Stop Me Before I Vote Again

Case in point: the long long road taken by the old China lobby was clearly lengthened and widened by a venerable component of most local empire projects -- a component I like to call the sub-missionary component.

Foreign missions of this sort are varied indeed, at least as to intent, but their intent has one common thread -- they are always strung on an altruistic sunbeam, and for that reason, they allow the lobby, through them, to importune without appeals to self interest -- not even spread-eaglery, not even partiotism.

Nope, rather their appeal is to unrivalled goods like God, and the collective soul of humanity. (Need I say, guys like Jesus play a mean lead trumpet?)

Nowadays, of course, we have secularists in this just-for-the-goodliness civilizing business. In fact the third world is filthy with 'em -- but still, the Christian godly are the biggest section of the goodly, and prior to, say, the new-frontier days of the Camelot 60's, the uplift of the backward races was almost entirely the work of Christ's little travelling witnesses.

Throughout our history -- and here's my point -- these googoos for the man from Nazereth were easily mobilized to do the occasional multi-tasking asked of them by larger, if baser forces -- i.e. cross border long range "private gain," whether reformed or papist.

The story of Uncle Sam is the same throughout east and southeast Asia. In fact, history is checkered to the point of dazzlement with all these scurrying yankee God squadrons.

And at those terrible times when an armed impasse arose -- a time when uncle's citizens' wares and rights were under siege or threat of seizure -- these fellow countrypersons that were there as folks of the lord could be counted on to add their voices to the outcry: "Uncle, help, help! Otherwise, millions our our little brothers' souls may be lost for all eternity."

Makes for a nice humane choral group at a congressperson's door or in a singing telegram, especially when that congressperson is being asked to vote to send thousands of jarheads, or grunts, or both, to shoot their way into (or back into) some place over there across the Pacific -- somewhere where Uncle's marines and paratroopers are not entirely welcome.