The values of intrumental reason are integral feature of capitalist ideology, Reason suggests that if you inflict enough pain, the other will submit to your will. Even tho Hitler's blitz led the English to even greater resolve, we have tried to use force when the victims of this force did not embrace the premises that force leads to compliance. Indeed, the use of force can often mobilize people againt the aggressor that might not have been mobilized. Now I am not challenging personal beliefs, nor denying that there are progressive moments to religion, but simply that the dominant vision in the US embraces several essential themes that impact policy. Perhaps most important, as a salvation religion, it would convert others-or send them to heaven, thus salvation religions such as Christianity or Islam, have a tendency to expand.
Economic imperialism is justified by the desire to convert heathens.
But not only does this moment justify imperialism, but in the American case, as Raygun put, God picked America to rule the world. This is not his early Alzheimer's, but a central theme of the city on the hill, it is up to us to secure Christianity's version of truth, or should I say the authoritarian, punitive, repressive side of Christianity as oppossed to the caring, merciful social justice side. So God ordained that America stop communism, and do so by whatever strict punitive means, and enlist whatever strict punitive measures, many of which are taught at the School of the America's. These many ideological moment impair the way we view the world and eliminate pragmatism from considerations. Thus we ally ourselves with some of the biggest jerks in history because we see them as we would like them to be, lackies of imperialism and defenders of the faith, and not as the corrupt worms they are.