| Quotations - General |
[Quote No.35066] Need Area: Friends > General
"Someone said, 'What do you say concerning the principle that injury should be recompensed with kindness?' The Master said, 'With what then will you recompense kindness? Recompense injury with justice, and recompense kindness with kindness.' " - Confucius
The Analects
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[Quote No.35072] Need Area: Friends > General
"The hand that cradles the rock rules the world. [This is a rearrangement of the saying 'The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world' which is about the power of a mother's influence on a child, to make the point that power resides with the most physically powerful, with the greatest potential to force others. Another opinion about power residing with the most financially powerful is the saying, 'The Golden Rule means that those with the gold make the rules']" - Donald E. Westlake
Novelist. Quote from his novel, 'Somebody Owes Me Money'.
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[Quote No.35073] Need Area: Friends > General
"All people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed." - Barak Obama
U.S. President. Quote from his speech in Cairo 2009.
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[Quote No.35092] Need Area: Friends > General
"Timid men prefer the calm of despotism to the boisterous sea of liberty." - Thomas Jefferson
Letter to Philip Mazzei, 1796.
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[Quote No.35097] Need Area: Friends > General
"The test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough [including practical education and opportunities to help themselves] for those who have too little." - Franklin D. Roosevelt
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[Quote No.35098] Need Area: Friends > General
"It is not right to spare a wrongdoer at the risk of his falling into graver sin... We must not only do harm to no man, but also restrain him from sin or punish his sin, so that either the man himself who is punished may profit by his experience, or others be warned by his example." - Augustine of Hippo
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[Quote No.35102] Need Area: Friends > General
"[In war or tricky political situations it is not unusual for governments and their oppositions to, preferrably quietly, subvert human rights. They justify this on the basis of the greater priority to win.] The Constitution has never greatly bothered any wartime president." - Francis Biddle
President Franklin Roosevelt's Attorney General , writing in 1962.
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[Quote No.35114] Need Area: Friends > General
"If you would judge, understand." - Seneca
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[Quote No.35116] Need Area: Friends > General
"Happy are all free peoples, too strong to be dispossessed. But blessed are those among nations who dare to be strong for the rest!" - Elizabeth Barrett Browning
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[Quote No.35117] Need Area: Friends > General
"The sword [of military force] is the axis of the world..." - Charles De Gaulle
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[Quote No.35123] Need Area: Friends > General
"Violence breeds violence...Pure goals can never justify impure or violent action...They say the means are after all just means. I would say means are after all everything. As the means, so the end....If we take care of the means we are bound to reach the end sooner or later." - Mahatma Gandhi
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[Quote No.35126] Need Area: Friends > General
"Kindness can become its own motive. We are made kind by being kind [and learning its subjective pleasure]." - Eric Hoffer
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[Quote No.35131] Need Area: Friends > General
"If one has no affection for a person or a system, one should feel free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite violence." - Mahatma Gandhi
Lawyer and Indian political leader. Quote from his trial for 'exciting disaffection toward His Majesty's Government', 18 March 1922.
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[Quote No.35134] Need Area: Friends > General
"Nothing is so galling to people, not broken in from the birth, as a paternal, or, in other words a meddling government, a government which tells them what to read, and say, and eat, and drinking, and wear." - T.B. MacAulay
Southey's Colloquies, 1830.
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[Quote No.35137] Need Area: Friends > General
"Men would rather be starving and free than fed in bonds." - Pearl S. Buck
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[Quote No.35138] Need Area: Friends > General
"Set aside justice, then, and what are kingdoms but great bands of brigands? For what are brigands' bands but little kingdoms? For in brigandage the hands of the underlings are directed by the commander, the confederacy of them is sworn together, and the pillage is shared by law among them. And if those ragamuffins grow up to be able enough to keep forts, build habitations, possess cities, and conquer adjoining nations, then their government is no longer called brigandage, but graced with the eminent name of a kingdom, given and gotten not because they have left their practices but because they use them without danger of law. Elegant and excellent was that pirate's answer to the great Macedonian Alexander, who had taken him; the king asking him how he durst molest the seas so, he replied with a free spirit: 'How darest thou molest the whole earth? But because I do it only with a little ship, I am called brigand: thou doing it with a great navy art called emperor.' " - St. Augustine
City of God, Book IV [5th century]
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[Quote No.35156] Need Area: Friends > General
"If I take care of my character, my reputation will take care of me." - Dwight L. Moody
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[Quote No.35151] Need Area: Friends > General
"...most folks are apt to forget favors you've done them, fact is, they remember the favors they do for you far better." - Louis L'Amour
Famous US author. Quote from his novel, 'The First Fast Draw'.
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[Quote No.35152] Need Area: Friends > General
"To have friends a man [or woman] has to be friendly and to get others to think of you, you have to think of others." - Louis L'Amour
Famous US author. Quote from his novel, 'The First Fast Draw'.
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[Quote No.35164] Need Area: Friends > General
"The common argument that crime is caused by poverty is a kind of slander on the poor." - H. L. Mencken
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[Quote No.35169] Need Area: Friends > General
"We recently traveled to Greece and Iceland in order to better understand the situations in each of these financial wastelands [after the 2007-9 Great Financial Crisis]. We met with current and former government officials as well as large banks and other systemically important companies and wealthy families. This trip confirmed our [negative] quantitative analysis and ultimately was a lesson in psychology. We met many interesting people in both places but virtually all of them lived in some state of denial with regard to each country’s finances. As Mark Twain once said, 'Denial ain’t just a river in Egypt.' [Besides denial, corruption was endemic as it has always been in nearly all statist-socialist government bureaucracies throughout history.] ...Shortly after this meeting, my host informed me of an audit recently done on one of the largest hospitals in Athens. This hospital was hemorrhaging Euros, and the Greek government is required to make up the deficit with capital injections. Officials began an inquiry into these losses and found 45 gardeners on staff at the hospital. The most interesting fact about the hospital was that it did not have a garden!" - Hayman Advisors
Dallas-based macro financial advisors. Quoted in their March, 2011 quarterly newsletter.
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[Quote No.35172] Need Area: Friends > General
"Every abuse ought to be reformed, unless the reform is more dangerous than the abuse itself." - Voltaire
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[Quote No.35176] Need Area: Friends > General
"I have seen great intolerance shown in support of tolerance." - Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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[Quote No.35180] Need Area: Friends > General
"I look upon an increase in the power of the State [statism] with the greatest fear because, although while apparently doing good by minimizing exploitation, it does the greatest harm to mankind by destroying individuality [especially personal freedom, incentive and initiative] which lies at the heart of all progress." - Mahatma Gandhi
Lawyer and Indian spiritual and political leader.
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[Quote No.35186] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Be skeptical of newspaper reports and journalists because...] Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices." - Voltaire
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[Quote No.35190] Need Area: Friends > General
"In a free, democratic society, people can speak their mind. This helps others clarify their own thoughts before they vote. Some people's comments are factual and well reasoned. Others are either deliberately or inadvertently false or poorly reasoned. So while it is important to let others say their piece, it is absolutely vital that people learn to examine critically what others say - including the media. Therefore skepticism is a fundamental part of the attitudes required to make a success of the freedom a democratic political system gives to its citizens." - Seymour@imagi-natives.com
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[Quote No.35192] Need Area: Friends > General
"Our [US] Constitution ...empowers Congress to set up a military establishment for 'the common defence ... of the United States,' the better to achieve the Preamble's goal of 'secur[ing] the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.' Armed liberation of oppressed peoples the world over wasn't part of the original mission." - Gene Healy
'Don't Beat the War Drum for Libya', March 8, 2011.
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[Quote No.51364] Need Area: Friends > General
"Individuals and societies that believe in individual freedom - informed choice - develop and promote systems of morality, ethics, customs, rules and laws that protect that freedom from fraud [i.e. skepticism and critical thinking skills as well as anti-fraud legislation] or force [i.e. self-defense skills, anti-force legislation and police and armed forces]." - Seymour@imagi-natives.com
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[Quote No.35199] Need Area: Friends > General
"What people say behind your back is your standing in the community." - Edgar Watson Howe
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[Quote No.35212] Need Area: Friends > General
"I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents." - James Madison
Pertaining to Congress' appropriation $15,000 for relief of French refugees, 1794.
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[Quote No.35221] Need Area: Friends > General
"Cherish your human connections: your relationships with friends and family." - Barbara Bush
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[Quote No.35233] Need Area: Friends > General
"What, then, do they want a government for? Not to regulate commerce; not to educate the people; not to teach religion, not to administer charity; not to make roads and railways; but simply to defend the natural rights of man [that is freedom from force and fraud] — to protect person and property — to prevent the aggressions of the powerful upon the weak — in a word, to administer justice. This is the natural, the original, office of a government. It was not intended to do less: it ought not to be allowed to do more." - Herbert Spencer
'The Proper Sphere of Government', 1843.
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[Quote No.35237] Need Area: Friends > General
"Individual freedom is the lack of formal or informal external restraints imposed by one man [or woman] or group of men [women or people] upon another [individual or group], save for the collective coercion aimed at preventing individuals [or groups] from acting forcibly or fraudulently against their neighbors. It is the absence of human impediment to the voluntary action of fellow human beings." - Ridgway K. Foley, Jr.
'The Freeman', published 1971.
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[Quote No.35239] Need Area: Friends > General
"The highest of distinctions is service to others!" - King George VI
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[Quote No.35247] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Self-Defense and Martial Arts: war and potential extreme conflict - safeguards and responses:] We sleep safe in our beds because rough men [and women] stand ready in the night to visit violence on those who would do us harm." - George Orwell
Famous journalist and author. [Refer the analogy of peaceful sheep, the dogs that protect them and the wolves that would hurt them from Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, the US Military psychologist and author in his book, 'On Combat, The Psychology and Physiology of Deadly Conflict in War and in Peace', published 2004.]
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[Quote No.35248] Need Area: Friends > General
"In no part of the [US] Constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department. [i.e. If a US President launched an attack on another country without prior congressional authorization, he would violate the Constitution -which defines the powers the people consent to release to their government public servants -and be breaking his Presidential oath to uphold the US Constitution. It could well be considered 'breaking the law' and an impeachable offence!] " - James Madison
He was one of the founding fathers of the United States and served as its Secretary of State under Jefferson and its fourth president.
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[Quote No.35251] Need Area: Friends > General
"Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances [which can drag a country into a war that isn't in their interests] with none. [The Founding Fathers of the US Constitution expressed admiration for the 'Swiss Model' of armed neutrality that has managed to keep Switzerland out of the vicious wars of Europe for hundreds of years.]" - Thomas Jefferson
US President. Quote from his inauguration.
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[Quote No.35252] Need Area: Friends > General
"It is not right to spare a wrongdoer at the risk of his falling into graver sin....We must not only do harm to no man, but also restrain him from sin or punish his sin, so that either the man himself who is punished may profit by his experience, or others be warned by his example." - Augustine of Hippo
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[Quote No.35254] Need Area: Friends > General
"[When a government says that it is there for all citizens it would be wise to check those facts. One of the first groups to be protected by any government is their own political backers as this article explains:]
A silver lining in the dark cloud of the recession that began in 2008 is that it has awakened the [US] nation's beleaguered private-sector work force to the fact that government employees are prospering at their expense.
For the private sector, the recession meant layoffs, pay cuts and reduced benefits. State and local employees felt nary a scratch. In fact, life is pretty good if your paycheck comes from the taxpayer.
In 2009, hourly compensation (wages plus benefits) for the average [US] state and local government employee was 45 percent higher than the private-sector average... 'Layoffs and discharges' in state and local government occur at just one-third the rate of the private sector.
Public-sector unions have had a hand in creating this privileged class of citizens, and any threat to their power is viewed as a threat to their existence. That's why Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker's move to limit collective bargaining privileges for state and local employees became a national battleground. If the state that gave birth to public-sector unionism were to fall, the union dominos across the country could follow.
Now that Walker has won the legislative battle, the unions and their allies on the Left are determined to make sure that Walker, and those who believe that taxpayer interests should come before union privileges, lose the war.
The unions and the Left are scurrying to raise millions of dollars to fund recall campaigns against the Wisconsin senators who dared challenge their interests. Walker himself is likely to be targeted. They're also mobilizing manpower and money to head off similar threats in other states.
Gerald McEntee, president of the 1.6 million-member American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, says that 'the country is now seeing more clearly the radical right-wing effort to destroy the power of working men and women.'
The attempt to make common cause with 'working men and women' is as repulsive as it is backward. Employee compensation accounts for half of the money state and local governments spend each year. That money is taken from working men and women in the form of income, sales, property, and a multitude of other levies on the private sector.
One can sense how desperate McEntee and his ilk are to maintain their grip on the taxpayers' wallets by the ridiculousness of their rhetoric. In trying to rally the public to his cause, McEntee enlists Lech Walesa and Pope John Paul II, while tarring the opposition as kindred spirits of the Bolsheviks and Iranian mullahs.
Although the government employee unions might be desperate, they also possess substantial financial resources and a motivated network of support. They also benefit from an unwarranted level of sympathy in the mainstream media.
Therefore, it will be up to the 'forgotten' men and women — the unorganized, and often unheard, taxpayers — to fight back against a force that views it as its 'right' to live comfortably at their expense. [Please consider carefully whether Keynesian aggregate demand stimulus which governments often bring out in recessions as the reason for their greater spending would not be even more effective if everyone shared the pain - so those in government accepted lower wages as non-public employees have to or at the very least a pay freeze. Then there would be even more money to stimulate more sectors of the economy and the government wouldn't have to go into so much growth restricting debt to do it.]" - Tad DeHaven
Tad DeHaven is a budget analyst at the Cato Institute and co-editor of Downsizing Government.org. This article appeared in 'The DC Examiner' on March 22, 2011.
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[Quote No.35257] Need Area: Friends > General
"I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts [and not some deceptive spin developed by a public relations guru]." - Abraham Lincoln
US President
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[Quote No.35259] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Self-Defence and Martial Arts:] A man [or a country] cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies." - Oscar Wilde
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[Quote No.35266] Need Area: Friends > General
"A good motto is: Use friendliness but do not use your friends." - Frank Crane
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[Quote No.35276] Need Area: Friends > General
"There is no power on earth that can neutralize the influence of a high, simple and useful life." - Booker T. Washington
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[Quote No.35279] Need Area: Friends > General
"Avoid the necessity of those overgrown [more than necessary for self-defense] military establishments which, under any form of government, are inauspicious to liberty [in the country -due to their high cost funded by higher taxes than otherwise required, and in other countries -due to the resentment and resulting retaliation any non-self-defence-necessary military 'intervention' causes]." - George Washington
Farewell Address, September 26, 1796.
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[Quote No.35281] Need Area: Friends > General
"The first casualty when war comes is truth." - Hiram Warren Johnson
In 1918 this US Senator is purported to have said this but it was not recorded.
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[Quote No.35282] Need Area: Friends > General
"'When war is declared, truth is the first casualty'." - Arthur Ponsonby
In 1928
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[Quote No.35283] Need Area: Friends > General
"Among the calamities of war may be jointly numbered the diminution of the love of truth, by the falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages." - Samuel Johnson
From 'The Idler', 1758.
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[Quote No.35290] Need Area: Friends > General
"What do we live for, if it is not to make life less difficult to each other?" - George Eliot
(1819-1880), pseudonym for novelist Mary Ann Evans
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[Quote No.35293] Need Area: Friends > General
"[Individuals should try to understand their country's and their neighbours' foreign policies as it helps explain their actions, including acts of war, etc and others' complaints of interference, imperialism, etc and should help inform them and possibly effect their voting in a democracy - as their government is acting in their name. An example of a significant foreign policy of one country is explained in the following article.] The Monroe Doctrine is a policy of the United States introduced on December 2, 1823. It stated that further efforts by European countries to colonize land or interfere with states in the Americas would be viewed as acts of aggression requiring U.S. intervention. The doctrine was introduced by President Monroe when he was enraged at the actions being executed around him. The Monroe Doctrine asserted that the Western Hemisphere was not to be further colonized by European countries but that the United States would neither interfere with existing European colonies nor meddle in the internal concerns of European countries [i.e. If you don't interfere in our business, we won't interfere in yours!]. The Doctrine was issued at a time when many Latin American countries were on the verge of becoming independent from the Spanish Empire. The United States, reflecting concerns raised by Great Britain, ultimately hoped to avoid having any European power take over Spain's colonies.... The US President, James Monroe, first stated the doctrine during his seventh annual State of the Union Address to Congress. It became a defining moment in the foreign policy of the United States and one of its longest-standing tenets, and would be invoked by many U.S. statesmen and several U.S. presidents, including Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Herbert Hoover, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan and others.
It would have been nearly impossible for Monroe to envision that its intent and impact would persist with only minor variations for almost two centuries. Its primary objective was to free the newly independent colonies of Latin America from European intervention and control (thus ensuring US national security). The doctrine put forward that the New World and the Old World were to remain distinctly separate spheres of influence, for they were composed of entirely separate and independent nations....
International Response: Because the U.S. lacked both a credible navy and army at the time, the doctrine was largely disregarded internationally. However, the Doctrine met with tacit British approval, and the Royal Navy mostly enforced it tacitly, as part of the wider Pax Britannica, which enforced the neutrality of the seas. This was in line with the developing British policy of laissez-faire free trade against mercantilism: fast-growing British industry was ever seeking outlets for its manufactured goods, and were the newly independent Latin American states to become Spanish colonies once more, British access to these markets would be cut off by Spanish mercantilist policy...
The 'Roosevelt Corollary': As the United States emerged as a world superpower, the Monroe Doctrine came to define a recognized sphere of control that few dared to challenge [Might is right?]. Before becoming president, Theodore Roosevelt had proclaimed the rationale of the Monroe Doctrine in supporting intervention in the Spanish colony of Cuba in 1898. After he became president, and following the Venezuela Crisis of 1902–1903, Roosevelt added the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine in 1904. This corollary asserted the right of the United States to intervene in Latin America in cases of 'flagrant and chronic wrongdoing by a Latin American Nation'.
The Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine was invoked to intervene militarily in Latin America to stop the spread of European influence [reducing the influence of the United States].
The Roosevelt Corollary was the most significant amendment to the original doctrine and was widely opposed by critics, who argued that the Monroe Doctrine was originally meant to stop European influence in the Western Hemisphere. This amendment was designed to preclude violation of the doctrine by European powers that would ultimately argue that the independent nations were 'mismanaged or unruly'.
Critics, however, argued that the Corollary simply asserted U.S. domination in that area, essentially making them a 'hemispheric policeman'. It is hard to argue that the Western Hemisphere is not entirely a United States sphere of influence, with the obvious exceptions of Cuba and Venezuela....
The Cold War: During the Cold War, the Monroe Doctrine was applied to Latin America by the framers of U.S. foreign policy. When the Cuban Revolution established a socialist government with ties to the Soviet Union, after trying to establish fruitful relations with the U.S., it was argued that the spirit of the Monroe Doctrine should be again invoked, this time to prevent the further spreading of Soviet-backed Communism in Latin America. During the Cold War, the United States thus often provided intelligence and military aid to Latin and South American governments that claimed or appeared to be threatened by Communist subversion. This, in turn, led to some domestic controversy within the United States, especially among some members of the left who argued that the Communist threat and Soviet influence in Latin America was greatly exaggerated.(who?)
The debate over this new spirit of the Monroe Doctrine came to a head in the 1980s, as part of the Iran-Contra affair. Among other things, it was revealed that the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency had been covertly training 'Contra' guerrilla soldiers in Honduras in an attempt to destabilize and overthrow the Sandinista revolutionary government of Nicaragua and its President, Daniel Ortega. CIA director Robert Gates vigorously defended the Contra operation, arguing that avoiding U.S. intervention in Nicaragua would be 'totally to abandon the Monroe doctrine'. In a case brought before the International Court of Justice by Nicaragua, however, the court ruled that the United States had exercised 'unlawful use of force.' The U.S. ignored the verdict [Might doesn't care if it is right?]. The Carter and Reagan administrations embroiled themselves in the Salvadoran Civil War, again citing the Monroe Doctrine as justification. The conflict was marked by large scale human rights abuses and the 1980 assassination of Archbishop Óscar Romero by right-wing death squads. The Monroe Doctrine was also cited during the U.S. intervention in Guatemala and the invasion of Grenada. Critics of the Reagan administration's support for Britain in the Falklands War charge that the U.S. ignored the Monroe Doctrine in that instance. Criticisms: Critics of the Monroe Doctrine, such as Noam Chomsky, argue that in practice the Monroe Doctrine has functioned as a declaration of hegemony and a right of unilateral intervention over the Western Hemisphere: a sphere of influence 'to leave America for the Americans' that would grow stronger with the Roosevelt Corollary. Chomsky points to the work of filibusters, most notably William Walker, who tried to conquer and annex various countries in Latin America.
Many Latin American popular movements have come to resent the 'Monroe Doctrine', which has been summarized there in the phrase: 'America for the Americans'. Monroe Doctrine's true objectives, and the sincerity of its proclaimed goals, are often questioned in Latin America, especially after the war between the United Kingdom and Argentina in 1982 where the South-American country did not receive any assistance from the United States." - wikipedia.org
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[Quote No.35299] Need Area: Friends > General
"The god of victory is said to be one-handed, but peace gives victory on both sides." - Ralph Waldo Emerson
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