House of Eratosthenes

Becky, the Girl in Short Short Talking About Whatever, re-writing the history of conservatism somewhat and reminding me why I am not a Libertarian (warning, her site is occasionally not-quite-work-safe):

Obama is widely condemned as a coward on FOX News, with frequent appearances by Lindsay Graham, Charles Krauthammer and the usual suspects. Neocon giant Paul Wolfowitz was on CNN’s Larry King Show, calling for the president to form an alliance with Moussavi (even though the guy is a socialist thug), American and European college campus hippies are on the march—and not a few of the CNN anchors have pulled out their green St Patrick’s Day ties.

Neoconservatives It’s beginning to seem the only person in Washington, on the president’s side, is Ron Paul. Everyone else is on the Wilsonian warpath to make Iran safe for Democracy.
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It would be pretty hypocritical for Barack Obama to get real huffy about the Iranian electoral system.

Repeatedly our country is excited at the outset about helping some resistance fighters— e.g. Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan—but it does not take all that long for the luster to wear off—and before long we are wondering how we could have been so stupid.

One good way to avoid a lot of stupid mistakes is to mind your own business.

It’s so simple—but always hard to do.

So far the president is doing a pretty good job.

Yeah. Like anytime I want a poster boy for minding-yer-own-business, I should make a beeline for 1600 Pennsylvania right now.

Becky usually makes more sense than this…and let’s be honest, she does make some sense here. That’s the intriguing thing about her site. Like most other women who call themselves “feminists,” she is drunk on how-things-should-be and very often fixates on the feminist game of “Hey look at that thing over there help me hate it.” One could argue she’s taking a break from it here, unfortunately at the exact moment in which it would have been most sensible.

But she has a point here that is worthy of engagement. Aren’t both sides of our ideological divide guilty of hypocrisy and inconsistency on the “Mind Your Own Business” front? How, if the iPresident-Replacement-Jesus isn’t showing us The Way, does one avoid that conundrum? That’s the fascinating thing about isolationism debates. Isolationism, being nothing more than not-doing-anything, cannot be reasonably practiced to extremes. As Jimmy Stewart said in that great Libertarian movie Shenandoah, “If we don’t try, then we don’t do; and if we don’t do, then what are we doing here?”

Naturally I blossomed forth with my own wisdom:

It’s a decent argument I’ll admit, or else I can see some decent underpinnings in it. The danger is that you’re arguing for consistency. If you believe in the Government staying out of the lives of its citizens then why not believe in the Government staying out of other governments?

It’s interesting that the Obama apologists are never attacked with this: How come isolationism works when it’s time to defend liberty, but never when the time comes to assault it?

This is how belief in a deity, or lack of belief in a deity, affects how you think about the world. I know you’re a devout Catholic but you’ve missed the boat on this one because whether you’re conscious of it or not, you’re treating liberty the way the secularists treat it: Something people want, like air conditioning, because life is so much sweeter when you have it than when you don’t. Therefore we should all have it, and if we don’t have it we should hold revolutions to get our air conditioning.

Believers in the founding principles of our nation, just don’t see it that way. We see liberty as something that belongs to us not because we’re cool, or it makes us happy, or because those who would deprive us of it are really bad people. Those all apply but none of them represent the primary reason, which is: We are Children of God, and the true purpose of our existence cannot be fulfilled unless we are granted what we were supposed to have upon our Creation.

Once you realize that, you realize as Children of God, we have no meaningful entitlements that don’t apply to other CoG. It then becomes obligatory for us to defend others on this matter, if in no other way, than at least to speak out forcefully. And I would point out that thus far that’s all anyone has done.

Isolationism: not caring if thugs rape and murder your neighbors as long as they leave you alone.
- JohnJ | 06/23/2009 @ 12:03
Ron Paul points out that Obama isn’t really isolationist, though. He just supports different regimes than Bush did: http://tinyurl.com/nvpqtk
- JohnJ | 06/23/2009 @ 12:28
Yea, that sounds brilliant until planes are flying into our buildings, Pearl Harbor is up in flames and Europe is awash in swastikas.

Love what she said in another post –

“Although Iran is not a flower of democracy, over the thirty year history of the Revolutionary Islamic Republic, there have been several robust and competitive elections—and no real evidence of fraud—at least no worse than in Florida.”

She should stick to posts about vibrating beds.
- tim | 06/23/2009 @ 12:56
I could go for isolationism. It’s a defensible position. AFTER backing gracefully out of … which means finishing up our … current commitments.

Not saying it would be my first choice. But that was my biggest beef with Ron Paul. See, when I promise my help and get hip deep in it, I think it’s immoral to just say, “well… see ya!” and leave the guy who got hip deep in it with us … hip deep in it by himself.

Other than that, crazy as he sounds … 435 Ron Pauls in congress would be a far sight better than what we’ve got now.
- philmon | 06/23/2009 @ 22:24
The thing is though, some folks are in favor of isolationism when interference would erode freedom and liberty. Other folks are in favor of isolationism when interference is needed to defend freedom and liberty.
- mkfreeberg | 06/23/2009 @ 22:33
I’m about sick and tired of hearing from Libertarians on the matter of US foreign policy in general, and the Mideast in particular. Most of them seem to think it’s still 1935, when we (supposedly) had the luxury of ignoring genocidal dictators and doing nothing while they build huge armies and horrible weapons capable of killing us all. The Pat Buchanans of this world would apparently have us beef up our borders with sandbags & razor wire while the People’s Liberation Army completes the conquest of Canada and Mexico.

I kind of wish the entire movement would A) admit what it really is – the home of paleo-conservatism (as in old) and B) stick to the only issue most Libertarians really give a hoot about: legalizing cannabis.

No one is arguing for a US invasion of Iran on behalf of any protesters, pro-democracy or otherwise. (At least not over this issue; I would have bombed the country into smithereens and toppled the ayatollah about five years ago over the uranium-enrichment, but never mind.)

I think what frustrates me the most about this ongoing saga is this: I don’t currently see our government doing everything it can – diplomatically, economically, politically, militarily – to use the current unrest in Iran to our advantage…to look for and exploit any opportunity to undermine the regime currently in power there. We need to ask ourselves – do we want to be rid of the mullahs and see them replaced with someone friendlier to our ideals…or not?

In short, why is it any different than what we did to Saddam? If anything, I’d argue that Dinnerjacket & Co are *more* of a threat to American security than was the Butcher of Baghdad, not less.
- cylarz | 06/25/2009 @ 05:00

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Another Isolationism DebateTuesday, June 23rd, 2009

Another Isolationism Debate
Tuesday, June 23rd, 2009