A Quote by Gael Garcia Bernal
Everywhere in the world, we're aware that democracy has incredible flaws and that the word has been used, especially in the United States, to wage wars.
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Actually, the phrase "national security" is barely used until the 1930s. And there's a reason. By then, the United States was beginning to become global. Before that the United States had been mostly a regional power - Britain was the biggest global power. After the Second World War, national security is everywhere, because we basically owned the world, so our security is threatened everywhere. Not just on our borders, but everywhere - so you have to have a thousand military bases around the world for "defense."
Our founding fathers detested the idea of a democracy and labored long to prevent America becoming one. Once again - the word 'democracy' does not appear in the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States, or the constitution of any of the fifty states. Not once. Furthermore, take a look at State of the Union speeches. You won't find the 'D' word uttered once until the Wilson years.
Now we're in a situation where democracy has been taken into the workshop and fixed, remodeled to be market-friendly. So now the United States is fighting wars to instal democracies. First it was topple them, now it's instal them, right? And this whole rise of corporate-funded NGOs in the modern world, this notion of CSR, corporate social responsibility - it's all part of a New Managed Democracy. In that sense, it's all part of the same machine.
Gone is any mention of American exceptionalism. I happen to believe that twice, three times in the 20th century, the United States saved Western democracy, both World War - both World Wars and the Cold War.
In the Islamic world, the U.S. is seen in two quite different ways. One view recognizes what an extraordinary country the U.S. is.The other view is of the official United States, the United States of armies and interventions. The United States that in 1953 overthrew the nationalist government of Mossadegh in Iran and brought back the shah. The United States that has been involved first in the Gulf War and then in the tremendously damaging sanctions against Iraqi civilians. The United States that is the supporter of Israel against the Palestinians.
Russia's interference in the United States' 2016 election could not have been more different from what the United States does to promote democracy in other countries, efforts for which I was responsible as a State Department official.
I believe the number is 70% of the world's refugees since World War II have been taken in by the United States. Every year, year in, year out, the United States admits more legal immigrants than the rest of the world combined. The United States has granted amnesty before to three million illegals and appears prepared to do it again.
I've used the prestige and influence of having been a president of the United States as effectively as possible. And secondly, I've still been able to carry out my commitments to peace and human rights and environmental quality and freedom and democracy and so forth.
We often confuse or loosely use the ideas of crony capitalism or neoliberalism to actually avoid using the word "capitalism", but once you've actually seen, let's say, what's happening in India and the United States - that this model of US economics packaged in a carton that says "democracy" is being forced on countries all over the world, militarily if necessary, has in the United States itself resulted in 400 of the richest people owning wealth equivalent [to that] of half of the population.
I used to respect the United States and the American dream. Now I consider the United States the biggest threat to Internet freedom and peace in the world.
We think of violence as being conflict and fighting and wars and so forth, but the most ongoing horrific measure of violence is in the horrible poverty of the Third World... and the poverty in the United States as well. We have our own Third World here. And we have to first become aware of that and how to help and solve that.
To the extent that the United States has, I don't like the word hegemony, the United States has influence around the world, I don't think that's based on to any significant degree on the fact that countries use the dollar as their major reserve.
The United States, working closely with the United Kingdom and others, established the liberal world order in the wake of World War II. The goal was to ensure that the conditions that had led to two world wars in 30 years would never again arise.
Now therefore, be it Resolved by the Fiftieth Annual Convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars of the United States, That we hereby declare that we are unalterably opposed to any program which would entail the surrender of any part of the sovereignty of the United States of America in favor of a world government.
Don't forget Drive-By Media think that most of the so-called victims in the world are in that state because the United States has not been compassionate or fair enough when there have been Republican presidents or Republican Congresses. They don't see the United States as a way out, as a way up. They see the United States as a collection pool, if you will.
I think that it's very important to have the United States' engagement in many situations we have around the world, be it in Syria, be it in the African context. The United States represents an important set of values, human rights, values related to freedom, to democracy. And so the foreign policy engagement of the United States is a very important guarantee that those values can be properly pursued.
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