If the world were perfect

People would not be beheaded. Women could vote universally. Ideally most other people would think like us. Our western values would get a chance as east meets west. Alas it is not so.

We actually have enemies, as in the real thing. Why is exasperating to many idealistic westerners, but the reality is there are groups who wish to do us in, and more importantly rule us. The religiously motivated groups who wish to impose their indoctrinated version of heaven on earth are the latest culprits, hard to believe as it is. The intensity of this religious zeal is astounding to many in the west. Soon the intensity of the Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, and many Animist responses will appear. Religious zeal knows no bounds.

What has bounds is reason. The mid east is not our focus of action, or our center of gravity. The power of oil income practiced by shabby desert tribes is on the decline. Their problems are not our American problems given a little pro American leadership and policy. Today it is a big deal, but tomorrow it is back to the desert tribes. Even a little domestic drilling in the future will send powerful messages throughout the world.

Our American center of gravity is the New World idealism, mixed with business and the the New World, mostly American, way to drag the rest of the Old World our way. Certainly the real world suggests business things, but along the way the western ideas of women’s suffrage and the promotion of western values as the basis of any new world should be our center of gravity.