Core assumptions and fun-house mirrors

I decided yesterday that a large of what's wrong with our country now is attributable to attitudes that have their origins in WWII.

The US participated to prevent Germany and Japan from overrunning everything and "Taking over the world". Germany, in particular had launched an offensive campaign and appeared able to pull it off.

By opposing them, we were clearly on the side of good. Our victory on the other hand, instead of cementing the notion that no one nation "owns the world" somehow gave rise to the idea that having defeated the axis powers, we had inherited the right to control the world having taken it away from the axis powers. The fact that that there were two nations in that position made it even worse because any abuse of the notion of self-determination could be justified by the fact that if we didn't do it the Communists would.

When the USSR came tumbling down, so did all the justification we might have had for continuing our stance.

This explains handily why RWA's in this country invoke the "Coming Islamic World Caliphate" and other such nonsense. They still need someone who wants to "take over the world" because otherwise we have no moral right to interfere with self-determination ANYWHERE.

This remains the elephant in the room however, which Glenn so clearly describes in the article. Discussing whether or not our troops have the right to be someplace in particular is absolutely taboo.

Of course they do. Isn't contrrol of the world what we won in WWII?