Posted on 06/11/2014 6:23:54 AM PDT by Kaslin
Both libertarians and conservatives want to keep America safe. We differ on how best to do that. Most libertarians believe our attempts to create or support democracy around the world have made us new enemies, and done harm as well as good. We want less military spending.
Some conservatives respond to that by calling us isolationists, but we're not. I want to participate in the world; I just don't want to run it. I'm glad Americans trade with other countries -- trade both goods and people. It's great we sell foreigners our music, movies, ideas, etc. And through dealing with them, we also learn from what they do best.
On my TV show this week, former U.S. ambassador to the U.N. John Bolton will tell me why my libertarian skepticism about the importance of a "strong military presence" is "completely irrelevant to foreign policy decision-making."
Bolton thinks it's dangerous and provocative for America to appear militarily weak. He supported the Iraq War and says that if Iran were close to getting nuclear weapons, the U.S should attack. "I will go to my grave trying to prevent every new country we can find from getting nuclear weapons," because if they do, "it's going to be a very dangerous world."
He criticizes Presidents Barack Obama's and George W. Bush's failed attempts at negotiation with Iran, "negotiation based on the delusion from the get-go that Iran was ever serious about potentially giving up its nuclear weapon program."
That kind of talk makes Bolton sound like a hard-headed realist. Who wants to be naive like Bush or Obama? But hawks like Bolton ignore parts of reality, too.
They are quick and correct to point out the danger of Iran going nuclear. They are not as quick to talk about the fact that Iran has a population three times the size of Iraq's -- and the Iraq War wasn't as smooth or short as then-Vice President Dick Cheney and others assured us it would be.
If it's realistic to acknowledge that America has dangerous enemies, it's also realistic to acknowledge that going to war is not always worth the loss of money and lives, and that it makes new enemies. War, like most government plans, tends not to work out as well as planners hoped.
I asked Bolton if he thought the Vietnam War was a good intervention. "Obviously, the way it played out, it was not," he said, but, "it's always easy after the fact to second-guess."
Bolton also acknowledges that the Iraq War did not go well, but then adds, "Where mistakes were made was after the military campaign." The U.S. was unprepared for the civil war that broke out. The U.S. also failed to turn utilities and other state-run companies in Iraq over to the private sector, maintaining poorly run monopolies on energy production and other essential services, often squandering billions of dollars.
It might be seen as a harsh lesson in the importance of planning for the aftermath of toppling a bad regime. But we libertarians wonder: Why assume government will do better next time?
Occasionally government acknowledges mistakes in domestic policy -- but that doesn't mean it then becomes more efficient. It usually just spends more to try, and fail, to fix the problem. It's the nature of government. Politicians don't face the competitive incentives that force other people to make hard decisions.
Candidate Obama garnered support by criticizing Bush for costing money and lives through a protracted stay in Iraq. But that didn't stop Obama from putting more money and troops into Afghanistan.
In his first term alone, Obama spent about three times as much in Afghanistan as Bush did in two terms. Did we win hearts and minds? I don't think so. The Taliban may still retake the country.
Our military should be used for defense, not to police the world.
You do realize that Chambers was CONDEMNING Ayn Rand's beliefs, don't you?
Frank Meyer, the man who Ronald Reagan credited with creating what we call conservatism. He gave it a shape, Bill Buckley took it into the arena, Barry Goldwater launched it as a political force, and Ronald Reagan rode it to victory.
Conservatism has a history. It’s worth reading. Meyer also predicted what would happen if the Right simply became about winning, and not ideas. If only he had actually used the term RINO.
I don’t know Chambers. Who was he?
I probably should have phrased that “why, in this discussion of libertarians and Rand, should I care who Chambers is?”
He eventually became disenchanted with communism and had a profound conversion to Christianity and became a conservative. He was the person disclosed that Alger Hiss was a Soviet spy.
His autobiography (and also an expose of the evils of communism/socialism) is named "Witness" and it is an amazing book (Ronald Reagan said that it was one of the reasons he became a conservative).
What is his connection to libertarianism and this discussion?
Conservatism vs. Libertarianism?
Maybe we could change the argument to:
Liberalism vs. Constitutionalism
-I’m on the side of the Constitution.
And limited government, and a restoration of Federalism.
-— Are you an official OG, STAquinas? :>) -—
That’s what my kids tell me 8-)
Too bad the war is libertarians trying to destroy conservatism.
But I am familiar with the technique you libbers use, it was cute.
I would like to hear what Rand Paul has to say about the prisoner swap, Benghazi, and the warehoused immigrant children.
All the Libertarians and Rand Paul want to talk about is Hillary.
Sometimes. In Germany, Japan, and post-Cold War eastern Europe, they made us allies and friends.
Yup. Mixed bag.
Nature abhors a vacuum, and that includes political power vacuums. If we don't make a serious footprint, someone else will, and most likely not by a friendly nation.
Military power is necessary to achieve this aim, for without it all the "diplomacy" in the world is just talk. But lacking the political will to project power, all the military power in the world means nothing. It takes both, because if, as Clausewitz observed, "war is the continuation of politics by other means," then the power to potentially wage war is necessary to achieving political goals without actually having to do it.
This is a depressing thread. How can there be conservatives who don’t know who Whittaker Chambers was? Whose first reaction to Frank Meyer is to dismiss him as a Communist? 70-80 years ago, there wasn’t “conservatism” as we know it today. There were various forms of traditionalists and libertarians who were opposed to the progressive, liberal direction of things, but there wasn’t an intellectual or political movement to rally around.
Several important thinkers and writers contributed to the movement that saw its apex in the election Ronald Reagan. You can be against gay marriage and abortion all you want, and that’s fine and I hope you vote, but if you don’t know why and how conservatism is what it is, you will all too easily wind up lost in the Bushes. You will not be ready to advance the cause without knowing why conservatives believe what they believe. It’s not a grab bag of positions on issues, nor is it simply a political confederacy for winning elections.
I cannot recommend strongly enough American Conservative Thought in the Twentieth Century (a/k/a Did You Ever See a Dream Walking).
http://www.amazon.com/Walking-American-Conservative-Thought-Twentieth/dp/0672512408
With good reason.
Libertarians ever go so "by the book," that they are forever stuck working at one remove from actual reality....
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