nationalism v. internationalism

Linda Milazzo wrote this in a blog post from huffinton post, "This evening at a Washington DC fundraiser, in a statement that can best be described as regressive American exceptionalism, former Republican Speaker Newt Gingrich said of himself:
"I am not a citizen of the world. I think the entire concept is intellectual nonsense and stunningly dangerous!" She then goes on to say, "Mr. Gingrich's...defines in two simple sentences the elitism, racism and egotism that have destroyed his Republican Party".

I don't see the racism in the statement by Gingrich? The reason she said that, I believe, is she thinks that calling yourself a citizen not of the world but of a country is racist to other nations. But that's not racism, that's nationalism.

But I think she has it all flipped around. An internationalist from America, who says things like, "To me being a citizen of the World means that I put the well-being of all peoples (regardless of Nationality) above my selfish desires. I think their beliefs are that our morality is more important than material posessions", and "I don't think that we who call ourselves World Citizens mean that we want to be subject to an oppressive World Government. We mean that the tribal connections that we feel are to all the peoples in the world, and not those born into a certain geographical area", (got these from two posted comments of the blog) are missing the political implications of their position. I do not doubt that they care about other nations and want to help them, but the tools that are in place are controlled by a few, meaning the United States and Europe (but not as much anymore in the case of Europe). Comments by internationalists, I think, need to be careful not to cross over to "The White Man's Burden" syndrome. Because we are the most powerful nation in the world, we should be careful not to force our way of life upon weaker nations. By claiming we are all citizens of the world, what perception of a citizen should be pushed? Should the American style of citizen and American style of democracy be the model for which we impose upon other nations. In other words should we be American missionaries going off to other countries to spread the good word of Americanism (or even more to the point humanism, secularism, and universalism) By sending money to some foreign country to bring them our food and our medicine, and also our style of farming and our style of economics, do we not deteriorate their way of life? Are we not then egotistic and arrogant, thinking our way is better than their way (whoever they are)?

After WWII (sorry bringing up more history) The united states and allies, believed what went wrong in germany was that the people didn't really know how to run a democracy correctly, so the allies and the united states took it upon themselves to show them. the ussr did the same in east germany. through time you had west germany looking like the us and east germany looking like the ussr, but neither of them looked like germany (whatever that may have been, good or bad). Both the us and ussr were imperialistic, egotistic and arrogant that it was their system that was better, splitting up another nation and people. Should we do the same to nations in Africa? or china? of nations in South America? places that have had different histories, and different languages, and different beliefs, and different societies will create different governments and different customs. By claiming to be helping the world, we could be eliminating the peoples we claim to be helping.

Forgive my long rant and sermon (sorry about that, I found that this blog is a great way to get my thoughts down and also to hear your points-of-view. by hearing your thoughts it makes me keep checking my views and making sure they are more based on reason than opinion.) I am not for not helping other people in the world, don't get me wrong. (I said "not" three times in that sentence, sorry) But the tools we use (such as the UN, peace corp, military, G8-g20 summit hearings, world bank) are Western-American tools which can seem more like imposing our ways than helping. I think we should focus on helping the basic Natural Rights of every human, that is life, LIBERTY, and property. But even then our definitions of life, LIBERTY, and property should keep in mind the traditions of the individual peoples. This really is kind of hard. Do we go as far as to not help women, who have little to no rights (would we be imposing our views upon another culture?) before you jump and say, no; what if it was syria instead of the us that was the dominate force in the world, and syria opposed abortions and they sent their people to the us to stop abortion. An issue here in the us where we believe abortion is a right of the woman. To them they would be thinking they are helping our society. We don't want to fall into "the US knows best" mentality. I lean more towards, if there is something that is allowed in a culture that physically hurts a person without their consent then we should step in. But I would be very much interested in hearing what you think should be the limits (if any) on building this idea of We are all of the World? Am I missing the point here, in grouping World Citizen with American imperialism? How much should the US get involved in other nations? What issues do you see that surpass the national level and should reach no matter what to every human? the bold is there so if you don't want to read the whole super long post you still can see the questions asked.