Spreading American Values During Cold War Era
Over the 1940s and 1950s, the U.S. fought both a World War and a subsequent Cold War in the name of defending and even spreading American values to the rest of the world. War (whether hot or cold) is never easy or pleasant, especially for a democracy attempting to win its conflicts without undermining its core values, and during this period of high tension the U.S. undoubtedly engaged in actions and behavior, both at home and abroad, which challenged its claims to be acting in the name of freedom and democracy. Overall, however, do you believe the U.S. basically lived up to its proclaimed ideals in its struggles against fascism and communism? Or, in the course of these conflicts, did it too often go against its own professed values to be able to credibly maintain that it ultimately upheld them? Was it acceptable for the U.S. to act out of accordance with its core values from time to time in the name of securing them in the long haul? Or could it have successfully reached the same ends in ways that better maintained its ideals? I believe that the ends justified the means to obtain it, which in this case was to protect the American way and spread it to other places in the world. It was for the greater good of the country that some of its core values such as freedom were stripped away for the country. Some sacrifices had to be made including freedom to protect freedom. It was either us or them. If we didn’t have the stomach as many people do not today we would have lost. There is similarity between then and now post 9/11. The government ramped up security measures such as phone tapping, and spying even on Americans for the greater good of our population. Just think about it for a second. If the United States of America had a better spy and information gathering organization that we had during the cold war in world war two we could have prevented many of these so called atrocities by people after the fact because information is king. We might be