The mind your own business" approach to foreign policy seems to evoke instant contempt and derision in elite Republican circles: yet it makes common sense and sneering isolationist" at its proponents is a mere bullying tactic.
A words change in meaning often exposes the heart of an entire Zeitgeist. Passionate" used to signify behavior which is impulsiveopposed to reason and heedless of reasons hand on the reins. For about twenty-five hundred years the word was so understood. Ancient philosophers regarded passion as the origin of what Christians would call sinful acts: one knows the wrongness of violence but strikes in anger one knows the wrongness of theft but steals in envy etc. Now and indeed for at least three decades to be passionate is considered good or even mandatory for certain promotions and honors. A candidate must be passionate about his cause an architect must be passionate about building homes a Nike salesman must be passionate about shoes and so forth. We apparently view lack of animationof entertainment valueas the unpardonable sin. Or perhaps we intend this denigration of cool objective reasoning to be proof of sincerity. If a person is worked up you can trust him; if he calculates his moves before making them hes a shyster. We seem to have forgotten that human beings often get swept upquite sincerelyin endeavors that must lead straight to the destruction of others or of themselves.
Every resident of the twenty-first century knows that you can call someone a racist and instantly turn the mob against him. In truth genuine racism is rather rare. It requires that its proponent have a fully developed belief system wherein important moral aspects of human worthfidelity courage modesty fairnessare determined by DNA. One race may certainly tend to have more foot speed or intelligence or talent for singing than another but none of these attributes affects the essential worth of the human being as moral qualities do. Early Texas settlers often remarked among themselves that Mexicans were savagely cruel a bestial trait that Texans and Mexicans alike would also have ascribed to Apaches. Blacks are represented in films of the thirties (if they make any appearance at all) as timorous and nave to a childish degree. Such views harbor racism. Most tribalists who group according to skin color however are bigots (a word that seems to originate in the pseudo-piety underlying the German expression for by God"). Bigots have not evolved any particular set of criteria. They simply notice that he isnt one of us dont you know old boy." Its a dull way of looking at the world; but then most bigots do not mature in environments that encourage thinking. Few of them are very passionate" in their prejudices. Those that are if not white seem to be received with uncommon indulgence. For that matter a passionate bigot is usually a racist because people tend to hate other people for being bad" not for being merely different.
Lately the word isolationist" has been drawing the same hisses and curls of the lip as racist". The latters effect we owe to the emotional profile paralyzed in adolescence of the political Left: the newer shorthand for I hate you" comes primarily from the dubiously named neo-conservatives (speaking of abused words). Anybody who is loath to invade designated despots is an isolationist. Anybody who can hear of children dying in Waziristan without sending his son to enlist is an isolationist. Anybody who does not want to bomb potential owners of a nuclear weapon who may potentially not like us is an isolationist. The isolationist is a coward who will cause us all to die. He is a fool who will create a world where our grandchildren must learn Nazi salutes. He is a feckless idler who will bring humiliation upon the Stars-and-Stripes while also facilitating the release of so much radioactive fallout that only crocodiles and roaches will survive to utter jeers. Our get control of the world and change it the right way" Republicans (a.k.a. Supply-Side Progressives) hate the isolationist more than their progenitors ever hated Stalin or Mao. Indeed their granddaddies once made common cause with that diabolical duo to annihilate Hitlera glory of which those dim-witted hayseeds the isolationists very nearly deprived them.
One of my objectives in this space is simply to remark the gross hypocrisy of such contempt inasmuch as the responsible global engagement" of neo-cons almost always accompanies a host of dont tread on me" positions on domestic issues. These critics of the secure self-sufficient island do not want the government telling them what to feed themselves or their children. They resent being required by law to insure themselves when they enjoy perfect health or have made other provision for catastrophe. They dont understand why a plainspoken person should be deprived of property or liberty for uttering an unvarnished version of the truth as he sees it. They snigger and scoff at warnings stamped under Big Brothers watchful frown that advise against using a chain saw as a toy or sticking drill bits in bodily orifices. They steam and fume when the State instructs their kindergarteners in the fine art of shrouding cucumbers in condoms. They write checks and attend rallies when ordered by Nanny-Caesar to surrender their sole effective means of defense against sudden home invasion.
These if you please are the same people who insist that the United States must police the world because the world is an overgrown child incapable of playing nice on its own. Im sure that we all act hypocritically every day in some manner: it is a weakness to which flesh is heir. The neo-con mission" to rule the world however while inhabiting a libertarian utopia at home is rank hypocrisy to the nth degreea Golden Gate Bridge a Lincoln Memorial a Colossus of hypocrisy. We are told that weor theyhave the mystical ability to read the motives of agents in distant cultures today and to read the intent of such agents years into the future; and we are exhorted therefore to let a priestly elite of high-tech neo-con witch-doctors rearrange destiny in a fashion more to our nations taste. No wonder the world hates us! Its the same reason that we hate our own government.
The other point I should like to advance pro insulatore is that an intelligent raising of the drawbridge really makes very good sense as foreign policy. You and I dont want to raid our volatile neighbors house to affirm that he has no gun on the premises... but neither do we wish to live beside him without a handy weapon or two in our shack. Hell behave civilly enough if he sees us just once on the target range. The international stage offers plenty of unstable neighbors who may or may not be packing a piece. You cant preempt all that a despot might do unless you corrupt him depose him or render his people abjectly poor (the three primary strategies in the neo-con playbook). You can secure yourself from his possible future flirtation with world-conquest though simply by building walls and distributing shields. My information is that to this day the U.S. still lacks a reliable airborne shield against missile strikesand we can see how serious our ruling class is about securing terrestrial borders by its current immigration policy. Why not bring home the troops that are teaching native forces to do our bidding keep at home the millions with which we bribe tyrants to advance our policies convert our stratospheric assassination-machines into intel-gathering spycraft and hunker down? Such a reversal of policy would at once render our citizens far more secure while also removing many of the motives that foreign powers have to loathe us.
Unfortunately at a street-by-street level we have not yet the technological means of blocking our psychotic neighbors bullets: massive retaliation as supplied by Messrs. Smith and Wesson is still the best way to keep him in line. But we could very soon have the means with determination and intelligent leadership to deflect missile attacks and snare intruding saboteurs. We could also develop (and indeed must develop for such an approach to work) our natural resources so as to become utterly independent of the rest of the planets food and energy. In fact an abundance of such wealth would be far and away the most effective stimulant in making bad boys behave: they would want to become our friends so as to share in the prosperity.
These are not new ideas. Yet when I see the likes of Jonathan Goldberg whose judgment I have always held in the highest esteem referring to isolationism with a condescension just within the bounds of good humor I sense that the case must be made again. And again. It doesnt help matters when naive souls like Ron Paul speak of our fanatical neighbors as if they were good family men and solid citizens. We must recognize that we inhabit a pretty tough ghetto. Shooting everybody else until we create a ghost town isnt the way out however. Neither is shooting the loudest bravo of the bunch every week so as to keep all the others quailing in their boots. Thats not Realpolitik: its political punkery.