Some Propositions regarding the United States

1. Ten Observations regarding the United States
   June 2014
   Mohan R. Limaye
   Professor Emeritus
   Boise State University
   
   
   The following propositions/observations of mine are likely to offend some of my readers.  However, you will agree that education is about challenging and being challenged.  Refutation, condemnation, agreement, corroboration – any of these responses are welcome as long as you give reasons and evidence for your reactions:
   
   
   1.     It is a common assumption (and I have been hearing this for a long time) that the U.S. won the Cold War.  If I were a perceptive Russian born and brought up in the “core” of Russia, I would respond, “Forget about the implosion of the Soviet Union.  We {Russia} won the Cold War.  We successfully averted (potential) nuclear attacks from the United States during all those decades.”
   2.     In my view, those Americans who incessantly talk about freedom are the ones who least understand what freedom really is.  These are, for instance, the NRA (National Rifle Association), Tea Party people, and Libertarians.  As I understand the concept of freedom and its practice, there have been only three people in human history who understood and lived a life of “freedom”: The Buddha, Jesus Christ and Mahatma Gandhi.  Sorry, none of them was an American.  As one of my friends puts it, they all had one common characteristic: voluntary acceptance of poverty.  They were persons of zero assets, people with no property.  This does not mean that all beggars are “free”.
   3.     The US imperialist or expansionist and racist tendencies were visible, quite palpable, from way before the U.S. became an independent nation -- in fact, from the time of the first permanent English settlement at Jamestown in 1607.  Certainly, from 1776, some of the Founding Fathers like Jefferson had their covetous eye on the Caribbean islands.
   4.     Talking about the Founding Fathers, I believe that, if we want any progress in this country, we need to stop deifying America’s Founding Fathers.  Raising any questions regarding this veneration is denounced as blasphemous and unpatriotic. In my judgment, we need to move away from the notion of the infallibility of the Founding Fathers.
   5.     The institution, called the US Supreme Court, needs to be abolished.  At best, it is redundant and, at worst, it is obstructive.  The Parliament or any elected body is perfectly capable of deciding on constitutional matters.  The advantage of such an arrangement is that, in democracies, such bodies are accountable to the people, unlike the Supreme Court. 
   6. The challenge for all societies has always been to strike a happy balance, to create a harmonious marriage, between the uniquely capitalistic characteristics of innovation and individual incentive, on the one hand, and the intrinsically socialistic or humanitarian impulse toward equity and compassion, on the other.  Most people may agree that political equality does not have much meaning in the face of economic inequality.
   7. From my standpoint, WWII was a war fought between those who had empires and those who longed for empires.  The British, the French, the Dutch and the Americans (the Allies) already had empires that they wanted to guard jealously, while the Germans, the Italians and the Japanese (the Axis powers) desired to expand their possessions.  Meanwhile, neither of these two parties to the War gave a damn for the colonized, exploited subjects in these empires.
   8. Though the U.S. adores Winston Churchill, I do not admire him at all because he was a hypocrite: Sitting on an empire and talking about noble things like going to war to protect democracy!  Here was a man who did not walk the talk.  And I’m not even mentioning his racism and his cavalier neglect, which resulted in the death of several million Bengalis/Indians of starvation.   
   9. A substantial number of Americans call themselves Christian.  However, in my view, they practice “Christianity without Christ.”  If they really followed the path of Christ, this nation would be overwhelmingly a socialist country, not a plutocracy.  The reality is that this republic is for the rich, by the rich, and of the rich. 
   10 I hope that the U.S. has learned a valuable lesson from its Vietnam War: Once a people find their “identity” and are willing to sacrifice their lives to preserve it, even countries far superior to them (in brute strength and resources) cannot prevail against them.