/suspicion of change, etc..

Any functioning system will have conservative elements. The question is always the relative dominance of conservative and progressive impulses.

We do have have a formal territorial empire but we are looked to sort of the same way Rome or England were. We view ourselves as the world's policeman and so do many other countries. We are expected be be coercively order-maintaining. We are expected to be vigilant. (And when we go nuts, like Iraq, it upsets the world the same way it would upset any of us to see a cop shoot a handcuffed suspect.)

Cops are not all bad people by any means (and some cops are quite liberal) but on average they are certainly more conservative than average. People with conservative impulses want to be cops and being a cop makes you more conservative because your raison d'etre is the preservation of order. Same goes for the military--not all soldiers are republicans but being a soldier is, on average, a conservative mind-set profession.

I think our role/position in the world cannot help but influence our internal politics, and is a drag on the progressive side of things.

[RC]

1. Yeah but, we don't maintain order. We spread chaos.

Our military bases all over the world are to protect our vital interests... Our most vital interest is our Military-Industrial complex. Their interest is to have their products destroyed so they can supply new ones. So we destabilize governments, nations. War is great for this.

And this is a conservative trait.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

2. In the famous garbled words of Mayor Daley:

"The police aren't out there to create disorder. The role of the police is to preserve disorder."

Spoken, I believe, in the context of trying to defend the police-initiated riots during the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago.

[napoleon_in_rags]

3. I think you describe a valid social perception.

The perception is, if you became the sole superpower, then you must be doing something right. If it ain't broken, don't fix it. The conservative ideology is supposed to correspond to not changing things. However, what gets ignored is that the right also corresponds to an ideology of small government and a lot of other policies that weren't in place during the ascendency of American power, which largely happened post WWII under the influence of FDRs policies. So you have this contradiction of people wanting to go back to a history that never existed. So then you get a president like GWB, who actually changed things a great deal...Or maybe I should say a lot changed under his watch. Anyway imagine true social conservatives sense this, and that uneasiness may lay in part behind the tea party movement where they are crying for "true" conservatives.

Regardless, you do hear this in the rhetoric from Republicans. I remember hearing for ages the argument against HCR being that the US has the greatest healthcare system in the world (the "sole super power" mentality, if it ain't broken don't fix it) but over time the facts didn't bear that out, now even down to things like infant mortality rates being much worse than other countries. So you just hear the "don't fix it" part of the argument, which is much weaker and has led to the title "party of no". I imagine a similar bubble burst is in the works for our "sole super power" status, probably from economic challenges in the coming decades.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

4. re: GWB's radical reign

Remember the conservatives creating the "big government conservative" label to try to explain away Bush's activist profligacy?

That really sends shivers down my spine. "Big government conservative" is so unmistakably a euphemism for fascism... it sounds like a line from a skit where Hitler goes to an image consultant.

[Ildem09]

5. It's a Vain attempt

to maintain hegemony... I say Entropy meet hegemonic stability theory. we reached our apex right after world war II look at how we've declined since then, we haven't really won a major conflict. we haven't fought any near peers since the proxy in vietnam. our military prowess is merely the last days of a old empire grasping for breath.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

6. And historically military strength is the last thing to go

Unlike meaningful measures like % of the world's production of finished goods a faltering empire can maintain/expand its military by government fiat. Just appropriate more money, draft more soldiers. Borrow the money for it on what credit you have.

As late as 1900 England was still producing some crazy amount, like half the world's finished goods. By 1920 they were down to something sad like 20%, and with us drinking their milkshake.

But they remained a disproportionate military power for a while because that's how they conceived of themselves.

I often think of that watching America borrow the money from China to maintain a military budget as large as the rest of the world's combined... just because we think that makes us great.

[Ildem09]

7. bingo

Look at the UK's adventure in the Faulklands that was the last time they engaged in solo military activity for the good of the crown

[grahamhgreen]

8. CHINA is a super-power, one we are in debt to, one that makes all our stuff.

[Ildem09]

9. economically maybe

however their force projection is horrendous in simulations Australia can kick their ass. and its in their geopolitical interest to not exert their economic power so its a very interesting situation

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

10. Probably not quite yet

I don't doubt that China will achieve that status soon but as of today their economy is surprisingly small compared to the US, Japan, Germany, etc. And they don't have much externalized military power. They couldn't invade Taiwan, for instance.

But they'll get there if that's what they seek.

[Ildem09]

11. they may be pased up

by India, or a resurgent natural resource rich Russia.

[grahamhgreen]

13. China, the USSR and the USA had been referred to as superpowers since the 60's.. links.

The media has so propagandized and brainwashed Americans, we've forgotten.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=r-0gAAAAIBAJ&sjid=D3IFAAAAIBAJ&pg=902,1019887&dq=china+ussr+usa+superpower&hl=en

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=GHMxAAAAIBAJ&sjid=DxEEAAAAIBAJ&pg=3336,4175639&dq=china+superpower&hl=en

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=k8sfAAAAIBAJ&sjid=qtgEAAAAIBAJ&pg=4538,1359689&dq=china+superpower&hl=en

[Ildem09]

14. Read what i said

I said in a certain context certainly Economically they can be considered a superpower, however because its in their realpolitik interest not to exercise their power the do not. Militarily they are not they have no force projection in several simulations Australia beat them.

The Soviet Union isnt arround anymore, however, Russia repleate with its natural resources and a general military infrastructure from the soviet union could be a resurgent power.. they are def trying to be

[grahamhgreen]

19. I agree. I think they are emerging as the dominant superpower. It's smart that they border Afghan.

but have somehow got us to do all the fighting over there.

Militarily, they can not be attacked because of their nuclear arsenal. Historically, they've never really been imperialistic.

Economically, they are now entrenched on the world stage.

They are clever strategists, it is my opinion that they are already at war (economically) with us, and winning. I'm just waiting for them to tell American businessmen that the factories and other items we think we own over there really don't belong to us anymore because of some arcane Chinese law or clause in a contract.

I do think it's very interesting that Americans have been reprogrammed into believing that that China never was a superpower, when it was referred to as such during my youth. It really shows just how much control the corporate media really has.

[Jamastiene]

16. They also own us. n/t

[m3e92man8850]

12. ain't that the sad truth

[Jamastiene]

15. I don't know.

It seems that when we had the cold war, we were conservative then too.

The biggest problem is that what we have is not really just capitalism. It's Capitalism Gone Wild. Unfettered greed is causing problems for us around the world and at home. Of course, we can't do away with capitalism, but we could try to make it work better for us and the rest of the world.

[depakid]

17. Aemerica's not a "superpower" - it's a failing state

that maintains a mighty war machine it can finance only at the discretion of the Communist Party of China.

It's not only structurally incapable of solving the most obvious and fundamental of domestic problems- it's created a culture of lies so thick that its own people can't even engage in informed public discourse, because they can't even agree on what objective, demonstrable facts are. Folks simply spout counterfactuals at one another!

What's more- in Kafkaesque fashion- most like it- nay, under the auspices of 1st Amendment idolatry many worship the culture of lies and defend it against any responsible re-regulation of the corporate mass media- waving a constitution that almost none of the people have studied or understands.

Therein lies the drag on progressivism- and the forward looking policies that once upon a time the rest of the world looked up to.

[smalll]

18. Interesting OP. However, by exerting our world-power, as I see it, in a fundamentally progressive

sense ---

means that, despite the semi-good points you make, when you tie us to late-18th-century, European, monarchy-and-nobility-based, De Maisrtre-style "the French Revolution sucks" ideology, you are wrong.

We brought liberalism, in the largest sense of the word, to Prussian-ridden Germany, to samurai-ridden Japan (at the end of the last great war) --

we saved half of Korea for it too --

And at the end of the Eighties, we were the only great power in the world who stood up forthrightly against the USSR, and helped that wall to come down:

And yes, now, we are the last great superpower. Thank God it is us. Thank God it is we, the last, best hope of earth, that emerges as the last great superpower at the end of history --

We Could Do A Lot Worse! (Yest We Can!)

:patriot: