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or lofty secular ideals that create this thrill may be merely the voice of
the larger social beast calling for some ultimate
contribution--demanding that a seventh century Mohammedan hurl
himself against the defenses of a city far from his ancestral home; or
that his descendant drive a truck of explosives into an American office
building.
Americans, too, have heard the cry of the superorganism. We
have been eager to funnel fresh food into the hungry maw of our
society. Albert Beveridge, an influential American senator21 at the turn
of the century, had a habit of making statements like the following:
"[God] has made us the master organizers of the world to establish
system where chaos reigns.... He has made us adept in government
that we may administer government among savage and senile
peoples.... He has marked the American people as His chosen Nation
to finally lead in the regeneration of the world. This is the divine
mission of America... We are trustees of the world's progress,
guardians of its righteous peace."22 Beveridge's words were designed
as a justification for swallowing foreign societies, and reassembling
them as pieces of the American organism. Two territories that the
Senator and his colleagues were particularly eager to absorb were
Cuba and The Philippines.
An amoeba hunting for fellow creatures whose substance it can
absorb would find such rationalizations for digesting its prey quite
handy. Just think, his hunger represents an attempt to regenerate a
senile world!
An ideology is usually a high-minded mask for a group's itch to
take power and resources from other social groups. It's a meme--a
cluster of ideas anxious to fatten on the substance of a superorganism's
neighbors.
Hans Morgenthau, the political theorist, has said that men don't
willingly accept the truth about human nature, and especially about
political nature. The aim of politics, Morgenthau says, is not to make
perior being whose power leaves them in awe. But the holy vision
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