The great criminals of modernity have been the tyrants who treated human beings not as ends in themselves with intrinsic value, but as means to their ends. This was the crime of Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Mao, Castro, and Pol Pot. And it is a sin against patriotism to treat a country not as an end in herself, a land to be loved and cherished, but as the means to an end, be it global democracy or “benevolent hegemony” or world government or Pax Americana or some New World Order. This is the sin of the Wilsonians and neoconservatives alike.
