Foreign Policy and Revolutions
Deborah Venable
02/06/11
Most
folks probably think foreign policy should be left up to the most intelligent
among us, because the subject is so dry and so complicated that the average Joe
just wouldn’t have any credible answers.
After all, these people who are ultimately put in charge of America’s
foreign policy have studiously learned their craft in the classrooms of great
thinkers who populate the best educational institutions all over the
world. None of them are capable of
functioning without huge staffs of starry-eyed graduates who learned their
lessons the same way. My point is that
foreign policy and diplomacy jobs, for the most part, require degrees from a
standardized education.
This
goes entirely against the grain of America’s original foreign policy
experts. Those people who had lived and
traveled all over the world, on their own dimes, and had earned much of their
education from self-study with little standardization applied. They trained their small supporting staffs
themselves, and trusted more in their own instincts than those of adoring
subordinates. And one other thing they
had a firm grasp on was a set of personal principles fired in the kiln of their
newfound political liberty – their own revolution.
Then
you had an unleashed press that could and did report accurately and pontificate
unabashedly the facts and opinions without an ever-present grain of poll-driven
salt. People said what they meant and
meant what they said, and morality was the great nation builder. Those who refused to use it were not as
credible as those who embraced it.
Fast
forward to this time in our dangerous world where America has survived every
plague upon it but the one we are now facing.
Morality has no meaning or credibility, and, therefore, there is no
benchmark from which to pursue foreign policy success. As our internal political affairs crumble
from a lack of the same thing, how can we expect our elected and appointed
“leaders” to make and carry American policy into the rest of the world? When homegrown progressive elites are
inciting revolution in our own country, why would we think that our wishes on
foreign policy would be honored elsewhere?
If
the radical Islamist uprisings (some would call them revolutions) now going on
in Europe, Asia, Africa, (and the Middle East) are successful, it is only a
matter of time before America would be a forgotten experiment in
self-rule. I refuse to throw around the
popular word, “democracy” because that is not what secures liberty for a
society. Until we get the lexicon
right, we will never have a successful foreign policy.
Among
the popular opinion of those who can’t be bothered to think about all the
ramifications of an unsuccessful foreign policy for America, the driving theme
seems to be that America is no better place to be than any other. (Notice, however, that they are not causing
great traffic jams trying to leave.)
These folks would have us hope and change ourselves into the same kind of
failed societies that we see all around the globe, but they do not bother to
try to understand exactly what that would mean. They hold up government supplied healthcare, for example, as a
more compassionate system than anything capitalism could conjure up. Never mind that this socialistic example
plays right into the hands of all kinds of revolutionaries, who also think
capitalism has failed and that wealth it created must be redistributed
(whatever that means) they are also the first to buy into the argument that
foreign cries for democracy should be supported by our capitalistic efforts at
all cost. Anybody else see an irony
here?
Bottom
line is that American foreign policy has only one requirement, and that is
whatever is good for American security.
Wonder if they teach that in foreign policy school these days?
Believe
it or not, the whole concept of successful foreign policy is based on
capitalistic principles. Investments
should only be made based on the projection of successful returns on those
investments. No – never mind – I know
they haven’t been teaching THAT for a very long time.
Anyone,
(including Muslim extremists and Marxist agitators) sitting around thinking
that what the world needs now is a Caliphate or One World Government, is pathetic
in their approach to understanding of humanity. As soon as the first tribe of humanity looked around and noticed
that they were sharing the planet with others who were different, the stage was
set for conflict and conquest that will never be eliminated. If history teaches nothing else, it should
at least teach us the difference between conquerors and the conquered.
This
is where America, with her European roots and expansive and unique thinking are
different, though, and it is time that Americans embrace that difference
whether the rest of the world does or not.
I’ve heard it said that America goes along with ruthless dictators
because we do not expect some people to be capable of self-rule, and therefore
our way of government wouldn’t work everywhere. Obviously, many of our own “rulers” and elites feel that we can’t
even be expected to rule ourselves effectively, and therefore we need more and
more socialism thrown into our own government.
The absence of a preponderance of moral evidence precedes such
thoughts. What they should be saying is
that immoral people are incapable of self-rule. Period. That is, after
all, what our Founders actually said.
Now
the problem comes with trying to define morality. I don’t know why. This
one is so easy that it literally escapes the minds of the great thinkers I
guess. Moral people do not do things to
other people that they would not want done to themselves. Christians call that the Golden Rule. Few live by it.
The
situation in Egypt is serious, and it is commanding much media attention, and
it is showing a great deficiency in American foreign policy. It is showing such a great ignorance by the
current administration that it is truly pathetic.
Liberal
blowhards, such as those great Hollywood experts and liberal, as well as some
so-called conservative politician and media types, who seek a microphone to
tell the world that they shudder to think of the likes of a Palin or a Bachmann
with access to the nuclear trigger, show their ignorance. They are probably the same ones that either
enabled or voted for the current administration, and thus, placed the trigger
in the hand of a dangerous revolutionary.
Forty per cent of the American people are still fine with that, if we
are to believe most of the polling data.
But consider if it were Palin or Bachmann in charge of American foreign
policy right now – both are in touch with the American people who get it – the
whole morality thing. They both have a
finer understanding of American history and our moorings in liberty. Neither of them thinks of the United States
Constitution as an antiquated document of negative liberties. They know that the Constitution was not
penned to support government liberty, but instead they know that it was penned
for the explicit reason to limit government and support individual
freedom. The blowhards have no concept
of this.
Conservatives
also know that revolutions happen as a last resort from within – not organized
from external disruptive forces. The
only successful foreign policy in dealing with the Egyptian situation, as well
as all the others that have sprung up lately, would be to ask and answer the
simple question: What is in America’s
best interest, and where are the greatest returns on any investment we can make
for our own security? Certainly not by
publicly admonishing a thirty-year ally and supporting ruthless extremists who
hate us and threaten us every day with the promise of death to us and our other
allies.
Okay,
all you “smart” people out there – tell me where I am wrong.