Two people actually asked me to start blogging - one in a friendly way, the other so that I would quit hijacking someone elses's blog. So here we are, the first day of my blogging career, September 27, 2007. Whether it's an auspicious day, or not, is yet to be determined. The moon is full, however.
Sam is a libertarian, a Buddhist and works in nonprofit fundraising. He is more aware than ever that he does not have all the answers, and is working through many issues as diligently as possible. Posts will deal with a variety of topics, as you might imagine revolving around those areas. Sam's style will fall somewhere between Henry David Thoreau and Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip Dilbert and blog of the same name.
Unlike Thoreau, Sam did not live in the 19th century, but admires the writing style of American Transcentalists. Like Adams, one of Sam's means of self-therapy is to attempt to be unremittingly honest about what is happening in the world, while striving to do the same for himself.
Thursday, September 27, 2007
Ending wars
Two things will be necessary to stop this country from continuing to wage wars like Iraq:
1. The culture of the country must change – i.e., enough people must be become convinced war is a bad idea except in the most extreme circumstances, (e.g., the Iranians have landed at Annapolis and are marching on DC) – that no politician left or right will even consider advocating or implementing a pro-interventionist-imperialist policy.
2. The left must realize that a large, highly interventionist government at home is necessarily a government that will want to suppress civil liberties here and try to establish an empire to run abroad – when in human history has that not been the case?
The two go hand in hand – it happened with ancient China, Egypt, Rome, and more recently Britain, France, Spain, Russia, Germany, etc. If the government isn’t too big, and doesn’t have too many resources, it’s not going to be undertaking multi-billion-dollar foreign military adventures. Seems simple enough, but not enough folks get it.
Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass and other 19th century Americans whose mantle today’s left-interventionists claim were in fact classical liberals/libertarians. Thoreau once wrote that “The government which governs best, governs not at all,” upping the ante on Jefferson.
American 19th century classical liberals opposed the expansionism that led to the Mexican War (which was backed by the slave-owning South) were vehemently abolitionist, but were just as vehemently against large government. Thoreau famously went to jail for refusing to pay a tax that would have supported the Mexican War and scolded Emerson from his jail cell for not being imprisoned with him.
They understood the link between leviathan-size government, suppression of civil liberties and imperialist wars, a link we seem to have completely forgotten about.
1. The culture of the country must change – i.e., enough people must be become convinced war is a bad idea except in the most extreme circumstances, (e.g., the Iranians have landed at Annapolis and are marching on DC) – that no politician left or right will even consider advocating or implementing a pro-interventionist-imperialist policy.
2. The left must realize that a large, highly interventionist government at home is necessarily a government that will want to suppress civil liberties here and try to establish an empire to run abroad – when in human history has that not been the case?
The two go hand in hand – it happened with ancient China, Egypt, Rome, and more recently Britain, France, Spain, Russia, Germany, etc. If the government isn’t too big, and doesn’t have too many resources, it’s not going to be undertaking multi-billion-dollar foreign military adventures. Seems simple enough, but not enough folks get it.
Emerson, Thoreau, Douglass and other 19th century Americans whose mantle today’s left-interventionists claim were in fact classical liberals/libertarians. Thoreau once wrote that “The government which governs best, governs not at all,” upping the ante on Jefferson.
American 19th century classical liberals opposed the expansionism that led to the Mexican War (which was backed by the slave-owning South) were vehemently abolitionist, but were just as vehemently against large government. Thoreau famously went to jail for refusing to pay a tax that would have supported the Mexican War and scolded Emerson from his jail cell for not being imprisoned with him.
They understood the link between leviathan-size government, suppression of civil liberties and imperialist wars, a link we seem to have completely forgotten about.
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