Sorry Poirot, I will have to give you are time out while I focus on Squeers who seems to be an arch lefty. I will deprogram you later. This should be fun.

The "rationale of history" my dear Squeers, is

The History of the world
Reveals a simple plan
He takes who has the power
He holds, who can.

We in the west no longer think that this is still valid and that is why we will eventually be brought undone by the Asians who do not share our altruistic ideals. Your sneery attitudes to making a profit seems to mark you as yet another socialist dinosaur still crying over the collapse of your beloved socialism everywhere. But you can still go and live in North Korea or Cuba if you want to. But no, you are another one who prefers to live in the comfort of the west while sneering at it as a form of class identification.

No wonder you see moral equivalence between ISIS and the West, you think just like they do.

As to the question of leftists being populists, it depends upon which demographic you are talking about. Certainly you stick up for the generally parasitic welfare class as a way of gaining an electorate. You gain their support by constantly thinking up ways to tax the productive to support the non productive. And you expand the parasitic class by constantly demanding that third world immigrants and boat people should swan into western societies and be supported by the productive, as a way of absolving this guilt you feel we owe the world for our past rapacious behaviour.

My take of Abbot's defence policies are different to your own. With Australia now spending less as a proportion of GDP than we did during the Great Depression, Australia's defence policy is still the one we have had for sixty years. We intend to fight to the last American. We will only put in token forces anywhere while the USA as usual, does all the heavy lifting.

Sorry LEGO but I don't have time to play. Please consider however that some of us are able to think (unable not to to think) outside your black and white, left and right spectrum; an often painful exercise which demands sincere self-examination, both individually and socially. Montaigne rather than Marx is my hero in hero.

LEGO,

"We in the west no longer think that this is still valid and that is why we will eventually be brought undone by the Asians who do not share our altruistic ideals. Your sneery attitudes to making a profit seems to mark you as yet another socialist dinosaur..."

Lol!..."altruistic ideals" no less!

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/mar/11/us-public-defrauded-hidden-cost-iraq-war

"An occupation conducted through under-scrutinized emergency appropriations enabled dozens, if not hundreds, of private companies to act like pigs at the trough – wasting taxpayer dollars on frivolous expenses while the insurgency raged around them. These private companies were able to behave so rapaciously because they were so desperately needed by the US government to run the Iraq war without revealing its true cost to the American public.

....To control costs and avoid imposing a draft, the US resorted to a parallel army of private contractors, numbering 100,000 people or more at the height of the war."

"The extent to which the US hid the costs of the war by relying on private contractors has left a disastrous legacy within Iraq itself. Many of these contractors behaved recklessly; sometimes, they even shot at crowds when they felt trapped or threatened. Thus private military contracting help to turn the population even more against the US and the occupation."

".....The Bush administration sold the American people a bill of goods with Iraq, offering them a short and glorious war while secretly running up a tab that future generations will be left with. Along with Afghanistan, the war in Iraq added $1.4tn to the national debt."

The Bush Administration funnelled taxpayer's money to private corporations to conduct the war, continue the occupation and towards rebuilding,etc....how "altruistic" is that!

Well Poirot, it looks like your hero has left the arena. Back to deprogramming you.

I see that you are still having trouble formulating an argument. All you can do is concentrate on something I wrote and make sneery references to it. That's OK. It means that you are uncomfortable sticking your neck out to say something you are prepared to stand by. Our readers can pick that up straight away.

Now, you seem to take exception to my premise that the west is altruistic while the Asians are not. According to Transparency International, those nations settled by white, North European people are the least corrupt in the world. Aren't you sad about that? Those wretched whites that you despise so much have demonstrably higher principles than anyone else. Asian, African and Muslim nations are very corrupt. But why would you say anything about them when you can give your own people a kicking?

For you and specimens like Squeers, anything bad happening in the world can always be blamed on white people with a considerable effort to push and shove around the facts. Iran holds US diplomats hostage and subjects them to mock executions, blame the yanks. Saddam Hussein invades Iran, blame the yanks. Saddam Hussein invades Kuwait, blame the yanks. The Yanks kick the Iraqis out of Kuwait and watch as Hussein massacres the Shiites and Kurds, blame the yanks. Hussein claims he is building nuclear weapons so the yanks go in and find out he was lying, blame the yanks. Iraq becomes a democracy and the new Shiite government ignores US advice oppresses the Sunnis who rebel, blame the yanks.

For people like you, the Americans will be damned if they do and damned if they don't. The only thing consistent to your ideology is that the USA is always wrong.

I am not sure why you submitted that the Iraq/Afghanistan war cost the USA 1.4 trillion dollars, it sort of shoots down your own argument that the yanks only go to war for self interest. But thank you for that one. Have you joined my side?

LEGO,

"I am not sure why you submitted that the Iraq/Afghanistan war cost the USA 1.4 trillion dollars, it sort of shoots down your own argument that the yanks only go to war for self interest...."

Lol!....I see that you failed to pick up the fact that the Bush Admin "funnelled" taxpayer's dollars straight into the deep pockets of private corporations...like Haliburton and Blackwater, etc.

Nice little earner that one.

Greedy corporations - and a willing govt providing the feeding trough.

That's where most of the 1.4tn went.

Altruistic....in a pig's eye.

To Poirot.

The USA has a private enterprise economy which includes weapons production. I suppose you would prefer America's weapons production to be through government corporations, but if the yanks did that their weapons would be lousy, and they would be just as inefficient and ruinously costly as NSW's Electricity Commission and Water Board, which both Labor and Liberals intend to privatise.

US foreign policy since WW2 was originally directed at stopping the spread of socialism as it correctly considered socialism as inferior to free enterprise, and a system conducive to creating totalitarian regimes. The USA tolerated totalitarian regimes which were anti socialistand free market because they were better than the socialist alternative.

That policy was enforced through military force and it was a policy which put self interest and altruism on equal footings. It was certainly in the USA's financial interests to prevent socialism from spreading, and it was in the interests of the people in foreign lands who the US used military force to prevent socialist takeover as well. Self interest combined with altruism is a powerful reason to go to war. But people like yourself can only see self interest by the USA and oppose the USA even when it is clearly doing the right think by using military force.

The US was once so blinded by hatred of socialism that it made mistakes like Vietnam, which was primarily an anti colonial war. The Vietnamese socialists were not the pawns of the Kremlin doing Moscow's bidding to help take over the world for socialism. You are so blinded by your hatred of the USA that you are making mistakes too. The primary reason why your ideology fails to impress anybody except he uninformed is that you always accuse the USA of perfidy and most informed white people know that is pure malarkey.

The USA is a democratic, free enterprise society much like our own. To condemn the yanks in every instance is to condemn every democratic, free enterprise society including your own. And democratic, free enterprise societies just happen to be the best ones to live in.