Americans are notorious idealists, but our ideals haven’t stayed within this country. The American conceptions of virtues— democracy, freedom of speech, human rights—have influenced every major country, most obviously with our friends and allies, but even our rivals. People laugh when the Chinese government calls itself democratic or when Putin claims he’s invading Ukraine to protect human rights, and yes it’s very funny, but it also shows how influential American morals are. And when a society keeps hearing the pretense of American morals used to justify itself, then slowly the pretense will start to become more real.
so fucking rad