Comment by kkowalczyk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by kkowalczyk | Hacker News Reader

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Given your eager defense of US I doubt you see how dangerous this kind of reasoning is.

You basically said that US, in general, is a good guy and therefore it's justified in doing illegal, immoral things and then hunting down those who expose this behavior.

So exposing bad behavior of US government is bad and worthy prosecution but exposing bad behavior of other governments, those you deem to be worse than US, is good and worthy praise.

Please explain the rationale for that double-standard.

Please also tell me which which other country dropped two atomic bombs, fought a prolonged, unprovoked political war (Vietnam) and invaded another country based on evidence that is believed to be completely fabricated (Iraq) and destroyed the lives of many creative people during McCarthy's communist witch hunt.

This is not to say that other countries aren't worse but let's not blindly wave patriotic flag and pretend that US government is immune to immoral, corrupt behavior. This kind of blind patriotism is easily exploitable. One thing that the "bad" governments have in common is that blind patriotism is a main propaganda technique used by Nazi Party, North Korea, communist countries to build us vs. evil them (except to them it's the jews or US is the "evil") and explain away their bad behavior (because the other side is even worse).

> You basically said that US, in general, is a good guy and therefore it's justified in doing illegal, immoral things and then hunting down those who expose this behavior.

That's not what he said. He said the US is, on balance, less immoral than the dictatorial regimes he named. Yet those other regimes don't get the scrutiny the US does.

this is also another really terrible argument that is used to rationalize bad behaviour constantly.

At least we arn't as bad as THAT guy.

If the USA does not have the level of human rights abuses of say china, does that give them a free pass? They cannot be questioned or criticized until china "cleans up its act", and everyone complaining should complain about china instead?

> If the USA does not have the level of human rights abuses of say china, does that give them a free pass?

No, but it means that if your goal is to fix human rights, you're going to get a lot more "bang for the buck" going after China than going after the USA.

Yet those other regimes don't get the scrutiny the US does.

For better or worse, the US puts itself in that position by acting as the world police. The most visible nation will, of course, be under more scrutiny, and rightfully so. The more power one has, the more safeguards need to be available to ensure that power is used for good.

Also, Wikileaks posts leaks from countries other than the US.

> For better or worse, the US puts itself in that position by acting as the world police.

To an extent, yes, this is a valid point. But I'm not sure "world police" is the right term. The United Nations is supposed to be playing the role of enforcing standards of civilized behavior on all nations, but it has failed miserably. The US is more like one of the more civilized citizens who is getting fed up with the stuff the less civilized citizens get away with without being called on it by either the "authorities" (the UN) or the other supposedly more civilized citizens. Which is not to say that the US always does the "right" thing when it gets fed up like this; but in many situations I'm not sure there is a "right" thing to do. The sad fact is that there are a lot of nations and a lot of people in the world who simply do not care about upholding standards of civilized behavior.

> Also, Wikileaks posts leaks from countries other than the US.

Yes, this is true, and I didn't mean to imply that the US was the only country being "targeted". As far as I can tell, Wikileaks is an equal opportunity organization: they're willing to piss off anyone. ;)

I agree with your characterization of the dangerous attitude of moral superiority by default.

If you start with the assumption that the US is generally a better world citizen than most other nations, it's a lot easier to turn a blind eye to the atrocities happening every day on the margin.

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