Gay Marriage

[kandrathe]

Your Americo-centric elitism is showing here. America was possessed of ideal socioeconomic conditions to facilitate revolution, and let's face it, a large part of the revolution concerned the right of the American bourgeois to expand ownership control over domestic resources. No such domestic industrial infrastructure exists, for example, in the Phillipines. Whereas Americans were previously British subjects and thus attributed some freedom in capacity building, ...

Actually, I was thinking about labor history, but one might think of the US revolutionary war as an extension of labor unrest and a successful attempt of the workers in shedding the shackles of the master Britain. Geography helped alot. Really, the turn of the century period was more crucial world wide in forming the trade unions and thwarting unrestrained capitalists.

Phillipinos are a cheap source of labour. That's all.

I'm sure they would disagree. They just need to find their voice, and courage.

I do, however, believe that the purpose of the state should be to protect the quality of life of its citizenry rather than solely to facilitate capitalist interest. Contrary to globalist claims, if we really want to make efforts toward the utopian goal of the spread of social justice, peace and equality worldwide, I would argue that the nation state must be the fundamental unit of analysis from within which domestic parties may make claims for social change.

To some extent they do by enacting laws and enforcing them. For example, these laws prevent slavery and exploitation of child labor and have enacted a "minimum wage". If utopia is a social endeavor, then let it be contributed at an individual level and not forced upon by government mandate. Each nation state has the concern of insuring the social justice, peace and equality of its citizenry, but I'm skeptical of any adventure in trying to export it beyond our own proletariat. We can be advocates and set a good example. When it comes to the relationships between nation states, then other more complicated factors intrude when state interests conflict with global concerns. For example, what right does the world body of nations have to tell Iran that they cannot pursue nuclear weapons? We have begun to implement international connections and "norms" for states through the UN, IAEA, and international treaty.

I hate to point it out, but the US loses out far more every year from the wealthy few cheating on their taxes than it does from those who would use welfare as a 'hammock'.

I mean more than the traditional "welfare" program. Those that rely on the hammock are individuals and corporations that feed off of the State without care to changing their situation toward becoming self sufficient. So that includes the abuse of defense industry subsidies for national security considerations.