Director Oliver Stone On History. And America, Jim Morrison & Ron Paul.

An Exclusive Interview

January 2012 by Ed Rampell

EXCERPT

Ron Paul "He’s the only one of anybody who’s saying anything intelligent about the future of the world." --Oliver Stone

RCM:  In Our History you ask if there’s “a potential wild card in an internal economic collapse of the empire”? Is America an empire? And if so, do you foresee the fall of the empire?

OS:  Yes.  Yes, both.   I don’t think it’s a wild card, I think it’s a given. There’s no way that we can continue this spending spree.  In fact, I think in many ways the most interesting candidate – I’d even vote for him if he was running against Obama – is Ron Paul.  Because he’s the only one of anybody who’s saying anything intelligent about the future of the world.

How do we go on being who we are? We have an identity crisis here.  But as long as we keep running this fantasy through our minds that we can dominate history, it’s not a wild card, it’s a given!

RCM: What do you think of Francis Fukuyama’s notion of “the end of history”

OS:  That was an extremely hubristic statement.  The kind of madness that manifested itself in this country in the late ’90s, when Time was putting [Larry] Summers and [Robert] Rubin on the cover*, proclaiming in metaphor that this was the American triumph. This was the kind of madness that setup the disastrous 2000s.
* Time Magazine; February 15, 1999. Rubin, Summers, Greenspan: “The Committee to Save the World.”
And now, too – Obama… in welcoming home the troops was saying how we had achieved “stability, freedom and democracy” in Iraq.  It was the same language that Bush used – and Obama was the guy who called Iraq a “dumb war.”
So you tell me, what have we learned?  Or who’s faking, or who’s kidding who?  Why is it necessary for every candidate – except for Ron Paul – to pay obeisance to this hypocrisy that the U.S. is a good force in the world, and that it is the dominant force, and can be the policeman of the world?  Since when?  What gave us that right?  The right of empire, the right of force?

RCM: Unexamined assumptions…

OS:  They’re based on this idea, this myth, Woodrow Wilson passed on when we entered World War I that we’re exporting democracy and freedom.

 ENTIRE INTERVIEW
http://www.rockcellarmagazine.com/2012/01/12/director-oliver-stone-...

Tags: Anthony Arnove, capitalism, Churchill, Cowboy Junkies, Eisenhower, Francis Fukuyama, Franklin Roosevelt, George Bush, Gorbachev, Harry Truman, Haymarket, Henry Wallace, Howard Zinn, Iraq War, IWW, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, John F. Kennedy, Ku Klux Klan, Larry Summers, leonard cohen, Manuel Noriega, Marxism, Matt Graham, Mick Jagger, NATO, Natural Born Killers, Obama, Oliver Stone, Oliver Stone 2012 Interview, On History, Pakistan, Patricia Kennealy, People's History, Peter Cuznick, Reagan, Robert Rubin, Ron Paul, Saddam Hussein, Showtime, South of the Border, Soviet Union, Stalin, Street Fighting Man, Sweet Jane, Tariq Ali, The Cold War, The Untold History of the United States, Vietnam War, William Jennings Bryan, William McKinley, Wobblies, Woodrow Wilson, World Resources Institute