The Antiwar Right's Bent View of the World

Man you have bought the neocon line totally. I agree our size and influence make us a target regardless. But we are more of a target because we intervene. As I have said before on this board, no terrorist are attacking Switzerland. And absolutely nothing I have said would fairly lead you to accuse me of wanting to sacrifice our sovereignty. I think we should get out of the UN and NATO and other multilateral organizations that sacrifice our sovereignty. I also have not, unlike some paleos, embraced the more dovish or realistic Colin Powell, because I realized his position was not motivated by principled isolationism but by multilateralism. I and most antiwar paleos and libertarians are the ultimate unilateralist. We should never have to seek anyone else's permission to protect ourselves. But providing for the common defense means protecting our northern border from Canada, our southern border from Mexico and Florida from Cuba and not much else. It does not include toppling foreign dictators halfway around the world just because we do not like them. If Saddam was blockading the Persian Gulf demanding we pay tribute to him on every barrel of oil that passed through, I would send in the 5th fleet. If Saddam is a ruthless dictator, it is the responsibility of the Iraqis and the Iraqis only to overthrow him. It is not America's responsibility and it is certainly not the responsibility of the poor Army grunt who is over there carrying water for all the keyboard warriors at National Review and the Weekly Standard. I am very familiar with the National Security Strategy for The United States. It could not be much worse if it was written by Satan himself. It is a strategy for perpetual unwinable war, and it has neocon fingerprints all over it.

The idea of preemptive war is dangerous in the extreme. Especially for the citizens in the country we supposedly have some crystal ball and are supposed to realize they represent some sort of threat. It also violates the Christian principle of a just war. You can not make absolute assertions that this or that would have been better if only we had intervened sooner because it is absolutely unfalsifiable. There is a significant case to be made for example that had we stayed out of WWI there would have been no WWII. If we had stayed out of WWII there would have been no Cold War as the Germans and Russians would have fought each other into the ground. The Russians were our allies in WWII remember. Do you think we should have been fighting a "preemptive" two front war then? Against the Germans and Russians. Those Russians were bad fellows and maybe we could have prevented the Cold War had we just stomped them sooner, right. You are living in neocon fantasy land.

If we are recommending readings for each other, may I recommend you read Washington's Farewell Address? I'll take the wisdom of the founders over wisdom from the neocons any day of the week.

BTW, did you get my private reply?

Well I have to give you credit like I did our two neocon globocops above, at least you are honest. I said I wanted to establish a baseline, and I have. You are a Social Democrat who has deluded himself into believing you are a conservative. You and David Brooks and the rest of the boys can believe in all the big government you want, just please do the rest of us a favor, and preserve the integrity of the English language, and don't call yourself a conservative.

Where exactly in the Constitution is Social Security, Medicare, and the DOE authorized? And please don't whip out the General Welfare Clause or the Interstate Commerce Clause. Your fellow traveling liberal buddies have already beat those poor sections to death.

The problem with the Articles of Confederation that the delegates were sent there to deal with were the debasing of the currency and interstate trade restrictions. (They were not sent there initially to create a whole new Constitution.) Those things could have been dealt with without creating a federal government that has grown out of control. In fact, that whole protecting us against a debased currency and insisting on gold and silver coinage is working great isn't it? Score one for the Anti-Federalist.

America has a great standard of living in spite of our big, meddlesome, nanny state, not because of it. How much more prosperous would we be if we only paid a couple of percent in taxes and were free from burdensome federal regulation?

And since Switzerland hasn't been attacked yet, maybe they should launch one of those preemptive wars. Since you are a prophet, maybe you could tell them who they should attack.

I have no idea what you or anybody else means by the term "neocon", and don't care a whit. I am a Conservative dead center in the mold of Ronald Reagan. That same father of the ultrapower United States brought on our present era of prosperity by defeating the Soviet Union - engaging in total and preemptive war against them, and won the world for the United States without firing a shot. You wish to throw all that away - No Thanks. That great Conservative also engaged in a preemptive strike against Grenada consistent with the Monroe Doctrine, assistance to the Afghan rebels that drained the Soviets, assistance to the Contras, and many other military and pseudomilitary activities that gave us the dominance we enjoy today. It made the world so much safer that people like you joined with the leftists to drastically degrade the military in the 90s. Aside: Why didn't you join with your buddies then to protect the borders? That dominance has started many nations down the inevitable road to greater freedom and liberty - the only moral manner in which the greatest Christian nation on earth could properly pursue.

You don't like that RR and I am a Conservative? Tough. We're not the first who believed your isolationist tendencies are the wrong course - and after the foolish experiment with isolationism in the 30s I would think that everyone would have learned. Arguably the most successful foreign policy document ever in the world's history was the Monroe Doctrine, and it is decidedly not isolationist, and espouses activist stances and preemption explicitly. President Bush's "Liberty Doctrine", that you clearly do not understand, updates the Monroe Doctrine for the modern world circumstances. It is the only way that we will be able to keep the jackals from destroying Civilization in the long run.

You want to bank on "border security" and police actions when the bad guys attack us - disappear from the world scene except when we decide to implicitly rubber stamp some stupid UN or other foolish socialist proposal? You want to be a Clintonite and respond to attacks on embassies and even the Trade Center by turning our heads or asking France to arrest the perpetrators? Those are losing propositions in this world - indistinguishable from the position of the Peace Nazis on the whacko far left wing - and you willingly embrace such leftist concepts and call yourself "conservative"? It is also a completely immoral way to behave, for to whom much has been given, much is expected, and we have been given much. You want to be an ostrich and hide your head from the world - go ahead for yourself - but this country does not have such a comfortable option. Whether YOU like it or not, the dictators and madmen and OBL's will continue to spin their webs, and the only - ONLY - way to ultimately keep them from attacking us is to engage them now, while they are weaker and more disorganized than they would be after you allowed them increasingly powerful bases and terrorist nations to operate from, and increasingly powerful technology to use in their attacks.

The NSS I referenced in post#36, and that encouragement of Liberty for the people of the world against oppressive regimes, is the only way I have yet heard that offers any hope of avoiding the type of world that you are espousing: the world of the US as an increasingly isolated "walled" commmunity. Your way is wrong for me and my children, it is wrong for the United States, and it is wrong for the world.

Simmer down. No need to get emotional. Just trying to have a rational debate.

You hit on one of the major problems. For most "mainstream" "movement" conservatives, their historical memory does not extend past Reagan. Reagan was a conservative by the standards of his day, but he was no conservative by the standards of the Constitution. There was not one Democratic spending bill that he should not have vetoed until he ran out of ink. He also appointed pro-choice Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court. An abomination. No one who doesn't want to get rid of ALL unauthorized, unconstitutional spending is a real conservative by any fixed standard such as the Constitution.

Also, historically the "Old Right" was always isolationist. It was conservatives who opposed our war against Spain, our entry into WWI and our entry into WWII. It was during the Cold War that anticommunism became the sine qua non of official conservatism and it's spokesmen such as Buckley. But libertarians and some of the more hard right conservative groups remained isolationist. (The John Birch Society opposed our entry into Vietnam for example, and you can not possibly say they were soft on Communism.) I do not endorse interventionism during the Cold War, but once the Soviet Union fell why didn't conservatism return to it's isolationist roots?

If you are a conservative "dead center in the mold of RR," I am a conservative dead center in the mold of Patrick Henry.

You want us to be the "encouragement of Liberty for the people of the world against repressive regimes." Talk about echoing the left. What are you now a "citizen of the world?" I am a citizen of the US, not the world, and the Constitution was designed to protect the Liberty of Americans, not the world.

You may believe that the NSS is the best hope for your children, but it is a monumental fools errand. We can no more end evil in the world than we can lasso the moon. It is a strategy for perpetual war and never ending hatred of the US.

An isolationist and idealist like yourself could not be elected, and could never govern if they lied their way into office. RR's way is the only possibility to reverse the damage that the socialists and isolationists did to the US during the 30s-60s. Unlike you, and the other idealists I know who could never gain power and therefore will be perpetual gnats instead of persons who will have any effect on policy, Reagan and other conservatives like me have managed to have an effect. Your way failed miserably before RR, and will continue to fail now. I DO remember the ineffectiveness of "conservatives" like yourself, and do not absolve them of their responsibility for getting us the great deal of the Thirties socialist programs by joining forces with the leftists.

Like it or not, the socialists imposed the great "deal" on this country and the associated welfare programs. I would LOVE to get rid of federal government meddling in much of what it has taken upon itself, and so did Reagan, but only so much was able to be done at a time. Weaning American of those "great deals" will take at least the same amount of time, and will take even longer if the gnats like yourself continue to join forces with the socialists in opposition to honest conservatives' efforts to continue to reverse it while maintaining the voting power to make a difference, and educating people as to why it is a better way. You see, I believe in PROMOTING the general welfare, not providing it, in agreement with you - but in a representative government such as ours, it is not possible to force American to do that "cold turkey".

Likewise, I believe the founders were right about PROVIDING for the common defense of this nation, and whether you like it or not, the alternative in the world of TODAY means that such provision must recognize that if we simply ignore what is going on outside our borders, this country will cease to exist. You, like the Peace Nazis, have a fantasy of a world filled with perfect people leading perfect nations, but that is simply foolish, yet at least you concede that a few nasties will try to get past our borders or corrupt trading practices so we need an isolationist wall. A walled "Castle America" is not viable and such a state that you have projected to us in this thread would be destroyed by a terrorist-led dictatorial state within three decades.

It is nice you finally recognize such views as yours make you a member of "libertarians and some of the more hard right conservative groups" instead of being a mainline conservative, such as myself. If those groups had gotten their wish and stayed out of, for example, WWII, Hitler or the Soviet Commies would have become the undisputed atomic powers and within a dozen years after that would have imposed themselves upon the rest of the world, including a USA defenseless against such weaponry. Your vaunted isolationist tendencies would have resulted in failure to PROVIDE FOR THE NATIONAL DEFENSE. Fine - be there with the rest of them - but you end up being extremely counterproductive in advancing to your own views when it comes to legislative effect.

Your joining forces with the Peace Nazis in this case, as well as socialists in the other case, make you no different from the left as far as being an asset to Conservative government, no matter your "good intentions".

"Citizen of the world" - rubbish. "End evil in the world" - balderdash. You claim know the NSS and the Liberty Doctrine, but you utterly fail to comprehend the reasoning behind it, and if you did you would realize that the NSS is based on no such preconceptions, nor is my argument. Just like a Utopian socialist, you can't seem to think past an immediate result. You can't seem to come to grips with the recognition that the promotion of Liberty for others will result in increased security and prosperity for ourselves, and, indeed, increased Liberty for Americans here at home and abroad. You apparently believe that the NSS states that the US will run the world, dictate to it, determine their governments or in some other way create an empire USA. If you were to actually THINK about the NSS and the present world situation rather than some socialist, idealist fantasy of the way the world "should" be, you would realize that it is the only hope of AVOIDING perpetual war, not be a cause of it. Perhaps you ought to review it again, assuming you have actually looked at it, against all discernible evidence.

Patrick Henry would most certainly approve such a strategy in today's world.

You are definitely right about one thing, since my conversion to real conservatism during my College Republican days, I have never, ever claimed to be a "mainline" or "main-steam" conservative. Main-steam conservatives are just as much of the problem as liberals of which they are a subspecies. In fact, they are probably more of a problem because they convince the masses that they really are conservative and they ostracize the real conservatives. Your anger is misdirected. You should not be angry at me for staying true to principle. You should be angry at those who sell out principle and call it conservatism.

I have said before that honest conservatives can disagree about the rate of change, but they can not disagree about the direction. Example: Medicare is clearly unconstitutional, an immoral wealth transfer scheme, and should be abolished. Conservatives could support abolishing it today, fazing it out at a fixed 10% over the next 10 years until it is down to zero, or by a fixed 5% over the next 20 for you moderates. But they CAN NOT support slowing its rate of growth because that is still in the wrong direction. At that point you are just arguing with the Social Democrats about degrees of Social Democracy. Social Democracy is NEVER conservatism.

I'm sorry if my injection of a little ideological reality messes up the nice little schema you have been brainwashed by the Republicans and the "conservative establishment" into accepting. Republicans good. Democrats bad. Republicans conservative. Democrats liberal. Well wake up buddy. The reality is this. Democrats = Social Democrats. Republicans = slightly less Social Democrat. And Rush and the rest of them can blather all they want, that is the Gospel Truth.

Don't be mad at me. Be mad at those who have lied to you. And come on over from the dark side and join us in actually trying to make some conservative change.

I'm the one joining forces with the leftist. Yeah right! What you are espousing is leftism.

On foreign policy, I am the realist and you are the Utopian idealist. Things are the way they are because of innumerable factors. Religion, culture, race, language, history, ancient jealousies, tribal conflicts, etc. etc. etc. To believe you can just uproot American style democracy and transplant it anywhere in the world, and they are all just going to welcome us with open arms and say, "Gee, thanks for liberating us" is Utopian in the extreme. It is much more likely to make the world angry at us and instead of decreasing the threat, it increases it.

P.S. Calling me a gnat was not very nice.

The problem with the Articles of Confederation that the delegates were sent there to deal with were the debasing of the currency and interstate trade restrictions. (They were not sent there initially to create a whole new Constitution.) Those things could have been dealt with without creating a federal government that has grown out of control. In fact, that whole protecting us against a debased currency and insisting on gold and silver coinage is working great isn't it? Score one for the Anti-Federalist.
It took 130 years to get out of control. That is not a bad record. The Fedral Reserve Bank was not created until 1913.
The Articles of Confederation were spinning out of control in 10 years. Score 0 for the anti-Federalists.

America has a great standard of living in spite of our big, meddlesome, nanny state, not because of it. How much more prosperous would we be if we only paid a couple of percent in taxes and were free from burdensome federal regulation?
Again, this is a recent phenonimon. Moreover, we are also wealthy because the country grew, had resources, could protect itself, and followed Hamilton's economic advice.

And since Switzerland hasn't been attacked yet, maybe they should launch one of those preemptive wars.
Huh?

So you were going to whip out the general welfare clause? If so, I rest my case.

Let me try to illustrate by way of example. Communist believe in the common ownership of the means of production. If you say you are a Communist, but you do not believe in the common ownership of the means of production, instead you just believe in heavy government regulation of the private economy, then you really are not a Communist. You can jump up and down and stamp your feet and insist over and over you are a Communist, but if you don't believe certain threshold principles you are not. Same thing goes for real conservatism. If you believe the right of the government to redistribute wealth in welfare schemes is somehow enshrined in the general welfare clause, then you are not a real conservative. And no amount of protesting or screaming or questioning how educated I am will change that.

Orwell said that freedom is the right to say 2+2=4. (Paraphrase.) Well 2+2=4. And Social Democracy = Social Democracy. 2+2 does not equal 5 and Social Democracy does not and will never equal conservatism, and no amount of brainwashing by the "mainstream conservative" establishment will ever change that.

And how can you say us hard core folks think we own the place. We are the minority here. And the mainstreamers are the ones always calling us names and making fun and questioning people's education, etc. etc. etc. I never call names, and I am always polite. I just point out inconvenient little ideological facts.

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