The
American Revolution was based upon the idea of freedom. Even now is the whole
nation associated with the topic of freedom. The nation was founded under the
idea that a government should place the people’s wills and rights as top priority,
going as far as to saying how the people should be allowed to overthrow a
government when necessary. The image as the defender of free people appeared
quite early on, but situations changed after the breaking of isolation during the
World Wars. Due to lack of participation in European events beforehand, the
American public generally had no interest in foreign matters. The United States
was developing as a major economic power and contender in the practice of
Imperialism especially in Asia, and there certainly wasn’t a concern for Europe’s
wellbeing. However, notice how “Imperialism” was already a practice of the
nation even before the Cold War. That practice greatly benefited the “free”
people of the dominant nation in a Capitalist matter, but limited the freedom
of the victims. In human rights, the United States was already hypocritical
from the beginning, especially with their excessive use of slavery which also
benefited Capitalism. Other examples included a war with Mexico, the control of
Cuba, and the conquering of Hawaii. With the context aside, some of the first
few major and notable limitations imposed on all of its citizens appeared
during the World Wars, just before the Cold War. It was limitation on the freedom
of speech in form of war propaganda. These efforts went so far as to eliminate
any anti-war propaganda. One notable example was during World War II when the
Smith Act was passed in 1940, which banned any support of violent overthrows of
the government. While this was also a limitation on freedom and a downright
removal of one of the fundamental ideas the foundation of the nation was based
upon, the concept of this act was later expanded upon during the Cold War to
oppose any form of Socialism or Communism. Known as the “Red Scare”, which was
the promotion of anti-Communism or leftist extremism, it greatly endangered
anyone even thinking about those ideals. This was a great limitation on the
freedom of speech and thought.
The
United States as the defender of Capitalism is a decent counterargument when
talking about defending free people. Capitalism was generally referred to as
the free system, therefore comprised of free people. This is commonly used in
the Capitalist versus Communist struggle as the good against bad, freedom
against totalitarian. If the United States was to defend their free people,
they would have to contain Communism. On the long term, this seemed to negate
all stated on the first argument above. People would lose even more rights and
freedoms under a Communist system when compared to a Capitalism system. It
should also be noted that all the human rights abuses stated above benefited
Capitalism within the United States. However, remember how the topic is about
the image compared to the reality? The Cold War consisted of excessive paranoia
that would make one question the validity of the actions of the United States
to oppose Communism. The numerous human rights abuses stated above would all be
valid if these efforts brought no real positive effect, and even if it did, it
was still an act against free people. If one was to treat the United States’
good intentions as the image, then the reality would still shatter that image.
Generalization aside, some specific actions by the nation may have benefited
its Capitalism and its free people, but were plagued by fundamental flaws of
Capitalism: not everyone benefits. As stated before, acts of Imperialism
benefited one at the cost of another. The United States took up the mantle as
the defender of people for not just its own citizens, but also the world. The
acts of foreign intervention in Latin America for the sake of containing
Communism were simply outright attacks on national sovereignty and human
rights. A famous example would be a US backed 1973 overthrow of the Chilean
government, putting the infamous Augusto Pinochet in power. Many other examples
in the Latin Americas like that greatly limited the foreign people’s rights and
yet Chile was just as democratic as the United States before the overthrow.
While that was for containing Capitalism which ultimately limited freedom, an
earlier example in 1954 in Guatemala would be also for Capitalist benefits.
After a long revolution to put a democratic government in place, the United
States staged an overthrow due to the nationalization of land that harmed the
United Fruit Company. Another dictatorship was put in place while human rights
were violated and genocide was attempted. The only moment where the protection
of Capitalism also benefited most of the free people was the Berlin Airlift.
The Korean War was only perceived as an immediate threat while the both that
and the Vietnam War had the United States supporting corrupt governments that
violated human rights.
It
can be ultimately stated that the goal of the United States was to defend free
people- or Capitalists that is. One appeal of Capitalism however was the
freedom and the lack of restriction. This was the only major part of Capitalism
that actually was aligned with the definition of free people, while the rest
were all about competition. The efforts of the destruction of human rights for
the sake of preserving and enhancing Capitalism were directly contradictory to
the simple term of freedom. Only a segment of Capitalism was about freedom, and
taking that away just to benefit the elite would mean that the United States no
longer supported freedom. Their intentions were to boost the economy and
preserve Capitalism, but the immediate threat of Communism easily twisted
perception and left out a fundamental ideal. The simple idea of freedom and
rights were absolutely violated by the United States during the Cold War.
