Monday, December 03, 2007

American Lebensraum Past and Present

Boy, I just hate to pile on the criticism of poor National Review but their interviewer sure gives a lot away in one question to the historian David Walker Howe about the history of American imperialism:
MILLER: In the final chapter, you mention the period’s “dark side” and cite “the waging of an aggressive war against Mexico.” Didn’t that war actually have a tremendous upside — i.e., the acquisition of Arizona, California, Nevada, Utah, etc.?
You know, I often have the same criticism of many World War II historians. Sure Nazi Germany had some "dark sides" in their "waging of an aggressive war against various European countries and the conspiratorial web of international Jewry," but if they hadn't squandered it away with that stupid invasion deep into Russia, think of all the lebensraum they would have! Just like us!

3 Comments:

Blogger to scranton said...

An America without (what would one day, in an unforseeable future frought with bloody American expansionism, be called) Flagstaff is an America in which I would prefer not to live.

11:33 PM  
Blogger to scranton said...

On a related note, in a particularly fat-headed column a week ago Jonah Goldberg had this to say about American empire:

http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/opinion/la-oe-goldberg27nov27,0,812102.column?coll=la-news-comment

Paragraph 7: "When they speak of the American empire, critics fall back on cartoonish notions, invoking Hollywoodized versions of ancient Rome or mothballed Marxist caricatures of the British Raj."

Paragraph 11: "Despite its flaws, Britain was the first truly liberal empire. America has picked up where the British left off."

Jonah Goldberg: Mothballed Marxist? Or completely self-defeating, illogical moron?

11:36 PM  
Blogger shrf said...

Flagstaff, Pearl of the Southwest! Paris of anonymous mid-level American cities.

2:47 PM  

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