That's a fantastic excuse for converting one's Anglo-American selfish interests into "universal truths":

We need slaves for the Carolinas! becomes White Supremacy.

We need the drive the peasants off their land! become the Enclosure Acts and the modern concept of private property.

We need to sell opium to China! becomes Free Trade.

Just take whatever the fatcats want in each generation and turn it into a "moral" ideology that must be imposed on the world, over and over again until the world lies broken and bleeding.

Regime change! The spread of democracy! Destroy welfare! Personal responsibility! Law and order! PROGRESS!

How's that workin' for us lately?

And you are obviously unaware that philosophy has moved on in both traditions in the last couple of hundred years.
--
All these memories will be lost in time
like tears in rain

Great post Jerome.

I agree, that is a fantastic way of justifying anything. Is it even true? Graffiti on the wall of a US base in Iraq: "America is not at war, the US Marines are at war. America is at the mall."

I am not sure the passion is there on the ground either. I suspect the US will be ejected form Iraq much like it was from Vietnam - it is running out of passion. Sooner or later Congress will call it off.

You're obviously French because you believe Descartes' view that universal and moral truths can be revealed through pure reason alone. We Anglo-Americans are Humeans to the bone and realize that you can't rationally derive an ought from an is; you need a "passion" to induce behavior.

Exactly. Right on. BTW, do you know other people who knew exactly of what you're talking about? Try Hitler, who was the master of politics aesthetics (remember the columns of light of the "cathedral of light"; remember the vast legions of people parading), try Stalin who made everyone have his portrait and worship every word of him like if it was their own, try Chavez, try Fidel Castro.

The moment that reality is aestheticized and turned into entertainment, you'll have dissolved yourself from reality. The moment that politics give faith more power than reason, it is the precise moment that they define their fate: a never-ending jihad against nothing important which will divert energies and resources from what could possibly save them from the demise that reason was able to forecast.

Most probably, it would end in a war. Oh wait.