Confessions of a warhawk: defending the American Empire

Enter Stage Right - A Journal of Modern Conservatism ^ | November 26, 2001 | Jackson Murphy

[SusanUSA]

I overreacted? :-)

[independentmind]

No empire has avoided the road to Caesarism unless, like the British Empire, it devolved its power before this process could develop," writes Henry Kissinger in his latest book, Does America Need a Foreign Policy? "As challenges grow more diffuse and increasingly remote from the historic domestic base, internal struggles become ever more bitter and in time violent. A deliberate quest for hegemony is the surest way to destroy the values that made the United States great."

Have you seen this?

[independentmind]

Globalization requires the US to ensure that goods flow. Terrorism, major wars, and intra-state conflict, are all threats to that flow of goods and make pretty much every backwater region in their interest.

Seriously if we left globalization up to France, for instance, not only would they have surrendered our freedoms to Germany in World War II. Had they managed to hold out globalization's freedoms would be limited to stinky cheeses and women's unshaved armpits. If the US is not a global leader, will the Rockwell crowd be willing to risk some other nation becoming one?

The author apparently isn't perceptive to realize that this is a fairly good argument against globalization. And the idea that if we don't do it, someone else will is really quite unimaginative.

[independentmind]

s/be:

The author apparently isn't perceptive enough to

[Askel5]

seen as the beginning of the feminization of politics

Bingo. Whenever I hear someone speak of our being "more free" (as if we'd discovered Additional human rights), I can't help but suspect someone who's bought at least one of the bogus freedoms gifted us by the State in the name of Choice ... like the mother-only right to homocide.

[Askel5]

Typical county club Republican, doesn't give a damn unless it is money related

Remind me to get the exact quote for you from Molnar on "conservatives" from one time he was in town.

[Askel5]

who's been involved in American intelligence for 50+ years that's still alive

An easy way to tell is to look for the Decent People.

As Kissinger told Putin ... "all decent people get their start in intelligence."

(Wish I'd been in the jump seat of their St. Petersburg limo at that moment to witness what I'm certain was a most soulful exchange of the eyes between two of the globe's most Decent Men men ever.)

[Twodees]

Ahaha, the very worst is French opera. It goes on for years and years. A man could drink long enough to pass out during a French opera and snooze long enough to wake up cold sober. He'd miss less than half of it. ;-)

[Twodees]

Oh, no ma'am. I was marveling at your restraint. ;-)

You're still the prettiest young lady on FR, BTW. Tell your hubby I'm not flirting, though. I'm too old to flirt.

[Askel5]

You know ... I call them useful idiots all the time but these fellahs than hang on the wisdom of Henry really blow my mind.

What do you think he is saying here? I'll bet they don't even know. I can't imagine why we'd take a page from the British Empire. Do we still have an opportunity to avoid Caesarism?

I don't understand how the division at home over remote interventions is a problem ... seems to me (just from observation) that such divisions stem strictly from our government's departure from its historical (read:Declaration, Constitional) base.

Americans have no problem fighting to hell and gone. It's not a conflict's being remote so much as it is being unjust or flim-flam that causes the division.

And if he's going to be throwing around words like Hegemon, why no mention ever of China? Considering the fact that this will boil down to an East-West cataclysm and the heat's already on in earnest, it seems pretty superficial and sorta sneaky to constantly avoid the dragon breathing fire so as to load up your assurances and stratagems with strictly Western references.

Devolve in advance like the Brits? What kind of advice is that? Given that he must have some "remote" concept of the mind of the enemy to all that is the "historical base" of American thinking as embodied in the universal human liberties and self-evident truths of our founding documents to which men the world over respond ... I find his counsel passing strange.

[SusanUSA]

*blush*
Thank you, sir.

[independentmind]

Well, I think WWI had something to do with Britain devolving its power; I don't think it was a deliberate policy choice.

Kissinger seems to be coming out against globalization, which to my mind is a good thing. It's also somewhat consistent with some of Cheney's pre 9/11 comments about the U.S. pursuing its own interests. Narrowing our interests to something less than the globe is the way to go.

[The_Expatriate]

...from the moment the Declaration of Independence was signed to the moment you eat your turkey dinner on Thanksgiving Day 2001, Americans have become more, not less free. Maybe not on a month-to-month basis but the trendline is undeniable. The emancipation of the slaves...

If a slave is defined as a person who has no right to 100% of the fruits of his/her labor, then what do we call a person who has no right to 50%? An average American citizen.

Undeniable trendline? Here's a trendline for you, Jonah.

Tax Freedom Day: 1964 to 1998

Note: Tax Freedom Day denotes the number of days that the average American must work each year to pay their share of federal, state, and local taxes. (Source: The Tax Foundation.)

Freedom is not simply the absence of a black-garbed stormtrooper on every street corner; what of the inalienable rights to life, liberty, and property? We are birds living in a gilded cage, plucked at our master's discretion.

As for the vaunted mobility that Jonah claims as synonymous with freedom, it does nothing to relieve the burden of the state on the individual. Americans, unlike citizens of all but a very small handful of countries worldwide, are taxed on their worldwide income regardless of where they live. Should an American citizen seek to escape this by becoming a naturalized citizen of another country, the IRS may, at its discretion, continue to tax the ex-citizen's US-based assets for ten years after he/she gives up US citizenship! This is freedom??? < /rant >

[Askel5]

I think he's trying to mitigate his damages and further entrench the Real Power -- the uber corporate governance types in the very tight celestial sphere of "The Economy, Stupid" -- while devolving entirely the power of nation-statesmen as water seeks a level in the world state which strokes the consumers, culls the unwanted and manages the "lives" (as the healthcare industry likes to call them) at play on the chessboard.

The better analogy to England, IMHO, at present is comparing the instant oligarchs of privatized Russia to the New Millionaires of England ... or contrasting, rather.

Kissinger made that "decent people" quote while in St. Petersburg as part of a group assembled by the ill-fated Sobchak to encourage investment. I think they really do believe in the "saving graces" of western materialism insofar as it may bring monied or suddenly powerful men into an Inner Ring of Counterpart brokers who'll see eye to eye.

Granted, I've no doubt they do on most levels ... it's just that in the purely material realm they inhabit, the East and Russians still infected with the "Will of the People" militant atheist bent will eat them alive.

In that Kissinger's just done too many bone-numbing dumb things not to be on that side ... and made too many clearly evil statements evidencing absolutely no human soul whatsoever ... it's quite possible he's a John the Baptist sort whose baptizing from both sides of the river into which one day soon will step the Anti-Christ.

Don't worry that I think so linearly I believe he'll be standing there to give him the official plunge. Clearly the anti-Christ might wish to wait a bit until Technology's got some (suitably cannibalistic) life extension in order so he can reign the length of an Egyptian Kingdom or Chinese Dynasty.

(Sometimes I've the ill suspicion that, if we've 1,000 years of peace in store, it's going to be implemented by Perpetual Peace-keepers, if you know what I mean. Like Brzerzinski said, Kosovo was just a "microcosm of what the world is about to be.")

[annalex]

It is very good. At the time I couldn't afford another protracted battle with you guys, trying to get some work done.

Thank you for the ping.

[annalex]

author had the gall to claim that we are freer today than ever before

He was quoting Goldberg. Besides, the quote explains in what sense "freer".