Common Dreams is a wonderful resource for progressives. I am, nevertheless, occasionally surprised by what the editors of Common Dreams deem progressive content.

Take, for example, Andy Rooney's latest 60 Minutes soliloquy titled "Our Darkest Days Are Here," the text of which appeared in the Views section of Common Dreams on May 24, 2004. Far from advancing ideas that could be described as forward thinking, Mr. Rooney's piece reflects much of what is wrong with the way that we, as Americans, view ourselves and our country.

Americans' vision of the present is very much a function of our conception of past events. However, many, if not most, sectors of the domestic population suffer from what can loosely be described as a kind of collective amnesia when it comes to U.S. history. Members of the mainstream media and, separately, the intellectual elite are particularly subject to this rule and, in fact, serve to reinforce it by disseminating information and opinions based upon selective memory and extreme myopia.

Enter Mr. Rooney, whose aforementioned commentary begins with a description of some of the "great times in American history." One can surmise from his selections that, in Mr. Rooney's opinion, times of war (he mentions the Revolutionary War and World War II) and mass killing (the slaughter of Native Americans subsequent to Columbus reaching the continent) are great. "Putting Americans on the moon," also ranks high on Mr. Rooney's great times list. Forget about advancing the progress of the human race - if that is indeed what our moon landing accomplished - what is important is that Americans landed on the moon first.

Besides reveling in the often violent glory of America's past, Mr. Rooney suggests that the history of America was devoid of moral transgressions prior to the emergence of the evidence that U.S. soldiers tortured Iraqi prisoners. Indeed, Mr. Rooney would have us believe that, "[o]ur darkest days up until now have been things like presidential assassinations, the stock market crash in 1929, Pearl Harbor, and 9-11...." Dark days, therefore, do not include the genocide of the Native Americans, an event which involved the extermination of (conservatively) eleven million to fourteen million human beings. Undoubtedly, Native Americans do not consider the day Columbus "got here" one of the "great times in American history."

The darkest days in America also do not encompass, from Mr. Rooney's viewpoint, slavery and the slave trade, the oppression of minorities, the extirpation of approximately two million Vietnamese and fifty eight thousand Americans during the Vietnam War, the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis (if not millions) in the wake of American economic sanctions directed against Iraq and, moreover, the killing of untold numbers of Iraqi civilians during the first and second Gulf wars. These few examples are but a tiny smattering of the ills that are an indelible part of our past and present. Suffice it to say, however, that Mr. Rooney is unconcerned by such trifling details of American history.

Instead, he advises us that, "[t]he day the world learned that American soldiers had tortured Iraqi prisoners belongs high on the list of worst things that ever happened to our country." The torture itself was not so much the problem, therefore, but rather the fact that it came to light and tarnished Americans' otherwise pristine reputation abroad. Bad things, furthermore, happen to America, but our country is never guilty of misdeeds. For Mr. Rooney, and others who think like him, America is by definition incapable of doing harm; Americans, like their system of government, are wholly just and upright. We may have a few rotten apples here and there, including the "bad" soldiers who tortured Iraqi prisoners and, perhaps, some of their higher ups, but otherwise Americans are faultless. Any action taken by the United States, therefore, must be taken for the good of mankind.

Americans' self-image has always been comprised of these principles. Despite Mr. Rooney's assertions to the contrary, it is an image that has long been at odds with the way that the U.S. is regarded in other nations of the world.

We cannot continue to exist under the delusion that the United States is a benevolent entity that uses its vast resources for "good." Americans would, in this respect, do well to pay attention to Noam Chomsky, who has explained that states are not moral actors; nations behave according to the needs of those who wield power and, in the U.S., as in the rest of the world, power is equated with money. It is the responsibility of Americans, therefore, to educate themselves about the past, to seek diverse sources of news coverage, and to reflexively question any information put before them - regardless of the source - before accepting it as truth.

Mr. Rooney is not being overly dramatic when he says that our civilization is in decline. The deterioration, however, has been taking place for a long time. The process may have been accelerated of late and made more obvious than it ordinarily is, but the rot has always been there. It is not, though, simply the United States that is in jeopardy but the entire human race.

If humans are to survive then all of us, Americans and citizens of other countries alike, must shed nationalism and our focus on the individual and turn to a more collective worldview. If, instead, we choose to grasp at a vision of the past that is largely fantastical, we will find ourselves facing graver and graver circumstances because the past is what brought us to where we currently stand: a few steps away from the brink of oblivion.

Jeffrey Michael Goodman (j_m_goodman@yahoo.com) is an attorney who resides in Virginia.

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