And here you go again in your manifest destiny rhetoric.
Maybe I'm neither - I guess I'm basically agnostic but when it comes to "ruling" the world, pantheism is much more preferable to monotheism. The thought og giving too much power to a people that doesn't know that "Lebanon is more than just the name of a little one-horse town in Tennessee actually scares the **** out of me.

Power is taken not given. If it were given the world certainly would have claimed it back by now. You might hate it but imho it's more productive to look into the nature of the beast, i.e. the never-changing centrality of power in world affairs. Hell yes we're an empire, and geographically-challenged Tennessee rubes aren't really the point. To wit: Bush and Blair are lame ducks now, the bums effectively having been thrown out by their angry electorates. Do you seriously think Iraq policy will change now? In the next decade? David Remick of the New Yorker said it best: "The atipathy to, even hatred of, George Bush among some Britons is so intense that Blair's most unforgivable sin seems to be his second-banana role in the Anglo-American alliance... The British have not soured on the United States so much as they have come to long for a Prime Minister who will remove the taint of subservience from the relationship." ... and I wouldn't hold my breath.

I'm not convinced that this whole "let's not cry over spilled milk" approach is at all productive. And you may be right - some ignorant Tennessean rednecks might not really be the point but neither are Bush's favorite European pet politicians. At a certain level power might be taken not given but to reach this level - in a democracy - you need to be given a certain power to start you off. But I don't want to go back to accusing you guys of empowering the wrong guy in 2000. What really freaks me out is that there hardly is anybody outside Bush's circle to take his place. Madame Clinton won't make it - and she is hardly any less narrow minded and power hungry than Bush. She really is just George W. with breasts (in itself a revolting image). At this point you Americans have no perspective than standing your course, which obviously is a mode of behavior deeply rooted in your cultural identity. You are not ABLE to change, you've been stagnating for more than 200 years now - and that's the whole point. Even if Bush's popularity is at an all time low, the American people will go and elect the next dictator. You just never learn... and ride on into the setting sun.

Replied on a new thread