I don't think a return to the politics of principle (which has been a pretty rare thing) is incompatible with ake's otherwise excellent post above.

DougR, most of us in Europe find the US postulation of right wing capitalist politics as some sort of norm or having some sort of desirability, and the associated preening that the US is the policeman of the world, that its enslavement of other cultures under its economic colonialism is some sort of liberation deeply, deeply offensive: just as offensive as the insistence by Christian missionaries that they were "saving" those they railroaded into subjugation.

We do believe that socialism is, that sharing is, morally superior to the beggar my neighbour beliefs apparently so prevalent in the USA.

It seemed to me, and it I expect seems to many of us, that you were taking a cheap shot about the "superiority" of the US norm over all others. It would I feel be consistent with your general political stance here, would it not?

I don't often quote the bible, but surely as ye sow so shall ye reap.