b********n
发帖数: 38600 | 1 Netanyahu's actions illustrate something that George Washington said in his
Farewell Address:
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/18th_century/washing.asp
"In the execution of such a plan, nothing is more essential than that
permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate
attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them,
just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation
which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is
in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection,
either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its
interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily
to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to
be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of
dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody
contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels
to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The
government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts
through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the
animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by
pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often,
sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a
variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the
illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common
interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays
the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter
without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions
to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to
injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with
what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a
disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are
withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who
devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice
the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with
popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation,
a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public
good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or
infatuation." (Emphasis mine - Kagemusho)
Read the rest of it. WRT US/Israel relations, it is bang-on target. |
|
