"The Lesson of Marx," the author calls this. Have Freepers adopted Marx as a teacher? Then they are in for a surprise, since if we believe this teacher capitalism is another fantasy likewise doomed to failure. Perhaps we lost the Cold War, after all.
Our author does not tell us why this dream house description applies only to rogue states, and not to the pie-in-the-sky capitalists who brought us the dot-com boom-bust and the Enron economy. And what about the fantastic neo-Wilsonian imaginings of our own president?
At the heart of the dialectically emergent concept of neo-sovereignty is precisely the double standard that Mr. Butler denounced - a double standard imposed by the U.S. on the rest of the world, whereby the U.S. can unilaterally decide to act, if need be, to override and even to cancel the existence of any state regime that proposes to develop WMD, especially in those cases where the state regime in question has demonstrated its dangerous lack of a sense of the realistic.
At the heart of American governance is the principle that a just government derives from the consent of the governed--What touches all, must be approved by all. If America decides to declare itself the world governor described here, we are betraying our foundational principles. I suspect this author would argue that such principles are out of date, "concepts from another age." All the more reason to distrust his foreign policy recommendations.
We must not let our noble ideals betray us into betraying our very ideals... We must take a hard look at every idea we hold dear and ask, Does this idea even fit any more?
How easily we abandon self-evident truths for the pragmatic.
And does it any longer make sense to speak of conservatives in a world in which a catastrophic change of some kind looms, or liberals when it is the core liberal values of all of us - even the most conservative - that are being threatened?
I'd rather stick to my principles and die than submit myself into the Leviathan State and live.
For neither in war nor yet at law ought any man to use every way of escaping death. For often in battle there is no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything. The difficulty, my friends, is not in avoiding death, but in avoiding wickedness; for that runs faster than death.
-Socrates, in Plato's Apology
But to call the United States' response a bid for empire is simply silly.
So what do you call a government that arrogates to itself the right to control the military of every other nation, as this very author advocates?
Harris is a scholar of Marx, as I learned when I read some of his other work, but not in the way you think. He is a highly skilled debunker of Marx and persona non grata in socialist circles. His point is simple and clear: There is no free lunch. Free rider systems cannot work. To suggest that the dot.com busts and Enron are analogous to the failure of free rider systems like communism and oil rich Arab tribal societies is deeply problematic, to say the least.
I suspect this author would argue that such principles are out of date, "concepts from another age."
You're right. That's why I said in my opening post that he's presenting us with a novel point of view. It will be no easy task for an American conservative, with an abiding commitment to American foundational, constitutional principles, to wrap his or her mind around the world-historical role for the country Harris lays out in the piece. But his central point should give pause to every serious person. Are we targeted? Can the weapons aimed at us cause mass destruction? How do we deal with the threat? How much of your disagreement with Harris grows out of a longing for the Fortress America that sadly disappeared in a miles long cloud of smoke and ash on a crystal clear September day?
So what do you call a government that arrogates to itself the right to control the military of every other nation, as this very author advocates?
I don't believe he is speaking as an advocate. I don't read the article as a work of advocacy. Harris wants us to think about these ideas, and, as he says in his final sentence, do so with some trepidation.