That the relationship between America and its democratic offspring accords with this dysfunctional familial dynamic occurred to me when I heard some Canadian intellectuals going on about America's gun culture post Tuscon - I'm not going to offer some blanket defense of American gun laws, but I would like to have asked these sanctimonious pissants how a country could possibly hope to field and maintain as viable a military as robust as America's without being able to rely on a culture that was comfortable with the idea of a gun? Of course they would have no answer and would fall back on hypothetical constructions entirely detached from reality - like I said, spoiled kids without a clue as how to get on in the real world.
Problem is, these spoiled scions usually only get their comeuppance when dad is dead and the fortune is gone. Nazi Germany's and Soviet Russia's perceptions of America and the strategies generated thereof were at least in part based on the belief that day was at hand - now China's machinations make the same assumption. I wonder if this time they'll be right?
From Max Boot at Commentary:
That tensions remain even after the two presidents broke bread together should hardly be a surprise. Keep in mind the larger picture. Numerous countries have ascended to great power status in the past 1,000 years, as China now aspires to do. Not a single one managed to make the transition peacefully. Not the Ottomans, not the Habsburgs, not the French, not the British, not the Germans, not the Russians. Not even the Americans. We like to think of ourselves as a peace-loving nation, but that’s not how our neighbors see us — and with good cause. Remember, as soon as we were strong enough, we went to war with Mexico to wrestle away the Southwest, and then, for good measure, we went to war with Spain to wrestle away Cuba and the Philippines. These were the actions, recall, of a liberal democracy. Autocratic regimes like the one in Beijing tend to be much more belligerent.
