Exporting the American Dream?

Exporting the American Dream Within the Anglo-Saxon circle, Americans are not as a general rule better citizens than Englishmen or Canadians. Yet even the most apathetic or under-privileged among them do not imagine that they could live under a different system-even thought they might violate their own laws or suffer cruelly under them. …Fundermentally the American system does not appear to be a mere triumph of human ingenuity in the face of great troubles and difficulties. It is more than a success, more even than a miracle; it is to paraphrase Lincoln, the achievement of a superior destiny placed by the Almighty into the hands of his ‘almost chosen people’ to spread ‘a great promise to all the people’s of the world in all time to come’. One might almost say the vocation of the American people is to go from one Promised Land to another, not only to move out of the Original Paradise of the Founding Fathers but to proceed towards the Eternal Paradise of mankind, gathering under a third Biblical Testament. This feeling of predestination and of self-wonder, served by unchanging rites and rhetoric, has astonished even the most sympathetic observers of the American republic, from Alexis de Tocqueville to Sir Denis Brogan. The certainty that American institutions are the best in the world- even when some of their defects are acknowledged- expresses itself in an ‘American Creed’ and prolongs itself in an ‘American Dream’ p49-50 Alan Clement US correspondent ‘Le Monde- in ‘The United States’ After reading what we have read here- You might wonder where around the world has USA managed to find places which wanted to emulate the American Dream? Is this dream a fantasy or Myth or has indeed there been actual nations places which have seen what USA has achieved and tried to gain and establish for themselves as well what USA has given to humanity- This third great Testament sent down from heaven for mankind. And yes I am not the least bit mocking for as a honest historian I have found two young idealistic leaders wishing to rid their nations and people of tyranny who have sought to gain the American system so that the old colonial rule can be overthrown and the American model be set up. And the two examples I have managed to find from the pages of history are young Ho Chi Min in Vietnam and Fidel Castro in Cuba. Now you may not be of a mind to believe me- so I quote another American historian here in the first instance; “In the fall of 1945 Japan defeated…in the meantime a revolutionary movement had grown there, determined to end colonial control and to control and to achieve a new life for the peasants of Indochina. Led by Ho Chi Min the revolutionaries fought against the Japanese and when they were gone held a special celebration in Hanoi in late 1945, with a million people in the streets and issued the Declaration of Independence. It borrowed from the Declaration of the rights of man and citizen in the French Revolution and from the American Declaration and began ‘All men created equal. They are endowed by their creator with certain inalienable rights among these Life Liberty and the pursuit of happiness’….the Vietnamese listed their complaints against French rule …Between Oct 1945 and Feb 1946 Ho Chi min wrote eight letters to President Truman reminding him of the self determination promises of the Atlantic charter and in one of the letters sent to both the UN and Truman said ‘Two million Vietnamese died of starvation during winter of 1944 and spring 1945 because of the policy of French who seized and stored until it rotted all available rice…three fourths of cultivated land was flooded summer of 1945 which was followed by severe drought of normal harvest five sixths was lost’ p469-470 People’s history of USA. And while a similar story can and could be told of Cuba’s desire to overthrow a very corrupt and incompetent dictatorship I lack the details but do know enough that US Army people fought on the side of Castro because as loyal American citizens they saw that was the right thing to be doing…. Yes if USA has a system of government which has been sent down from heaven- Dear Reader rest assured the God of History has been and will hold USA to account!