Spreading good ideas with someone you know is one of the simplest things we can do to improve the conversation.

Permalink for this idea

•  BUZZ
•  DELICIOUS
•  DIGG
•  FACEBOOK
•  LINKEDIN
•  EMAIL

Sign up for the Big Think newsletter in order to get pertinent thoughts and commentary delivered to your email.

Get Daily RSS Newsletter Get the Big Think Brief

Select the content feed of your choice in order to get pertinent thoughts and commentary flowing into your RSS reader.

• the united states
• Peter Beinart
• These Comments
• All Experts
• Big Think Blog

Follow these topics and ideas elsewhere

• Find on Google

  • Peter Beinart
  • the united states

• Find on Twitter

  • Peter Beinart
  • the united states

• Find on Wikipedia

  • Peter Beinart
  • the united states

Spreading good ideas with someone you know is one of the simplest things we can do to improve the conversation.

• Mario Kossatz replied on 12:55 PM on January 27, 2008
  Agree absolutely. The US has this huge responsibility in the world today, never before have we been so threatened in the outlook for the future and unless the US changes its fundamental attitudes it will be very difficult for the rest of the world to follow. During the recent round of negotiations on the environment a delegate, I believe from Papua-New Guinea, addressing the US delegation said something like "If you can not lead, at least get out of the way". The trouble is there is no way for the US to get out of the way. The US must lead the way. We can all help, but the US must take the initiative to change.
  • Reply
  • Hide
  • Flag
  • #1
  • • 1
    • 2
    • 3
• Mario Kossatz replied on 05:55 PM on January 27, 2008
  Agree absolutely. The US has this huge responsibility in the world today, never before have we been so threatened in the outlook for the future and unless the US changes its fundamental attitudes it will be very difficult for the rest of the world to follow. During the recent round of negotiations on the environment a delegate, I believe from Papua-New Guinea, addressing the US delegation said something like "If you can not lead, at least get out of the way". The trouble is there is no way for the US to get out of the way. The US must lead the way. We can all help, but the US must take the initiative to change.
  • Reply
  • Hide
  • Flag
  • #2
  • • 1
    • 2
    • 3
• bill brueckner replied on 12:49 AM on March 14, 2008
  Rules and policy that you mention as well as how this nation interfaces with the rest of the world are laid our in the US Constitution. We have politicians holding the seats of government acting as autocrats elevating policy of the political system over the rule of law. The press must measure our politicians against the enumerated powers that come by way of the seats they hold. Heres and example. US Constitution Article 1 Section 8: Congress shall coin money and regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin. Section 10: No state shall... make any Thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts. Money with intrinsic value of gold and silver would stablized the dollar that is nothing but a fiat paper note. Wealth in the money itself would not allow manipulation over the entire world and would prevent draining off the wealth and undermining the standard of living of Americans. Congress and the president are enforcing a criminal act against the Constitution with severe negative effects. Why does the justice dept, courts and press allow this criminal defiance against the Constitution? especially the press which is supposed to be our first line of defense against tyranny.
  • Reply
  • Hide
  • Flag
  • #3
  • • 1
    • 2
    • 3
• bill brueckner replied on 04:49 AM on March 14, 2008
  Rules and policy that you mention as well as how this nation interfaces with the rest of the world are laid our in the US Constitution. We have politicians holding the seats of government acting as autocrats elevating policy of the political system over the rule of law.
  The press must measure our politicians against the enumerated powers that come by way of the seats they hold.
  
  Heres and example. US Constitution Article 1 Section 8: Congress shall coin money and regulate the value thereof and of foreign coin.
  
  Section 10: No state shall... make any Thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts.
  
  Money with intrinsic value of gold and silver would stablized the dollar that is nothing but a fiat paper note.
  Wealth in the money itself would not allow manipulation over the entire world and would prevent draining off the wealth and undermining the standard of living of Americans.
  
  Congress and the president are enforcing a criminal act against the Constitution with severe negative effects.
  
  Why does the justice dept, courts and press allow this criminal defiance against the Constitution?
  especially the press which is supposed to be our first line of defense against tyranny.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  • Reply
  • Hide
  • Flag
  • #4
  • • 1
    • 2
    • 3

Sign up or log in to post a response to this idea.

Sharing good ideas with peers is one of the simplest things we can do to improve the conversation. Please share good conversation starters here for others to discuss.

Sign up or log in to post a response to this idea.

America's Place in the World

Peter Beinart Editor-at-Large, The New Republic

• All My Ideas
• Contact Me

Question: How do we restore America's standing abroad?

Peter Beinart: I think the larger principle . . . the reason that America was relatively successful in establishing its legitimacy – certainly easy in comparison to the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War – was that America helped to forge a series of rules for how countries should behave in . . . in . . . in . . . in foreign policy that we not only expected other countries to comply by, but that we complied with ourselves. Those rules were not absolute. They didn’t mean that every country had equal power; but there was a fundamental recognition that there were a set of rules in international affairs that we did not simply define ourselves; that other nations had a role in defining; and that if they constrain those other nations, they to some degree constrained us as well. That was what the building of the United Nations, the IMF what became the World Bank, what became the WTO, what NATO . . . what those things were all about. They were based . . . based on the principle at least – even though America was by far the most powerful country in those institutions – the principle at least that might did not make right; that there were principles that existed above and beyond the United States; that we had to try . . . sometimes modify our behavior to comply with. I think that the fundamental thing that has happened in the Bush era is the sense that other people in the rest of the world believed that while America still insists that other countries adhere to certain rules that we lay out, we no longer ourselves abide by those set of rules; and we no longer ourselves give other nations any role in defining the rules that, in fact, constrain us as well as them. And that although we keep on speaking about these rules as universal – democracy, human rights, peace – they don’t seem universal to other nations because other nations are playing the role in defining them. To other nations it seems imperial. It seems as if America is simply saying democracy, and human rights, and peace and all these other nice things are simply whatever America decides it wants to do.

Recorded on: 9/12/07

Read full transcript »

Peter Beinart Editor-at-Large, The New Republic

• Contact Me

Peter Beinart has been at The New Republic since 1999, where he is a journalist and editor-at-large. He is also a contributor to Time magazine and writes a monthly column for the Washington Post. Beinart graduated in 1993 from Yale University, where he was a member of the Yale Political Union. In 1995, he received his MA in international relations from Oxford University, which he attended on a Rhodes Scholarship. Critical of the Bush administration’s handling of the war and its aftermath, Beinart was nonetheless a vocal supporter of the war itself, defending that position on the PBS show Buying The War, with Bill Moyers. However, in Beinart’s book, The Good Fight: Why Liberals-and Only Liberals-Can Win the War on Terror and Make America Great Again (2006), which he expanded from an essay as a guest scholar at The Brookings Institution, he renounced his position, claiming that if he’d known then what he knows now about the capitulation of the War on Terror, he wouldn’t have supported it in the first place. Beinart is a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Read more about Peter Beinart »

• 
  John McCain on NAFTA NAFTA has created millions of jobs, says McCain.
• 
  Thomas Cooley: How Can You Make The Most Of Technological Revolution? The Dean of the NYU Stern School of Business, Thomas Cooley, on how technol
• Letterman Writer Gives Full Frontal Nudity the OK
• Geithner Answers Questions on His Financial Plan
• Eleven Technologies That Will Revolutionize Business
• Having Sex With Lolita in Tehran
• How to Be a Smart Adopter
• Ricky Gervais on Religion
• Michael Bloomberg Action Plan
• Ray Kurzweil on Living Well Forever
• Eight Ways Microblogging Will Transform Your Company

• 
  Mary Roach Author / Journalist 1
• 
  Eric Kocher Staff Sergeant 2
• 
  Steven Castellano Student Scientist, High Technology High School 3
• 
  Clay Shirky Professor of New Media; Author, Here Comes Everybody 4
• 
  Elizabeth Gilbert Author 5
• 
  Paul Krugman Professor of Economics, Princeton; Columnist, The New York Times 6