Originally posted by: Jhhnn
I'm really having trouble figuring out why Americans are so opposed to others demanding the same thing we hold so dear...
Because for many, their real interest in any broad-minded principles extends about as far as their usefulness for feeling self-righteously smug, while grabbing all they can?
All men being created equal didn't quite extend to the Native Americans or blacks, and not to mankind, i.e., women - and those were in our better days, before being the world's only superpower with the military spending of the rest of the world combined and where any itch we feel is easily turned into a threat to our nation justifying action, when the mere implied threat of such action from our overwhelming military might isn't coercive enough to get others to do as they're told.
Need we look further than Vietnam where the people wanted tobe free of colonial rulers (France, Japan, US puppets), and we killed millions of them for our own reasons - there the people there had gone so far to make it clear as to model their own 'declaration of independance' based on ours?
Need we look forther than the Mexican-American war, a war we started to take half of Mexico under false pretenses, being nothing more than a bully?
Need we look further than our treatment of Mexican immigrant workers, with no care for their well-being in Mexico, but taking advantage of their services here, on the one hand keeping it illegal to deny them benefits, rights and our own minimum wage, and on the other keeping it easy enough for them to come where we rarely prosecute employers and have over 10% of the population of Mexico now inside the US, while we are happy to tell the grand stories of our own immigrant ancestors?
There are those who are more noble in the US, and those less so.
You ask why those who are less so say what they do. For them, the principles are little more than marketing to make them feel good about their country, not things to do.