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Message: <blockquote data-quote="TheCosmicKid" data-source="post: 7740102" data-attributes="member: 6683613">Nobody at the time could or did predict the massive effect the United States would eventually have on world history (regardless of whether it was for better or for worse). Similarly, we can't predict whether our actions now will have those kinds of consequences. So we can't base our decisions on them, and we shouldn't justify the decisions of others in the past based on them. This line of reasoning is not so much "wrong" as it is not useful.No, that doesn't follow. You can say one without the other.No, that definitely doesn't follow. You can advocate that things which exist are illegitimate and that things which do not exist ought to.Disagree. I think you should read up some more on the events leading up to the French Revolution and the history of British democracy, because both were well underway before the first shots were fired at Lexington. In particular, Britain had already tried absolute monarchy, overthrown it, established a republican dictatorship, overthrown that, and finally settled on a parliamentary system with a figurehead king. The democratic ideals born of this experience -- to wit, John Locke and Thomas Hobbes -- were much more an inspiration for the United States than the other way around.But all that's beside the point. Even if the United States really were the fountainhead of all the good in the modern world, you would still not be obliged to defend any of the bad things Europeans did in the Americas or anywhere else.</blockquote>

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