These two readings, “The march of the flag” and “Platform of the American anti-Imperialist League” have totally different ideas of liberty from each other.
First of all, “The march of the flag” is based on the thought that America has to conquer the world under its political and economic power. As we could see from the reading, author emphasized that America needed to be “the commercial supremacy of the world”, “by broadening their reign as the children of liberty wax in strength, until empire of our principles is established over the hearts of all mankind”. It is quite obvious that the author wanted America to be the center of the world by invading lands of other countries. He pointed out that the way to accomplish it was to spread the American way of economic system to the world, which is “A market economic”. He said that the trade is as free as between the states of the Union, because they are American territory when others have to pay the tariff, and more and more people have to join the union to make the economic work smoother. However, this thought totally ignored the custom, culture, living standard of people from other countries. Even though author said, “The rule of liberty that all just government derives its authority from the consent of the governed, applies only to those who are capable of self-government.”, the idea is still based on the idea that America is better than the other and every country has to follow them, which means the author totally ignored others system and the progress in their system in the future. It seemed like America still has thought at present, as we can see in Iraq War. They forced them the democracy by using military force, even though they needed more steps before to be democratic like the change of the education, the development of the economy and so on.
The author of the reading, on the other hand, seemed to have totally different idea from the previous author. He thought that what important is rather liberty and the pursuit of happiness than forcing them into American system. He also spoke out the importance of the government deriving people’s power from the consent of the governed. His thought is based on the opposition to the racist, war and subjugation to any kind of people. Of course, if this is practiced in the present society, it is an ideal world. However, it is a little bit unrealistic for me, because the world is following more to the idea of “The march of the flag” both in politics and economics. For me, it was just like utopia.
