[quote=chrispedersen;652310]
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Originally Posted by llamabeast;652267I think this is a pity. The US makes a far bigger deal about its history of freedom and equality than in Europe while actually being not especially good at it. [/quote
Llama, your post continue to bother me far after I had logged off.
So, I did some thinking...
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Many of those are erroneous, a few examples... NATO is not a Human Rights organisation: It's a military defence pact founded to stop Communism. Although Woodrow Wilson worked hard on the League of Nations, the USA Senate actually declined to ratify it. The Red Cross was invented by some Swiss guy in the 19th century, and the founder signatories were only European nations.
Furthermore, American dominance and lead in many of these is not a reflection of American moral superiority, but a reflection of its economic, military and political dominance. Western European nations were just as enthusiastic for some of these endeavours. War-shattered nations of 5-60 million people don't take the lead over largely unscathed nations of 200+ million. Especially when the smaller owes the bigger a vast amount of money and needs more to rebuild.
Not only that, but "disinterested generosity" is not entirely true. Many were simple sensible or active self-interest. The UN was because of the importance of setting up a talking shop rather than risk another world war. The World Bank and IMF are very controversial organisations - you need to read up on the controversies and see why and how they've unwelcomely advanced capitalist ideologies that benefit the West, and in some cases have damaged nations. NATO was a mutual self-defence pact where all benefitted.
America has also done a lot of dark things. If funded guerrillas and coups, often against democratically elected leaders (eg. Chile). It propped up a lot of vicious dictators (Korea, Vietnam). Blacks only got the vote in the late 60s. It has invaded sovereign nations (eg. Panama, Grenada, bombed Yugoslavia as you mentioned earlier) when convenient, but not necessarily under UN rules. There's a lot more.
For all that, I think America does have a strong moral heart, in its population if not always its leaders. But there's a lot of worldwide cynicism about America, and there are an awful lot of cracks in any US claim of moral superiority.