Helloooooooooo Red Herring!
Someone's a little bitter. Everyone is perfectly aware of the problems inherent in the American system. We are selfish, arrogant, gluttoness, and largely clueless about the rest of the world. But you know what? We're also the sole great bastion of freedom in the world. When you ask a starving Chilean where he wants to live, he doesn't say Italy, or Spain, or even Canada. He says AMERICA. We deal out our fare share of bullamphetamine parrot to the rest of the world. But you know what else? We're also responsible for the vast majority of the cleanup, and the creation of a world stable enough for your little experiments with socialism.
People who base their assesments of what is "right" and "wrong" with global politics on a very narrow amount of experience. I have experience with capitolism. I live in America, in a socially liberal but financially conservative middle class rural New England family, and I'm happy. I want for very, very little. I also look very closely at my government, much closer than most people, and I GUARANTEE closer than anyone who doesn't or has never lived in this country. I have no problem with yours or any other country being socialist. I just don't want it in mine. I have known people living under socialized healthcare, socialized utilities, and luxeries taxed to hell and back. And that isn't for me. I don't want to be 75 and walk into a hospitol for dialysis and be turned away.
Socialism's a great idea. In theory. But it requires two things to be succesful.
1: Brutally efficient but free government, encouraging the individual over the Marxist "good of the people" of which there exists none in the world today.
2: The means to provide for ALL of its citizens, of which there is not enough.
Capitolism, on the other hand, serves as the vessel through which we acquire and grow, to come closer to the day when we may adopt egalitarian ideals. But until that day, we have to remind ourselves that while we are all created equal, either through circumstance or choice, we are not all equal. Some of us are born into bondage. Some of us are born into wealth and power. I was born somewhere in between.
While we should strive in every aspect of our lives to close the gap, it should not be by bringing down the powerful, but by raising up the impoverished. And to do that we need growth, discovery, and production, things which socialism is not very good at. The greatest motivator that exists is money, the drive to become better than your neighbor. I didn't write the rules, that's just the way it is. A nice happy Star Trek inspired socialist paradise may be the destination, but capitolism is the vessel. And there ain't no shortcuts.
And when did the US ever say that it was encouraging us to "take" these despot-ruled nations? Or the nations we save from being conquered? Did we ever say that Requierimento was a good thing? Or the Columbian exchange? Of course not. We grew up. Did we annex Japan, Kuwait, Afghanistan? No, we made sure that they were free societies. We don't fight to take, we fight to liberate. And everyone could use a bit of that sentiment.
End rant. For now.
Oh, and before I forget, as far as being a malevolent, conquering imperialist, you all can kiss my great-great-grandfather's dirt poor working class French-Canadian immigrant ass.