December 30, 2011
The Difference between Non-Interventionism and Isolationism
Driving home from work earlier this week, I happened to catch a called on Sean Hannity’s program. This caller, who sounded to be in his 20s or 30s, was lamenting Ron Paul’s foreign policy views. I was not in the least bit surprised to hear that; many in the GOP think the US should have an aggressive foreign policy. What made me hit the roof (and yell at the radio) was when this caller described Paul’s views as “isolationism.” I’m sure many people sincerely think that pursuing a peaceful foreign policy is isolationism; I’m sure there are many others who know the difference, but choose the word ‘isolationism’ as a loaded term. So I’d like to make the clear delineation between the two words, because they represent distinct philosophies.
The New American Oxford Dictionary defines non-interventionism as “the principle or practice of not becoming involved in the affairs of other countries; such a policy adopted by a country in its international relations.” The principle of non-interventionism follows from the principle of self-determination, which states that people are free to determine their own form of government. If citizens of Country A attempt to remove the government that the citizens of Country B have chosen, the self-determination of the citizens of Country B is violated. The United States has been Country A in this scenario several times, most notably in Iran, Guatemala, and Chile. Defenders of interventionism often justify the action by pointing to the objective of the intervention, and how much better off the world would be by intervening. This is much like saying that it is OK to arrest and search the homes of everyone who lives in a certain neighborhood known for gang violence, solely to find the criminals involved and decrease violence in the neighborhood. What’s left unsaid – or ignored – in both cases, is that violence is done to innocents in the process; this is not acceptable.
Many of America’s founders were non-interventionist in nature. George Washington famously exhorted Americans that “(t)he great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible.” Thomas Jefferson desired “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” John Quincy Adams stated that America “goes not abroad seeking monsters to destroy.” Notably, America’s greatest foreign interest, as stated by Washington and Jefferson above, was free trade with other nations. Non-interventionism affirms the right of nations, and individuals within those nations, to trade freely. The best examples of non-interventionism in today’s world include Switzerland, Canada, and New Zealand.
Isolationism shares some traits with non-interventionism: both philosophies reject involvement in the internal affairs of other nations. However, isolationism goes much further. Oxford defines isolationism as “a policy of remaining apart from the affairs or interests of other groups, esp. the political affairs of other countries.” The difference is subtle, yet profound: isolationism keeps a country apart from other countries altogether, while a country that practices non-interventionism retains friendly, peaceful relations with other countries. Isolationism in practice involves protectionism – legal measures that restrict the free flow of goods, capital, and labor from crossing the borders of that country. That means restrictions on trade, high tariffs, fixed exchange rates, restrictions on foreign citizens’ investments in a country’s stock market or capital investments, and restrictions on immigration and emigration. Look no further than North Korea to see isolationism in all its glory.
But look no further than the platforms of America’s two major parties for many tenets of isolationism. How many times have you heard Republican candidates talk about closing the southern border with Mexico, or building a wall, or deporting all 11 million illegal immigrants (never mind the mind-boggling logistics of that)? How many restrictions have the GOP proposed to limit legal immigration? On the other hand, Democrats, especially of the pro-union variety, are guilty of protectionist economics, including limitations on free trade and subsidies to various “threatened” industries. Agriculture and the steel industry come to mind immediately.
A candidate who supports immigration or trade restrictions is isolationist. A candidate who supports a foreign policy of peace and free trade with all nations is non-interventionist. Now you know.
December 26, 2011
What is Our Highest End?
One of my favorite quotes is from Lord Acton, the famous 19th century British historian: “Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end.” The quote comes from a speech given in 1877 entitled “The History of Freedom in Antiquity.” The majority of the speech deals with the concept of political liberty in ancient Greece and Rome. Acton goes into great detail about what the more well-known Roman and Greek philosophers had to say about liberty, what liberty meant to those civilizations, how the concept of political freedom contrasted with Greece and Rome’s governments. Towards the end of the speech, Acton changes directions, and looks at liberty from a more philosophical standpoint:
But Plato and Aristotle were philosophers, studious not of unguided freedom, but of intelligent government. They saw the disastrous effects of ill-directed striving for Liberty; and they resolved that it was better not to strive for it, but to be content with a strong administration, prudently adapted to make men prosperous and happy. Now Liberty and good government do not exclude each other; and there are excellent reasons why they should go together; but they do not necessarily go together. Liberty is not a means to a higher political end. It is itself the highest political end. It is not for the sake of a good public administration that it is required, but for security in the pursuit of the highest objects of civil society, and of private life.What Acton says and doesn’t say is very important. Acton doesn’t say that liberty is man’s highest end; he says that it is the highest political end. This in itself implies that there is something more important than liberty for people to pursue and obtain. He immediately makes that implication explicit when he says that liberty is required for people to pursue the highest ends of both public and private life. But what are those highest ends?
The scripture that gives the most direct answer is “Fear God and keep his commandments, for this is the whole duty of man.” (Eccl. 12:13; all Scriptures ESV) Fearing God involves being in awe of Him, not so much being terrified of Him; as the O.C. Supertones once put it, “Not fear like a gun, but like the heat of the sun.” So we glorify God for who He is and what He does, as Paul instructs us: “Whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” (1 Cor. 10:31)
As to keeping God’s commandments, Jesus instructs us that “you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it: You shall love your neighbor as yourself.” (Matt. 22:37-39) We also read, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” (Micah 6:8) So we see from Scripture that our highest ends are the glorification of God and keeping His commandments, and in so doing, enjoying a relationship with (walking with) God. In doing this, we fulfill our highest end. The Westminster Catechism states it well: “Man’s chief and highest end is to glorify God, and fully to enjoy him forever.”
Carrying this back to the original quote, our political liberty can be used for many different things. We can choose to equate political liberty with moral liberty, disregarding moral principles and living a libertine lifestyle. We can choose to live a life of material fulfillment and chase after riches. We can choose to live a life of solitude, removing ourselves from society to the greatest extent possible. We can choose to make political liberty our highest end, working our entire lives to make people politically free who are still enslaved to sin. Or, as the Bible instructs us, we can choose to take advantage of our political liberty in order to fully pursue the way of life God has intended for us.
December 23, 2011
Why I Support Ron Paul
Before I get too far into this post, I feel that I have to make a disclaimer: I am not a “Paul-bot.” If you follow libertarian or Republican politics, you know to whom I refer: the hardcore Paul partisans, the ones who tell all their friends to vote for Ron in any number of online polls each day, the ones who will automatically label you as a statist if you dare to disagree with anything Ron Paul says. I realize that most national political candidates have such followers; Paul’s partisans just seem to be much more visible, and there don’t seem to be any throngs of hardcore followers of the other GOP candidates.
So, that being said, I am supporting Ron Paul for President. I support him because his views align closest to mine on the single most important issue of our time: shrinking the size of government. Paul has a plan to balance the budget within three years – the most ambitious such plan out there. I’ve gone over the plan briefly (you can find it here). I think it’s a mostly solid plan, although there are a few over-simplifications in the budget. For example, Paul advocates eliminating the Department of Commerce completely. I have no issues with that in theory; there are certainly some agencies in that department that do work the government shouldn’t do, such as the Economic Development Administration or the Minority Business Development Agency. However, the Census Bureau, which performs the Constitutionally mandated decennial census, is also part of the Commerce Department. I’m sure Paul’s got a plan for keeping the Census Bureau around, but I’m sure there will be some costs associated with the bureau, even in years in which there is no census. But even if Ron Paul’s budget savings are only 75% of what the official plan says it would be, that’s still a savings of $1.6 trillion over four years (as compared to President Obama’s FY12 budget). That’s the type of dramatic turnaround we need.
Ron Paul also wins my vote for his views on national defense and foreign policy. This is also the area where he is most maligned by your typical Republicans. As a matter of principle, Ron Paul would stop spending tax money on foreign aid. In an age of trillion-dollar deficits, that’s a wise policy. Yet, included in that blanket policy would be foreign aid to Israel. Many evangelicals see this as abandoning Israel, and thus disobeying God’s will concerning them. I will have to tackle this subject in a future blog post, but suffice to say that I don’t agree that we must support Israel; God has promised that He will not let Israel be conquered again. So I have no qualms about cutting 100% of foreign aid.
As for defense, Ron Paul wisely believes that we should defend America, and America only. Much like John Quincy Adams, Ron Paul (and I) agree that America “is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.” Paul is called an isolationist, when really his views are non-interventionist, much like George Washington advocated. I also believe that America’s armed forces should be used only for the defense of America – see my post Cutting the Pentagon Budget, Reframing the Pentagon’s Goals.
In recent days, a lot has been made of Ron Paul’s newsletters, published back in the early 1990’s when he was out of Congress. Apparently, some of those newsletters make statements many consider racist. I’ve read a few of the excerpts that have been paraded around the news, and while they’re not the worst things I’ve ever read, they’re certainly not something you would put your name on. Ron Paul has stated that he didn’t write everything in his newsletter, and that he doesn’t recall who wrote many of his articles. That’s probably true; the things Paul says today don’t sound anything like the articles in question, and it’s certainly not unheard of to have other people write articles for you. However, Paul deserves admonishment for allowing those views to be published if they don’t actually express what he believes.
So Ron Paul is certainly not a political Messiah; his views will never match anyone else’s views perfectly, and he’s got his share of skeletons in the closet. But he’s the best candidate in the race, and certainly better than any candidate either major party has put forth since Goldwater. That’s why I’m supporting Ron Paul this year.
December 4, 2011
Reboot
So… it’s been a while. Over a year, actually. But I’ve decided to “reboot” this blog, this time with a plan. I suppose it was a bit naive of me to begin a blog without a plan. Then again, I suppose that’s why something like 90% of blogs fail within the first year.
I had a few realizations in the process of thinking about this blog, its existence, and my purpose in writing it. First off, I realized that I enjoy writing. It helps me to think my thoughts through. I’ve been on Twitter for a while now (@5stringJeff), and that’s a fine medium for what it does, but it sure doesn’t allow for deep thought. I realized that I needed a medium that would allow me to analyze my thoughts, which mostly revolve around my relationship with God, theology, and American politics. That medium is this blog. Secondly, I realized that to blog effectively, I needed a bit more of a focus. So, drawing on my MBA knowledge, I immediately drafted a mission statement. Here’s what I’ve got so far:
Liberty in the Son Mission Statement: To glorify God through a long-term analysis of the Christian’s gift of liberty, individually (in living) and corporately (in politics).
Third, I realized that I needed to put myself on a schedule in order to blog effectively. The plan is to post about three times weekly, with posts on Christian living, current events, policy analysis, theology, and a synthesis of all of these into somewhat of a “worldview.” That sounds a lot more complicated than I mean it to be; I don’t want to compartmentalize my political views apart from my faith, and I think there is a good, intellectual way to combine libertarian beliefs with the Christian walk.
The focus of the blog will remain more on being a Christian than being a libertarian, but still looking to answer this basic question: are Christianity and libertarianism compatible in theory and in practice, and if so, how?
July 22, 2010
It’s HOW MUCH?!?
I’m not meaning to be too pessimistic these days, but I can’t let this pass me up.
A friend on Facebook posted a link to the U.S. Debt Clock. Go ahead and take a few minutes and let those numbers sink in.
The number that caught my eye is down towards the bottom: US Unfunded Liabilities – Social Security and Medicare. $109 trillion. TRILLION. It’s quite literally a check the government will never be able to cash. They could seize all private assets in America ($73 trillion) to try to pay the bill, and they’d still only be 2/3 of the way there.
Social Security and Medicare are unsustainable and empty promises. The sooner we bring an end to these two monstrosities (instead of adding to them, Dubya), the better. Unfortunately, the Two-Headed Beast of a political system in America is busy trying to “bolster” Social Security and “overhaul” Medicare reimbursement rates. I hate to overuse the phrase “rearranging chairs on the Titanic,” but if it applies anywhere, it applies here – the numbers don’t lie. In the meantime, America can count on continuing to pay around $200 billion a year in interest alone. Wouldn’t we like to have our share of that back in our pockets each year? But, as Proverbs says, “the borrower is the slave of the lender.”
July 19, 2010
Top Secret America and America’s Ruling Class
If you’re looking to come down off of that July 4th euphoria, we’ve got just the thing for you. Two things, actually.
First, the Washington Post has launched a new project called Top Secret America. It’s an expose of sort on the government’s menagerie of organizations that do nothing but deal in classified information. These organizations span at east 14 departments, plus offices within the White House and Congress, not to mention close to 2,000 private companies that engage in top-secret espionage. But take heart, good citizens, your Federal Government would never think to use these organizations to, say, unconstitutionally spy on American citizens. Right? Right?? Right?!?
And if that doesn’t get you down, then go right on over to Angelo Codevilla’s article in the American Spectator, entitled America’s Ruling Class – And the Perils of Revolution. Warning: not only is it extremely long, it’s extremely depressing. But it’s also extremely relevant. In Orwell’s classic 1984, the protagonist Winston Smith reads through a couple of chapters of “The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism” by Emmanuel Goldstein, who was the resistance figure in the book. As Winston reads, he observes that the information he is reading is mostly things he already knew, or at least suspected, but was organized in a fashion that put everything together in a way that made sense of everything for the first time. Codevilla’s article is much the same. You know that the Democrats and Republicans are different sides of the same coin, you know the common man can’t get a fair shake in this country, and you have this gut feeling that things just won’t ever change, but you just can’t figure out why. Codevilla will show you why.
After reading all that, just go on down to the post below this and laugh at some double rainbows. Trust me, you’ll need a pick-me-up.
July 17, 2010
Double Rainbow! What does it mean??
This has absolutely nothing to do with anything, except that it’s the latest internet meme, and I’ve been laughing for half an hour about it.
So… the first video is a guy who’s seeing a double rainbow:
And this is the obligatory techno remix (which is actually pretty good):
And, finally, the Hitler-is-Angry version of the video. This is probably my favorite.
July 16, 2010
The “S” Word
Think any politician could get away with saying this today?
“If there be any among us who wish to dissolve the Union or to change its republican form, let them stand undisturbed, as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.”
No, this isn’t a quote from a Confederate sympathizer. It’s from our third President, Thomas Jefferson, during his first inaugural address in 1801. The author of the Declaration of Independence – America’s formal announcement of secession from Britain – certainly didn’t have any qualms about letting speech about secession enter the public discussion. In fact, Jefferson welcomed such speech, so long as both sides were free to “combat” their opponents. But, beginning sometime around April 1865, public support of secession became forbidden. Nowadays, even the mention of the word “secession” is met with gasps, confusion, and even hostility. But Jefferson was wise to welcome all topics into the public forum, because he recognized that the good ideas would always rise to the top, and bad ideas could be defeated through logic and debate instead of hysteria (see this story & comments) and shouting down.
Just another bit of wisdom from one of our greatest Presidents.
July 10, 2010
WA Pharmacies Allowed to Opt Out of Plan B
In 2006, Washington State instructed forced pharmacies to stock and distribute Plan B, also known as the “Morning-After Pill.” However, there was an exception granted for conscientious objectors. When Christine Gregoire was elected as governor in 2006, she publicly pressured the State Board of Pharmacy to remove this exception, which they did, essentially forcing pro-life pharmacists to stock a pill that they believe aborts a human life in its first days.
Now, in the face of a federal lawsuit, the board has reinstated the exception, allowing pharmacists freedom of choice in which drugs they stock. The board is going through a rule amendment process, so the new regulations won’t be official for several weeks. But this is a significant victory for religious freedom.
The flip side to this argument is that women have a right to reproductive choice,and that Plan B is a part of a woman’s right to reproductive choice, and therefore pharmacists must be forced to stock Plan B. But this position is flawed. Women’s reproductive health rights do not include the duty of others to provide health care to them. That’s a concept called “positive liberty,” which is Orwellian Newspeak for “coercion of one person for the benefit of another.” Individual rights are just that – those which belong to and are exercised by an individual. You have the right to get health care for yourself, including getting Plan B; you do not have the right to force me to provide the pill to you. Not to mention, even when there was a temporary injunction against the exception, a NARAL survey found that 90% of WA pharmacies were stocking the pill. So it’s not as though the pill was unavailable to women in the state. In the end, it’s good to see that religious freedom has triumphed over state health care regulations.
July 9, 2010
Baptist Preacher Relieved for Praying in Jesus’ Name
A North Carolina pastor was relieved of his duties as honorary chaplain of the North Carolina House of Representatives, for the heinous crime of praying in the manner in which the Bible instructs us to pray.
Dr. Ron Baity, the pastor of Berean Baptist Church in Winston-Salem, was appointed as honorary chaplain from May 31 through June 3. However, he was barred from returning after his first prayer mentioned the name of Jesus. A House clerk had asked Dr. Baity to remove the reference, mentioning that some people might be offended. To his credit, Dr. Baity did not back down. Nor should he have. We ought not to be ashamed of naming the name of Jesus – as He Himself said, “For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” (Mark 8:38, ESV)
Unsurprisingly, the ACLU attempted to argue that there is no right to pray a “sectarian prayer” before a public meeting, because the pray-er is praying in public, and the prayer should reflect the values of all Americans. However, this is a really inconsistent position. How can a prayer to any god be representative of the (non-)beliefs of atheists or agnostics? How could a prayer to God be representative of the beliefs of Buddhists, who deny the existence of a personal god? How could a prayer to Allah be representative of Christian beliefs?
If the NC House wants to invite religious leaders to pray, they must be free to pray according to their beliefs. This basic freedom of religion is not only guaranteed by the First Amendment, it’s a basic human right. In the meantime, I hope other Christian leaders follow the lead of Dr. Baity in obeying Jesus’ command: “Truly, truly, I say to you, whatever you ask of the Father in my name, he will give it to you. Until now you have asked nothing in my name. Ask, and you will receive, that your joy may be full.” (John 16:23-24)
