What Would Happen If All the World Were America?

This seems like another point that no one has raised publicly, or at least loudly: What exactly is America trying to create with Bush's doctrine of creating democratic states in the Middle East? Is his final goal to make a world that is full of little Americas?

This sounds good at first, and this, somehow is how far Bush has gotten in his reasoning: How great would it be if everyone was espousing equality, freedom of speech, the press, and religion, with the Peoples determining their governments. However, what Bush also means by democratizing the world, is a world that is dominated by American consumer culture. For some reason we have not yet divided these two aspects of our culture. And I think that reason is that Bush is a corporate person. He believes in our consumerism. In his understanding, it raises our quality of life.

However this is a very short term answer. This increasing consumer culture would be terrible for the world. Overconsumption is not something to push as a wave of the future, or a way to become wealthy and happy. It comes at the expense of our environment. It also comes at the expense of real human happiness, which arises from self-awareness. This is the spiritual search. The spiritual search comes only after the materialistic search finds nothing. It can perhaps arise on its own, but consumerism definitely will also lead to spiritualism.

Thomas Friedman, in a recent NY Times opinion said, "A majority of Americans, in a gut way, always understood the value of trying to produce a democratizing government in the heart of the Arab-Muslim world. That is why there has been no big antiwar movement." If our reporters don't even take the time to reason out what the world would look like eventually if everyone was like America, it is less likely that the American people will reason this out. And it is less likely that we will have an active antiwar movement.