The Holy Grail of Democracy

[DanaC]

I actually was not referring necessarily to slavery. Though obviously that crossed my mind. That was soimething which the democracy of America was built upon. I am thinking more widely of the way the current "democratic" states of the western world are built upon and continue to be built upon the backs of less free people's. For instance......There are approximately half a million children working as child slaves in the production of Cocoa for the sweet treats we westerners so enjoy...

.Now that we feel ourselves above the dirty jobs we employ others to do them for us....at the very loweest rates we can get away with....consequently so many of our luxury goods are made with little nimble fingers that anyone looking at our society from the vantage point of history may form a very different picture of our western "freedom" than we might.

The economic imperatives of capitalism require that there be a large wash of people at the bottom, bearing the weight of the world.

Added to that is the tendency of the western world to accept all manner of inequity for other countries, all with our support as long as it is politically expedient to us ( Saudi Arabia, Kashmir, Palestine)

I havent even touched on that ol'chestnut of cultural imperialism. I imagine many of you Americans hold in mind an image of America as the young and feisty nation that stuck one in the eye of the old British empire. But those days are long long gone. America is the new Rome. For many of us outside America there is no doubt in our minds we are living in an American Hegemony. It doesnt feel so oppressive to us English after all we share a language.....But if I was a banana grower in the carribean or a Palestinian in Gaza, or an Argentinian buisinessman....I may not feel so free of the American cultural whip.