A Dispatch From the Country of the Blind

It can be difficult to define what is “libertarian” because it would mostly be a list of negatives. (It's no accident that Ron Paul was known as “Dr. No” during his time in Congress.) But what is anti-libertarian? In the broad-brush sense, it's any political world view that puts government first and people – i.e. individuals, not “the people”, which is another word for government – second, or not at all. It includes both communism and fascism, as well as what I call suffocating socialism – i.e., socialism with a veneer of law and order – and even humanism -- but with a firm totalitarian underpinning (sort of like what we're starting to see in Canada and Australia). People are oppressed not so much by guns, prisons, and internment camps (although those may be present) as by laws and regulations that impact every aspect of their lives, no matter how trivial. This would include the American-style socialism that was created by the Progressives but reached full fruition with the New Deal, as well as postwar European-style socialism which has had, let's say, its ups and downs. Europe is still committed to socialism on the fundamental level, but its implementation goes through various cycles, accompanied by disputes and controversies. They go through cycles of reform, then reform of the reform, then reform of that reform, ad infinitum, but never seem to learn any lessons.

Our form of socialism has morphed from the relatively “pure” type represented by the New Deal into what I will call “soft fascism” -- i.e. control of the economy, and therefore (by necessity) the political system, by financial entities, both domestic and international (given that there is even a difference, which is doubtful). The fact that soft fascism doesn't involve mass rallies, torches, uniforms with a lot of leather, and goose-stepping parades doesn't make it any less fascism. What it means is that it's less obvious... more subversive... sneakier.   Another way of putting it is that, in the old days, fascism had to be presented as a political system where government was still in charge, with business being subordinate.  Now we've decided we no longer need that illusion, and government is openly subservient to business.

When Americans wake up, on occasion, to the fact that every meaningful political, economic, and social decision has been taken out of their hands when they weren't looking, that's when they feel the cold chill of fascism – but it's quickly forgotten in the wake of government handouts and entitlements and the contemporary equivalent of “games and circuses” (think NASCAR, the NFL, NBA, entertainment media, computer games and gadgets, etc.).

And you might say, “Whaddaya complaining about? Life (at least in this country) is no longer 'nasty, brutish and short', and the stock market is at an all-time high,” etc. Well, it's true enough that life is now, for most people, only mildly annoying, a bit dangerous at times, but longer than ever. And that's the point – or one of the points. We've been overcome by blandness. We are so far from our own revolution that we've completely lost any concept of what revolution is – the excitement, the fervor, the willingness to sacrifice. Ron Paul's campaign was called “The Ron Paul Revolution” (with the 2^nd through 5^th letters reversed to spell “love”) because it was, indeed, a revolution – not in the physical or violent sense but in the sense of consciousness – of awareness. As such, it was every bit as radical, if not more so, than the cultural revolution of the 1960s, which changed the world view of many but didn't make much of a dent in the true, underlying power structure. Rich white men ruled back then, and they continue to rule today – and the primary instrument of their rule is not “cut-throat competition” and “capitalism”, but government. Economic freedom is enjoyed by those at the top of the heap, and the rest of us have to be satisfied with our status as faceless, gray serfs. And granted, this does not differ significantly from the socio-economic structure of either communism or fascism.  But at least under “classical” fascism, the middle class had a place and a function, although it was tightly supervised and controlled – more so than the “proles”. Under the new fascism, the middle class has no more place than it does under communism; the only question is how quickly, and by which specific means, to eliminate it. For us, it's not about forbidding people to own property per se – or to be consumers. It's more about making it more and more difficult to save money, or to hold onto money that is saved. And it's also about making it more and more difficult to start small businesses, and to remain in business. Please note that large corporations run around sucking up small businesses like some sort of giant Roomba. The regulatory and tax structure is overwhelmingly tilted in favor of the largest entities, and works directly against the small ones. When you wake up one morning and find that everything you eat, drink, wear, drive, use, listen to, watch, feel, touch... is all under the control of one giant international corporation, you will know that a milestone has been reached. (On the plus side, there will be no more need for advertising, any more than there was in Soviet Russia or Nazi Germany. Propaganda, yes – ads, no.)

There's another aspect to all of this, and it's a product of this deadly combination of helplessness and cradle-to-grave security. I call it “societal anorexia”. It is not natural for man to be rendered helpless when it comes to his own life – his successes and failures and the decisions that lead to them. And it's not natural for him to be treated like a baby or retarded adult all his life – as someone who is incapable of making any important decisions and would be a "danger to society” if he did. So what is his reaction to this? We know that in the case of anorexia, women react to helplessness in the face of exploitation and abuse by asserting their choices and power in the only way available – namely by not eating. If everyone (or so it seems to them) has complete power their bodies, they'll show them that they don't, by not eating even to the point of starvation. Well, when you render an entire society helpless except for the ruling elite, they push back in odd ways. Their span of control shifts from society in general (Why bother voting?) to their immediate environment, and when that fails to themselves, and not even to the aspect of themselves that interfaces with the rest of society but by something that they alone can control and manipulate. So we get radical tattooing, piercing, people redoing their facial and body structure... things that go way beyond the self-assertion via hair and clothes that characterized the hippie era. If you can't have any impact on your environment, and if you're fair game for whoever wants to come along and intervene in your life, then the only option is to reinvent yourself – again, not at the interface (which is a lost cause) but physically. So I don't blame these people; they are reacting the only way they know how. Call it ill-advised, weird, pathetic, whatever – but I understand it, because the alternative is annihilation... being sucked into the machine like in “The Wall” and turned into lean finely textured beef, AKA pink slime. And of course the people who witness their futile antics shake their heads and wonder what their “problem” is. And – the tattooed, pierced hordes shake their heads back because they know what the problem is, and the squares don't.

The election of 2016 now seems to be looming on the horizon – at least according to the media. And in the midst of it all, breathing fire and crushing everything in her path, is the political Godzilla, namely Hillary Clinton. The supposed inevitability of her nomination and election makes any efforts the Republicans make seem silly and pathetic – like, why don't they just give up now? Hillary could be elected by popular acclaim, thus even eliminating the need for an formal election (and campaigning, and political ads – hmmm, not a bad idea when you come to think about it).  She could place the empress' crown on her own head, the way Napoleon did, with Bill smirking in the background.

And among the Republican “field” stands Rand Paul, who is invariably called a “libertarian” by.... well, by pretty much everyone but libertarians. The problem with Rand is that, unlike his father, he doesn't seem to have a deep understanding of libertarian principles. In other words, he is more a politician than a theorist. He says a lot of the right words, but wanders off the reservation a bit too often, in my opinion; he can be seduced, at least to some extent, by politics and “pragmatism”, whereas Ron Paul, as far as I know, never was. What it means is that it's a bit ironic for the mainstream Republicans to be having conniptions about this “radical” libertarian in their midst, when he really isn't – although compared to them, I supposed anybody with even the vaguest concept of individual freedom is going to seem like a radical. So, bottom line, if he in fact runs for the nomination and loses (which would be inevitable) it's no great loss for libertarianism. It would be better, in fact, if he were to stay where he is and, as I said, say the right things at least enough of the time to get people's attention (and their irrational reactions, which give away the hollowness of their position).

Having even a quasi-libertarian in the midst of the Republican Party is no less anachronistic than if he were in the midst of the Democratic Party. Each party gets things right on rare occasions, and totally wrong the rest of the time. I find myself agreeing with radical leftists more often than with the bland middle... and I even agree with the Neocons once in a while (based on what they say, not on what they actually believe). But I think that if our society is to survive in any meaningful way, and not morph into a blob of green slime out of some horror movie, the only thing that will save it is libertarianism in government – AKA Constitutional “originalism” -- combined with charity and tolerance on the part of individuals. You can't have a decent government if the citizens don't give a damn... and you can't have a decent society made up of people -- regardless of how charitable or good-intentioned they are – who are ruled over by evil men. People think of government as a one-way street, which it is in our time – all of the energy moves in a downward direction. But society, on the other hand, has to be a two-way street in order to function. This country was imagined, and organized, as a society, but has, over time, become a two-class system of rulers and ruled (with the middle class deluding themselves as to which class they belong in). It may be “soft” still, but there is no rule – nothing on the books – that requires it to remain that way, and plenty of sectors of our society have found themselves on the receiving end of actions that are anything but “soft”. That fact that prisons constitute a significant sector of the economy should tell you something; we are gradually moving toward a point where there are the “done to” and the “doers-to”, and no truly free men.

And as I've said before, perhaps this is only the natural product of societal evolution. Perhaps, like any organism, a given society has only so many years to grow and prosper, after which decline and death are inevitable. In that case, it's our bad luck to be around during the decline, although I imagine it will get much worse before things hit bottom. On the other hand, predictions of the demise of any society, nation, or system can be premature; cultures have a strange way of muddling through and showing surprising survivability – based, I would say, on cultural habits and values rather than governmental structures and laws. This may yet give us time to repent and mend our ways (dream on!), but what is more likely is that the system will collapse of its own weight (as opposed to being conquered in the military sense), not unlike what happened to the Soviet Union. And yet, there is always someone left... someone survives... and let's hope that they at least have a sense of history.

One Last Gesture of Defiance

It doesn’t take any great stretch of the imagination to conclude that the Republican Party is “dead meat” on the national level -- i.e. when it comes to the presidency.  And I’m not being pessimistic here; the Republicans richly deserve extinction since their sins are great and many.  Not that the Democrats are any better, but one must admit that the Democrats are still, in some ways, a party of ideas, wrong though they may be.  But the cold facts, as many have pointed out, are that the Democrats have demographics on their side, and the Republicans don’t.  We have evolved into a system where more than half the populace are tax receivers, as opposed to tax payers… and more are being added to their ranks each day.  It’s not just that more are being born -- ironic, since the Democrats are nothing if not the party of “population control”, AKA abortion (free and on-demand).  Thousands of immigrants -- call them “illegal” if you like, even if Obama and the media won’t -- are crossing our borders each day, and they are, at least if one believes Rush Limbaugh, guaranteed Democrat voters (once they all come of age if not before).

So… does this mean that the Republicans are delusional when it comes to the presidency, and they might as well just give up?  Not even have a convention?  No nominee?  Well, in a perfectly rational world this might be an option, but we can’t expect them to just give up and lie down to be trampled by the forces of collectivism.  But their platforms have, of late, been pretty pathetic -- mostly “me too-ism” with the message “We’re almost as compassionate as the Democrats”, or compassionate in a different way, or something.  (And why vote for that when you can vote for the real thing?)  Because it’s all about feelings any more, and even though the Democrats have ideas, their appeal is all on the feeling level -- the politics of envy… of race… of “identity”… of class warfare… of victimhood.  They have a ready-made model for the way things ought to be -- or a number of models, actually, ranging from Scandinavian socialism to Soviet- (or even Maoist-) style collectivism and totalitarianism.  Not that they identify it in so many words (they’ve even quit identifying themselves as “liberals”, and have returned to the nostalgic, good-old-days term “progressives”), but that’s what it amounts to.      

Every domestic political issue of our time boils down to the same thing, basically -- “compassion”, which is the sole property of the Democrats, versus capitalism, “greed”, “hate”… you fill in the other dozen or so buzz words.  And the Democrats have not only a solid demographic base -- growing every day, as I said -- but a united front in the form of politicians, the media, academia, the entertainment industry, the arts… really pretty much everyone except the “heartland”, fly-over folks who are ignored and belittled more now than they were in the glory days of the New Deal (and the slightly less glorious days of the Great Society).  White, middle-class, non-ethnic, male, heterosexual, self-supporting Americans are under siege, not only in the demographic sense but also in the cultural sense; their day is past, and when they are all dead and gone and the rough places have been made plain, well… then we might, if all goes as planned, have a one-party system, not unlike… oh, let’s see… ah yes, the Soviet Union, or Nazi Germany, or China, or any number of other examples of good governance -- and we’ve seen what splendid results come out of those types of systems.  Democrats long for the day when the party is the government and the government is the party; it would make things so much simpler… so much more humane… so efficient.   

And it’s all about class as well -- as always.  The dream of collectivists down through the ages has been to eliminate that annoying, pompous, complacent, bourgeois middle class and to replace it with a people’s paradise, overseen by benign and enlightened leaders.  And never mind that there are “populists” on both sides -- think Occupy vs. Tea Party.  The populists of the right are obviously misled and mistaken, and have to be educated out of their Medieval delusions -- by force if necessary (the job, first, of the public schools). 

But -- you might say -- when it comes to immigration, haven’t we always been a “nation of immigrants”?  True enough.  But there’s a difference.  The immigrants of old -- let’s say of the great wave in the late 19th and early 20th Centuries -- came here expecting to work.  And work they did -- harder, in most cases, than the native-born Americans.  They came to get the blessings of a “free country”, but had to earn them as well.  And those “huddled masses” who showed up in the old days were not showered with gift baskets of benefits and entitlements the minute they stepped off the boat.  They had mutual aid societies, brotherhoods, and charitable organizations staffed by people who would have been called social workers if the term had been invented -- but what they got from the government was, to use a Yiddish term, bubkes -- i.e. little or nothing.  So they clawed their way up the social and economic ladder, and many of them succeeded in a spectacular way.  But they could almost all claim to be self-made -- i.e. not merely wards of the state. 

All of this began to change in what is called the Progressive Era, and it reached a fever pitch with the New Deal… but that was still nothing compared to the Great Society, with its full-blown welfare state… and that was still nothing compared to what we have (or are trying to have) today. 

But -- you might say -- aren’t these good things?  Isn’t compassion, even if the term is widely abused by demagogues, an intrinsically good thing -- the best of humanity, in fact?  People helping people, etc.?  Setting aside all Constitutional issues here (just as the Constitution itself has been, basically, set aside and relegated to the dustbin of history known as the National Archives), I propose a single word, or concept:  sustainability.  And no liberal can argue with this, since “sustainability” has been a kind of shibboleth by which one defines the merits of anything involving natural resources.  Oddly enough, however, it’s very seldom applied to economic issues.  No one ever wonders -- at least not out loud -- what happens when everyone becomes a tax receiver and there are no tax payers left.  And this, in turn, is based on the premise that government is the source of all wealth and prosperity… that’s it’s a kind of magic cornucopia that even without input is capable of infinite output.  More sober economists will contend that, in fact, the government doesn’t -- cannot -- produce wealth at all, that’s it’s basically parasitic, and owes its very existence to the dwindling proportion of productive citizens.  Government cannot produce wealth, it can only redistribute it (while keeping a good chunk for itself) -- and human nature being what it is, productivity tends to decline when people discover that they can live almost as well not working as they can by the sweat of their brow.  But this is an insight that has escaped the attention of nearly everyone in government as well as their facilitators in the media, academics, etc.

So the question is, how can the Republicans, especially given their ambivalence and demonstrated impotence on these issues, compete with this notion?  The answer is, they can’t.  The stars of  “talk radio” and Fox News can scream all they want, but they won’t change anyone’s mind on these issues.  Either you subscribe to some sort of economic sustainability concept -- however vague -- or you don’t, and in our time most people don’t. 

How, then, will it all end?  Are we dealing with some basic laws here, not unlike the laws of physics?  Or will benign UFOs swoop down some day soon and shower us all with gold bullion (in which case, gold will be worth no more than tinfoil)?  Where, in other words, is the escape hatch that will save us all from our folly? 

Fortunately (or not), we have many examples from the 20th Century as to how this kind of thinking turned out.  We have the Soviet Union, with its starvation, deprivation, and gulags… and we have Mao’s China, where it was necessary to exterminate hundreds of millions of people just to break even.  Or on the extreme end, we have Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, which committed what I call “auto-genocide”.  And yet, even those benighted societies turned around eventually, with varying degrees of success, and the process continues.  What is left of the hard core -- the true believers?  Arguably, North Korea -- a people’s paradise if ever there was one -- and, to a lesser extent, Cuba.  And what do you know, not a day goes by but what some Democrat doesn’t hold Cuba up as an exemplar.  (They aren’t quite as enthused about North Korea, although I expect that they secretly look upon the Kim dynasty with burning envy.)    

So what’s a good Republican to do?  Muddle along with those ciphers in Congress known as “the Republican leadership” (You know, those guys who were born without a spine, like the never-seen character on “Saturday Night Live”)?  Embrace the Tea Party?  The problem there is that it’s not a real party, and its ideas lack coherence.  It’s “agin” plenty of things, but what is it for?  All I ever hear are vague concepts and memes.  Plus, it has a huge Achilles heel called “foreign policy”, which I won’t belabor at this point. 

A search for honest, unapologetic conservatism might take one back to the Reagan era… or to Goldwater… or to Robert Taft.  And that would be a start.  But those strategies would still run the risk of being contaminated by nationalism (as opposed to patriotism) and empire-madness.  No, what I propose is making a clean break -- going all the way.  Rather than throwing the libertarians bodily out of the convention, welcome them with open arms, sit at their feet, and learn.  By which I mean, learn sound economics, sane foreign policy, sustainable (that word again) domestic policy… and, most of all, regain some self respect.  The libertarian philosophy contains much of what the Republicans have fought for in the past, with varying degrees of success, but without all of the accumulated baggage that has, in effect, doomed the Republicans as a party and as a political force, except on the strictly local, and occasionally state, level.  Best of all, it would yield up a real position… a platform… a philosophy of government.  And yes, it would guarantee a crushing loss in the 2016 election, but better to retire from the scene with some self respect than simply as a confused pack of losers.  And who knows, it might plant some ideas in some people’s heads -- ideas that might be remembered, and even come to fruition, after the deluge is past (although that may take years… decades… even generations).  It would be a way of saying to the Democrats, “This is where we stand.  It’s honorable, it has a historical basis, and it works.  Your program, on the other hand, is deceptive, cruel, unsustainable, evil, tyrannical, designed for your own glory and enrichment, and, ultimately, doomed.  And we want nothing to do with it.”

Now that would be an act of defiance.  It would be “TV worth watching”.  And it will never happen.  The Republicans have brought a curse upon themselves by being pale imitations of the Democrats, and they are suffering the appropriate fate.  They are complicit in their own demise.   
       

Citizen Scaife

The countless obituaries, tributes, and encomiums that have appeared following the recent demise of Richard Mellon Scaife, publisher of the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review and all-around philanthropist, typically call attention to his support of the Republican Party and his conservative political views, although Scaife apparently considered himself more of a libertarian than a conservative in the usual sense. But at the same time, he is presented as having been a firm advocate of what is called a “strong defense” and a “vigorous” or “muscular” foreign policy – what some of us would call empire building. Now, the question that no one seems to want to deal with – mainly because no one even considers it an issue – is in what way neocon-style foreign policy is, or can be made, compatible with libertarianism. Libertarianism is, of course, a general concept and reflects a certain view of government, and thus, one would think, of both domestic and foreign policy. In other words, it has a theoretical base, and is not just a passing fad or an expression of mindless selfishness (as it is typically accused of being by the liberals and the mainstream media). So the question of compatibility has to be expressed in terms of ideas and concepts, and not just specific policies (or, obviously, specific political parties, government programs, and politicians).

Libertarianism, to cut to the chase, is the idea that we would all be better off if we left each other the hell alone, and if government left us alone. So the libertarian concept of government is minimalistic, but not anarchistic, that being an entirely different position, although (as usual) often confused, by the usual suspects, with libertarianism. (And I guess if you're committed to totalitarianism, even of the “soft” variety, libertarianism and anarchy are going to look about the same.) And although America in its early days may not have been explicitly founded on libertarian principles, the practical consequences of the ideas it was founded on produced a society which libertarians can only dream of in our time. And it's not that there weren't plenty of bumps in the road, but I would be willing to claim that America was, for all intents and purposes, a libertarian society up to the Progressive Era, when all of a sudden it was deemed desirable for the government to redistribute income and wealth – I.e. to take money out of Person A's pocket (or keep it from ever getting there) and put it into Person B's pocket. This was, if one studies the matter, always a fear among political thinkers even from the founding, and was considered a potential weak spot or Achilles heel in the American system – a fear which has been more than borne out in our time.

Progressivism, as originally conceived, was the notion that government had to fill in where voluntary charity had failed. And it wasn't as if charity did not exist in the old days; it did, and much of it was based on religious ideas and sponsored by religious bodies. But there were gaps, and yes, people did “fall through the cracks” on a regular basis. So, for good or ill, we embarked on an extra-Constitutional program which continues to this day – first providing a “safety net” to keep people from becoming homeless, or from starving, or from being poisoned by other people. And yet this was apparently not enough, because the time came when we needed the New Deal... and then the Fair Deal... and then the Great Society... and Equal Opportunity... and Affirmative Action... and “hate crime” laws... and now Obamacare. And the struggle is far from over. It has gotten to the point now, as in Russia under the Bolsheviks, where if your neighbor has one more goat than you have, he's immediately branded a capitalist, landlord, exploiter, racist, homophobe, sexist, what have you. So the collectivist, totalitarian ideal is alive and well, even though it had comparatively modest beginnings over 100 years ago.

But that's all about ideas. How about implementation? The great and mighty hammer that the Progressives came up with was the graduated income tax, which is, sadly, still with us. But it was supplemented by a mountain of other laws and regulations, and an army of bureaucrats and enforcers on all levels. All in the name of charity and compassion, mind you – and you can decide whether money extracted at gunpoint has anything to do with charity or compassion; my answer is that it doesn't. But even here there is a point to be made. The premise is that human beings, including Americans, lack sufficient charity and compassion to care about, or care for, the “underprivileged” among us, and this is why government has to step in and bridge the gap – although I have yet to perceive any trace of charity or compassion in government. It is a thing, not a person, after all – despite propaganda like “The Grapes of Wrath”.

Oh, but government is just an instrument – a means to a just end – you'll say. OK then, maybe the charity and compassion lie with those in charge of the government – with politicians and bureaucrats. Tilt! Oh, but maybe they, even given their manifold faults, are only acting on behalf of a charitable and compassionate electorate. But if that's so, why doesn't said electorate exercise charity and compassion in a direct manner, rather than hiring others to make and enforce laws that, once again, are designed to achieve the desired result at the point of a gun? Well, it's because, in the aggregate, people are more likely to want be on the receiving end rather than the giving end – to be takers or tax receivers rather than givers and tax payers. Even on an individual basis, my bet is that most people would prefer to give a little and get a lot – which means that the individual's place in the social order has degenerated to that of a gambler in a casino, betting that his input will be more than compensated by the casino's output. And yet casinos continue to make money, and government continues to become larger, more intrusive, and more oppressive, and its operatives become more prosperous and more numerous. Thus we see the effects of a great fallacy.

And this is just fallen human nature at work. So maybe the Progressives had a point. Maybe society really is a social compact, and if we want to be members in good standing we have to be willing to make sacrifices. The problem is that, eventually, the number of people on the take exceeds the number on the give – as is happening in our time. So the government, which is supposed to right all wrongs and make all the crooked paths straight, winds up with a cash-flow problem, and we have a national debt that can never be paid off, and so on. A related issue is that our definition of “poverty” -- i.e. what constitutes being needy – has degenerated to the point where our “poor” have a higher standard of living than most of the rest of the world – and yet there are still demands for more. More social justice, more reparations, more affirmative action, more preferences, etc. etc. And these demands can never be satisfied; this is the point. We could adopt a system of radical collectivism like China under Mao or Cambodia under Pol Pot, and it still wouldn't help. The best one could hope for would be equal misery for all... and yet that is precisely what many of our liberal, AKA “progressive”, politicians seem to be aiming for. (And please note, those systems still include a wealthy power elite, but that's OK since they're the people with all the great humanistic, Utopian ideas so they deserve to get to the head of the line.)

While Mr. Scaife might have agreed with some of the above – maybe even for the right reasons – the idea that this necessitated supporting the Republican Party can be termed delusional at best. The Republicans have had nothing to do with libertarianism since... oh, I would say the days of Robert Taft, although the Goldwater campaign provided some faint echoes, as did the Reagan administration. But the state of things in our time is best reflected in the fact that the libertarians got bodily ejected from the 2012 Republican convention. The Republicans find the libertarians annoying... disturbing... and downright terrifying, and I suspect it's largely because the libertarians make the Republicans feel guilty – that they have sold their birthright for a mess of pottage.

So here you have the first contradiction -- but that's only on the domestic side. The main point is how one reconciles libertarianism, even the kind that is willing to appear under the Republican banner, with neocon-style, empire-building foreign policy. Some possibilities:

1. Libertarianism for us, to hell with everyone else.  Another way of putting it is this:  Is "libertarian foreign policy" a contradiction in terms?  This position may be economically arguable, but it's politically (not to mention diplomatically) suspect and morally bankrupt. One could call it cynical. And yet it's not that uncommon a point of view. Is it because we believe that only Americans are fit for, and deserving of, liberty and that all others are invincibly ignorant and doomed to exist in hopeless squalor and perpetual night? Well... when one has a look at things that are going on in Africa and parts of the Islamic world, it would be tempting to come to that conclusion. But surely we haven't given up on at least setting an example... or have we? Can we be at once optimistic about our own future and despairing about the rest of the world? Or to put it another way, are we willing to leave them alone out of charity, or because we've given up on them?
   
   
   The practical consequences of this position are, basically, isolation combined with a strong defense – by which I mean real defense... defense of our borders, and nothing more. At least this would have the conceptual advantage of eliminating the bogus concept of “terrorism” -- there would only be us and them, and if they hate us we don't especially care why (vs. the obsessing that followed the events of 9/11). Job One of defense is to keep them from killing us and taking our stuff; we don't care about their motives. This would at least be a clean and uncluttered position. But it was not Mr. Scaife's.
   
   
2. Libertarianism for us, and spread the blessings abroad. This is close to being the core of the stated neocon position, as represented by the Republican Party, “talk radio”, and – yes – the “Tea Party”. Liberty is good for us, and it would be good for the rest of the world as well, if only they could be convinced. And it's not enough for us to just set an example, we have to jam it down their throats by, first, invading, then taking over their governments, installing our stooges as “leaders”, and hitting them with (after the drones have done their thing) a barrage of propaganda, social workers, etc. Call it “tough love” on an international scale. This was standard operating procedure in Iraq as it is in Afghanistan... and the question is not how well it works, because it doesn't. The question is, was this actually our intent? And my position is that it wasn't, no matter how many purple thumbs come filing out of polling stations in the middle of the desert. We insist on some trappings of democracy in order to validate our actions to the international community (on those rare occasions when we care what they think), but the real agenda is otherwise. It's about conquest for its own sake, number one... and economics, and neutralizing threats to Israel, and... well, that's about it, actually. It's about making some people very rich, increasing the power and scope of government (domestically, note), and producing “war presidents” (and every boy born in a log cabin wants to be one of those, right?). It's not even about gaining military victories; just ask anyone in the military (OK, ask the honest ones who haven't been brainwashed). Wars in our time are notoriously victory-proof, and intentionally so, I might add. No one ever got rich from a “cakewalk”; what produces fortunes is a long, drawn-out conflict with no end, no exit criteria, no nothing – preferably not even a “war”, because people still have this funny, old-fashioned idea that wars ought to result in victory – in winners and losers. 
    
   So was this Mr. Scaife's position – i.e. the naïve, as opposed to cynical, version? Very possibly. But the inherent contradiction there is that to fight perpetual wars – for any reason – you have to have big government. No... massive government, with oppressive taxes, ever-vigilant intelligence and law enforcement agencies, and a dictatorial regime. Empire building abroad and liberty at home? Doesn't work, can't work, never has, never will. This is the greatest misunderstanding on the part of so many self-styled conservatives and, I suspect, some libertarians as well. Libertarianism is compatible with defense; it requires it, in fact. But it is totally incompatible with empire-building and perpetual war. This is not true, of course, for mainstream conservatism and/or neoconservatism... and maybe Mr. Scaife was just confused about his terminology. 
   
   
3. Libertarianism for us and gentle persuasion for everyone else. This is the least likely alternative, yet the only one with any moral validity. The “shining city on the hill” has lost a lot of its glimmer since the founding, and we are now in the position of being seen as just another bullying empire throwing its weight around. We had ideas once; now all we have are drones. Were those ideas valid? (And if so, why are they now discarded?) Or was it all just a grand illusion? Democracy, as flawed as it is (or as we've made it), is certainly not the worst system ever devised... nor is the Constitution the worst founding document ever written. The mistake we've made as a society is in assuming that ideas were enough – that we could just coast along, decade after decade, propelled by some sort of magical holy writ that would render us not only morally superior but, in some sense, invincible for perpetuity. But it seems that ideas can only survive as long as the kind of society that gave rise to those ideas survives. Otherwise they will wither in the glare of human greed, folly, and downright evil, as happened in the case of Rome and seems to be happening here as well. If ideas are the soil and society the plant, and liberty the fruit, how long will the plant survive once pulled up by the roots, and how much more fruit will the plant produce after the fruit it did produce is consumed (or rots)? 
   
   
   Another way of saying this is to ask, do we still have anything to offer the world (assuming we did at one time)... other than (as the Vietnam protesters used to say) “bombs, bullets, and bullshit”? Maybe not! But I'm not totally convinced, and I don't think that libertarianism is a political dead letter, even in our time... but it may take many more catastrophes before people come to see its value. And if that day ever comes, could the Constitution be, once again, established as the basis for a political system – with changes, as needed, to eliminate the inherent contradictions? And could we not then, in a spirit of true humanism (vs. the kind opposed to religion and thus to true morality) and, yes, charity and compassion, at the very least show other societies a better way? And I'm not talking about political systems here – not about “democracy” or purple thumbs, or parliaments, or anything else. Any society will be benign and of benefit to its members if the leaders are thoughtful and moral (think “natural law” at the very least), and any society, regardless of structural details, will become oppressive and evil if its leaders are drunk on power and concerned only with their own glory. This seems like a simple enough lesson... but we can't teach it by force, and we can't teach it unless we are willing to set an example, which in the present day we apparently are not. 
   
   
   And another aspect of this renewal, should it ever come, would be as follows: Stop thinking of other societies and systems as, somehow, “undeveloped”, primitive, or retarded, just because they don't care to do things our way. And especially, don't constantly present religion (of any sort) as a barrier to “progress” (as we invariably do in foreign relations, and as we are now busy doing here). “What profiteth a man if he gain the world but lose his soul?” If even this simple question were made fundamental to our government and laws – and our foreign policy – a new day might truly dawn.