Political analysis
Libertarian at Home, Conservative Abroad
- By NotYourDaddy
- February 09, 2008
I have always been, and will always be, at core, a libertarian. I used to be an idealistic libertarian. The first time I ever voted was in 1980, for Ed Clarke. (Anybody remember Ed Clarke?) I was a purist then, in favor of non-intervention and no foreign entanglements. But that was before we were attacked on our own soil, killing thousands of civilians, in a clear and compelling act of War. Now I’m a pragmatic libertarian.
I understand the standard Libertarian argument that, if we just leave everybody alone, they’ll leave us alone too. It’s very nice and neat and rational. The problem is, it assumes everybody else in the world is nice and neat and rational, too. It doesn’t account for terrorists who want to destroy us because we’re infidels and our Western culture is an abomination to Allah.
I’m still a libertarian, albeit a conservative one. But I’m not a pacifist or a non-interventionist. The Monroe Doctrine just won’t work today. Back in the day, there was an entire ocean separating the eastern hemisphere from the western hemisphere, and it took months to cross it, at great peril, and we felt pretty secure from whatever they were doing over there. Today, we have satellites that traverse the globe (Iran just launched one), and nuclear weapons that can decimate entire cities at one pop. (And Iran may soon have those, too.) Back in the 1800s, everything ran on coal or wood, and we had all the coal and wood we needed right here. We had no dependencies on resources controlled by others on the other side of the globe. Today, our entire economy would grind to a halt and people would starve and freeze to death if our oil supply were cut off.
In a rational world, with a free market ruled only by the laws of supply and demand, that would not present a problem. But, when you have ideological enemies who are determined to see your culture brought to its knees, and they control the supply of your economy’s life blood, you have a very different situation. We need to protect our access to the vital fluid that sustains our economy and culture. I’m not suggesting that we have a right to take it just because we need it. We’re willing to pay – but we can’t afford to be cut off entirely.
That’s the world we live in today. It’s a lot more complicated than it used to be. With satellites and nuclear weapons, and the ease of transcontinental transportation, our neighbors are no longer just the countries in our hemisphere. The whole world is our neighbor. And some of them are nuts.
When it comes to domestic policy, I’m still a libertarian. I’m for minimizing government and maximizing individual freedom and responsibility. But when it comes to foreign policy, I’m a hard line conservative. We can’t change the world. But we can preserve our own sovereignty and, within our own borders, we can maintain a free society. And people who share our values, and revere the principles on which our nation was founded, and have something to contribute to our country and our economy, are welcome to come here and carve out their own niche in the land of liberty. And I believe we should make it easier for those people to become citizens. But open up our borders, grant entitlements to aliens, increase our exposure to terrorism, or compromise our sovereignty by entering into binding agreements that let other nations dictate our policies? No way.
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We need to protect our access to the vital fluid that sustains our economy and culture.
By establishing permanent bases in Iraq?
Or, maybe we need to find ways to run our country without all that oil. Put the kind of resources to work on it like we did the moon shot.
Oh, wait, we can’t do that, it would mean we’d have to actually change our behavior or something, and that would interfere with our happy motoring.
285 days ago by scumby
Sounds like a plan, scumby. Just let me know when all these alternative energy sources are available. As soon as they’re as effective and efficient as oil, I’ll be happy to start using them.
If I could afford to heat my home with solar panels, I would. But I can’t. We could always grow corn for biofuel — except it turns out that’s more harmful to the environment than fossil fuels. In the meantime, while we’re researching and developing alternatives, we’re stuck with a dependency on oil…285 days ago by NotYourDaddy
You’ve pretty much described me to a “T”. great read. btw-what’s with the crazy guy above? what exactly is “happy motoring”? Sounds to me like lingo from a Frisco culture for which I do not belong.
284 days ago by Rp4Prez
I totally would have voted for Paul had he not opened his mouth about America being responsible for the arab world hating us. It’s such a disconnect from reality that I could not bring myself to vote for him even though I COMPLETELY AGREE WITH HIM ON DOMESTIC POLICY. Maybe next time Dr. Paul, maybe.
283 days ago by John Bon Jovi