G.I. Joe movie to de-Americanize Joe

My comment: I doubt there has been a greater force for good in this world in the modern age than the American soldier. No nation has fought more bravely, more selflessly, more thanklessly, more tirelessly. World War One defeated Prussianism–let no one deceive you on that point. The Great War was not about nothing, it was not about an obscure Serbian Duke, it was fought to prevent Bismarck from trampling on lesser nations and taking their land and peoples. World War Two defeated Naziism. The Cold War defeated Communism. South Korea now has a free country and a robust economy, thanks to the Korean War. The only time in recent history the American soldier has been a goat rather than a hero is Viet Nam: when we pulled out of that nation, and Congress voted to break our sacred national promise to support the anticommunists there, 2.5 million people died in a bloodbath.

If we were Romans, the American Eagle would be as feared as the eagle of Rome, because these places would be our dominions now. If we were even as imperial as Victorian Great Britain, we would have no qualms about placing Viceroys over conquered lands in  the Middle East or even Europe. Do you really think West Germany could defeat a nuclear-armed American military if we were determined to fly Old Glory in every place the German flag flies, or the Red Sun of Japan? But America does not crave dominion, we crave partners in trade: we don’t want slaves, we want customers and vendors. We want equals.

As with most things in the human condition, it is the cynical and clear-eyed Hobbes who explains why the American soldier is currently held in such dishonor by those who have the most cause to honor him, namely, the craven, weak, and weak-minded Leftists of Europe and America, the ‘useful diots’ who would have been summarily killed by any of the various tyrants they dote on, Castro, Stalin, Mao, or Saddam.

Hobbes says:

To have received from one, to whom we think ourselves equal, greater benefits than there is hope to requite, disposeth to counterfeit love, but really secret hatred, and puts a man into the estate of a desperate debtor that, in declining the sight of his creditor, tacitly wishes him there where he might never see him more. For benefits oblige; and obligation is thraldom; and unrequitable obligation, perpetual thraldom; which is to one’s equal, hateful. But to have received benefits from one whom we acknowledge for superior inclines to love; because the obligation is no new depression: and cheerful acceptation (which men call gratitude) is such an honour done to the obliger as is taken generally for retribution. Also to receive benefits, though from an equal, or inferior, as long as there is hope of requital, disposeth to love: for in the intention of the receiver, the obligation is of aid and service mutual…

Search high and low, and the one theme never seen in modern philosophy, Marx and Nietzsche and their epigones, is the theme of gratitude paid to any human or divine person. The Leftist never says, with the humility of Newton, that they stand on the backs of giants, for they dare not admit any debt owed their ancestors, lest it be admitted that some generation before the present one be seen as wise.