This article from the Guardian is an interesting read. Combine that with another Guardian article here and a couple good points are made.
If you’re too lazy to click through on those links, then here’s the goods. The Guardian is a (good) newspaper in Britain. They make a good point about the world community having some kind of decision as to who our next president is. They’re asking their readers to write letters to voters in battleground states before the election to express their views on the candidates.
Now, I’m not saying we should let other countries vote for our leaders, but we do often like to consider ourselves the cool kid on the block an awful lot. With that should come some kind of responsibility to listen to the opinions of others in the world community.
I had the chance to hang out with some cool people from Australia for a few days when I was in Ireland a couple years ago. We talked a few times about what the US was doing in regards to terrorism and Iraq, etc… At one point they asked me:
“What are you guys doing? We respect America and we love America and we’re trying to support you, but now you guys are starting to scaring us.”
That seems to be a common thing around the world. We should stop being the “oh-so-wise” bully and start treating respect withrespect.