"The greatest nation on the face of the earth."

[Guest guest]

This morning I was watching the news on television when I saw George W Bush refer to America as "The greatest nation on the face of the earth." with a straight face.He was speaking about the latest apprehension of a certain Islamic terrorist.

 

Such an attitude isn't going to win America many friends.I love many aspects of American culture.I think Americans have come up with a lot of great music,literature,sports entertainment,humour and many other beautiful things.But I don't think its very prudent to declare one's own country to be the greatest on the face of the earth.That is simply materialism.

 

Wonder what Prabhupada would have said if he met George W Bush and Bush said:"Srila Prabhupada...welcome to America...the greatest nation on the face of the earth."

 

 

[leyh 0]

The above post was by me. I was using a computer in school and had forgotten to log in.

[Guest guest]

Perhaps he would say something like this:

 

"So it is a chance we should not miss. You can become brähmaëa. There is chance. We should not be satisfied that “I am born in America, so I am great. I am born of a great nation.” That’s all right. You are born of a great nation, that’s all right. But next cultural birth, to become a dvija, twice-born, is awaiting. Lord Krsna says, “Yes. I give chance to everyone to become dvija.” Mäà hi pärtha vyapäçritya ye ’pi syuù päpa-yonayaù [bg. 9.32]. Never mind wherever he is born."Bg 4.12-13 lec July29, 1966

 

 

 

[Avinash 0]

I could not understand some of words in your post. Could you please clarify?

[Tarun 6]

"Dear Mr George: It is not YOUR nation; it is Krishna's nation. Krishna own everything: Isavasyam idam sarvam... in cluding Amerika. And if u don't stop killing innocent cows & innocent people, all in the name of economic stability, u will soon find yourself out of a job, unemployed."

[theist 1]

Perhaps he would say something like this:

 

"So it is a chance we should not miss. You can become brähmana. There is chance. We should not be satisfied that I am born in America, so I am great. I am born of a great nation. That's all right. You are born of a great nation, that's all right. But next cultural birth, to become a dvija, twice-born, is awaiting. Lord Krsna says,Yes. I give chance to everyone to become dvija. Mäà hi pärtha vyapäçritya ye pi syuù päpa-yonayaù [bg. 9.32]. Never mind wherever he is born." Bg 4.12-13 lec July29, 1966

 

That should make it easier Avinashji.

 

 

 

[shvu 1]

 

 

....

You can become brähmana.

...

 

 

 

Why would he say that? With due respect, he is the President of a country and should speak like a President (which he is doing), and not a religious wannabe. Supposing he had said "America is one of the many, many countries of the world and is not greater than any other country", how is that not materialism? Or more specifically, what is spiritual about such a statement? For convenience, the definition of materialism according to Merriam webster is as follows,

 

****

 

1 a : a theory that physical matter is the only or fundamental reality and that all being and processes and phenomena can be explained as manifestations or results of matter b : a doctrine that the only or the highest values or objectives lie in material well-being and in the furtherance of material progress c : a doctrine that economic or social change is materially caused -- compare HISTORICAL MATERIALISM

 

2 : a preoccupation with or stress upon material rather than intellectual or spiritual things

 

****

 

Finally, with due respect again, if Srila Prabhupada et al., thought otherwise, they would not take the trouble to travel all the way to the US, while there exist so many other countries in between (India and the US) where they could have carried out their preaching. They chose to go the US, because they knew it was the greatest country and preaching there was the best strategy.

 

Whether people of other countries like it or not, the US is the #1 country in the world and there are enought numbers to support this. No offense is intended...just my thoughts.

 

Cheers

[Avinash 0]

Your cleaned up version is quite clean.

But, I do not agree that the president of USA or any other country should use the word "Brahmana", "Krsna", "Dvija" etc.

[theist 1]

How about".. you become true ksatriya."

 

I agree, presently, in so many ways America is unequaled in the world.The idea is that we should not stop there and feel safe and secure thinking we are part of the great country and so everything is fine.

 

Death certainly finds every American as well as any other nationality.

 

We must be born into spiritual understanding.By posting that quote I only meant to suggest that Prabhupada would somehow exhort Bush (or any leader)in that direction.

 

Hare Krsna

[Guest guest]

This is what Prabhupada said during a S.B. lecture in Montreal on July 4th, 1968

 

That is the instruction of Prahlada Maharaja. He is deriding that manye dhan¢bhijana rüpa. Abhijana. Abhijana means born in great nation or in great family. Nobody can be proud that “Because I am born of a very rich family and because I am born of a very great, rich nation like America, therefore I can purchase the favor of God.” No. That is not possible.

 

-----

 

To give my two cents worth…

 

I think America is the greatest nation in hedonistic terms; it is a capitalistic nation.

 

I justify this below.

 

Now remember that life is a moral field as well as a physical field when reading what follows.

 

Basically, vaisya activity is third class. And here's what the modern vaisyas are all about:

 

•They claim or take resources that don't belong to them.

•They transform raw materials in their factories and poison the world in the process by toxic chemicals and other pollutants.

•They use sophisticated marketing to provoke any and every conceivable sentiment of mankind and direct it to their products through association. I mean they use sex to sell just about everything! So message is always in your face saying "You need this. You want this."

•And lastly, they corrupt politicians and lawyers to approve of these nefarious activities.

 

So where's the morality?

 

ethos

[xxvvii 0]

American is going on THE old way of 50's, therefore their outcome will be same.

[Myra 0]

 

I received a copy of our weekly Asia-Pacific Economic Monitor publication from our Department's Chief Economist.

 

Here's the fate of the so called "The Greatest Nation of the World"!!!:

 

-Bush looks for help from abroad-

 

Sydney, Sep 5: The week just passed has seen something of a sea-change in Washington: President Bush’s administration appears to have finally woken up to the nasty fact that it cannot afford—politically or financially—to run the world on its own, as apparently it would like to. Not only has it grudgingly agreed to go back to the spurned UN for help in Iraq, but the week also saw Treasury Secretary Snow petitioning the mandarins in Beijing and Tokyo for help in cutting the US trade deficit. Progress on North Korea, what little there has been, has come only thanks to strong Chinese pressure on its wacky neighbour and erstwhile ally. The sudden about face, coinciding with the end of the summer holidays, reflects a renewed focus on the election, only just over a year away, and the fact that it is now very much Bush’s to lose. Mounting body-bags from Iraq are one part of the nightmare, disappearing jobs (expect much wailing and gnashing of teeth if non-farm payrolls for August fall) and record current account and budget deficits are another. Bush suddenly realises he needs some help from other countries, partly so he can spread the blame if conditions worsen, but also to cut the serious costs of his foreign adventures, if he is not to be the second one-hit wonder in his family.

Whether that help will be forthcoming is the main question. In the case of Japan and China letting their currencies strengthen, the answer was very clearly no. China’s central bank chief told Snow that the US needs to lift its export game to cut the trade deficit, and that the yuan will be revalued sometime in the future (but most likely not before the US election). And Japan, relying on a stuttering export-led recovery to jumpstart the economy (which seems ultimately doomed to fail thanks to the lack of restructuring and reforms over the past twelve years), is not about to abandon its defence of the yen, as Friday’s bout of intervention rudely reminded Snow as he took the revaluation message to the APEC finance minister’s meeting. As with Japan, most countries in the region are facing weak domestic demand and exports are seen as the way back to growth. To that extent, regional central banks are expected to continue fighting the dollar’s downtrend as much as they can—apart from the Philippines, which still sees a strong currency as something desirable in and of itself.

Snow should be at least half-relieved that Asian countries did not respond with alacrity to his urgings: having financed about half of America’s current account deficit between them this year, the Bank of Japan and the People’s Bank of China are in turn helping keep long-term US rates lower than they would otherwise be as they park their dollars in US treasuries. Stopping that intervention would mean the private sector would be called upon to finance America’s savings shortfall—and it would be sure to demand higher returns to compensate. Higher interest rates would make the hoped-for recovery in employment less likely, and could stop the property market (and by extension, consumer spending to at least some degree) in its tracks. This is not a happy pre-election scenario.

Meanwhile, Washington looks unlikely to get the sort of help it wants for Iraq, namely, other countries’ soldiers under US command. After having dismissed the Security Council as largely irrelevant to its needs in the runup to the war, its ‘willingness’ to allow the UN back in, while still calling the shots, might strike some on the Council as hubristic in the extreme. France and German (and Russia to a lesser degree) are the chief sticking points for a new resolution given their desire that any UN force would be under UN, not American, auspices. And although it is obviously in no country’s interests to see the mission in Iraq fail, leaving turmoil in its wake, they are unlikely to be too willing to give Bush all that he wants. The likely scenario is the current draft fails to pass, the US muddles on for a while and then tries again, this time offering more control in return for other countries’ military and financial participation. It is in this muddling period where the danger lies if the US cannot restore effective security to Iraq.

And all while Afghanistan is providing a case study in how not to wrap up a ‘regime change’ mission. The resurgence of the Taliban in areas of the country and the renewed troubles between Pakistan and India, that are at least partly fuelled by intransigent elements unwilling to support Pakistan’s support of the US-led war on terror, show how dangerous it is to leave a power vacuum behind after regime change. The worst scenario now would be for the administration, with two eyes on next November’s election, to try to exit Iraq without having secured the peace.

These are the issues that might even be disturbing Bush’s sleep. For the markets, these are long-term issues that may not affect this week’s trading overly, but it would seem to us that the two main factors to be gleaned from this are that the US economy is more likely to disappoint in the second half of this year (the output gap continues to widen, ratcheting up deflationary pressure) and that winning that election will be the number one driver of US policy in the next fourteen months.

Looking to this week, there are few major numbers in the US, with July trade data on Thursday and August retail sales on Friday the most important. Markets will be looking to the FOMC meeting on September 16th, but there appear to be no grounds whatsoever for a policy change at present. However, mounting deflationary pressures, of which the August PPI data on Friday may well provide further evidence, could mean that the next move is down rather than up as the market generally expects. Recent data from the US have been reasonably positive, but the surprise should be that the numbers have not been stronger following the biggest monetary and fiscal expansion in history. The path of the US since the IT-led meltdown in 2001 is cleaving ever closer to that of Japan in the wake of its bubble’s bursting back in 1989. Remember, Japan had bouts of growth fed by massive fiscal spending, but these fizzled quickly once the support dried up.

In Japan this week, further evidence of the endemic weakness of the domestic economy will be provided by money supply data for August on Monday, corporate goods prices on Wednesday, and current account data on Thursday. Machinery orders for July, out on Tuesday, are also expected to be weak, though the trend has been firmly upward since late last year. While this is positive, orders have risen much more slowly than in the last cyclical upswing, and at the same time, manufacturing has been stagnant, suggesting that the rise in orders is being tracked by a rise in cancellations. In politics, the LDP presidential poll sees Koizumi campaigning on his platform of privatising the post-office and sorting out the highway corporations—the exact same issues he campaigned on two years ago. What happened to reforms with no sacred cows?

Australian markets will spend the week waiting for the labour data on Thursday, for signs that the economy is accelerating after stalling in the June quarter with just a 0.1% increase in GDP. However, they will wait in vain as the domestic economy is already rollicking along—domestic final demand rose at an annualised 4.8%, hardly indicative of a weak economy. Weakness is coming from the drought and from slumping exports. Unfortunately, that strong domestic profile is not being matched by job creation. In the Jan-July period, the economy shed 29,500 jobs, most of them full-time. Failure to get a rebound in August would suggest that not only George Bush needs to worry about the impact of a jobless recovery on his electoral chances. Housing finance data on Tuesday will also be eagerly watched reflecting the central bank’s focus on the housing bubble. Neither pieces of data will change our view that interest rates remain on hold for some months, with the next move being higher. Ditto for New Zealand after both central banks left policy unchanged last week.

Regional Asia sees little data of interest this week. After last week’s export shock for July, Malaysia’s industrial output data are unlikely to be pretty and we look for just a 2.5% increase, down from 8.6% in June. However, the data will not now be released on Tuesday, but will come out on Friday, when any negative headlines are likely to be crowded out by those from Mahathir’s last budget that is also delivered on Friday.

—George Worthington