Comments on: The Bogey Of Isolationism

By: chrome agnomen

chrome agnomen — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 13:40:56 +0000

not isolationism, but self reliance, and self responsibility. not to hesitate to act globally, just to honorably uphold one’s end of the bargain. and to eschew both the self-righteous screed, ‘do as i say, not as i do’, and he waving of the ‘might makes right’ banner.

By: kent

kent — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 03:55:44 +0000

The American Conservative has now jumped on the bandwagon of pushing this story as being a big deal. Too bad they didn’t bother to read Mr. Larison’s debunking on their own pages.

http://www.amconmag.com/headline/1071/index.html

By: Grumpy Old Man

Grumpy Old Man — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 22:15:33 +0000

I prefer a small amount of mustard and sauerkraut with my bratwurst; I don’t care for relish.

Point taken.

By: mgm

mgm — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:43:42 +0000

I vote for “Washingtonian”. I think it would intrigue many who hear it and would provide a “teachable moment”.

PS to Grumpy Old Man – your phrase about Americans’ eating various things “with relish” has an amusing alternate take. I prefer mustard, myself.

By: beej

beej — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:09:49 +0000

Um … liberal Democrat?

By: S.L. Toddard

S.L. Toddard — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:51:28 +0000

“A label would be useful. If not “isolationist,” what? “Anti-entanglement,” perhaps?”

Washingtonian non-interventionist, or Washingtonian neutralist.

By: KXB

KXB — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 16:22:58 +0000

I’m having trouble thinking of a one word description, but a nice slogan could be “America wants to send its tourists overseas, not its military.”

By: SteveM

SteveM — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:33:46 +0000

George Washingtonism?

By: Brett

Brett — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 04:37:02 +0000

A label would be useful. If not “isolationist,” what? “Anti-entanglement,” perhaps?

Well, let’s see. It’s a low-impact policy focused mainly of securing good trade relations while minimizing US involvement in conflicts. “Coopertarianism”, maybe? “Market-centric”? The problem is that there’s no convenient single term for the above that doesn’t have some other unpleasant implications.

By: bobopapal

bobopapal — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 02:53:46 +0000

Labeling someone an Isolationist is nearly as potent as declaring that someone is a Racist or anti-Semite. It is so loaded with historical baggage that upon hearing it most people instantly associate it with the wrong (sometimes dark) side of history. I am afraid that it will be used for many years to come because of the useful universal negative impression it emits. The trouble with devising a new label is that the opposition will just graft Isolationist to it. Any new label will need to somehow be shielded from the Isolationist smear, and this will likely only be possible when a consensus forms that interventionist policies have failed and are counterproductive. However, in spite of our Iraq experience, by the results of the poll, that day seems distant.

By: krogerfoot

krogerfoot — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 02:51:16 +0000

Sadly, the descriptive power of a lot of potentially apt labels has gone down the tubes lately. A “conservative” foreign policy certainly no longer means what we wish it would at this point. “Moderate” wins no one any friends anymore, and “realist” is long gone. “Non-lunatic” or “antihysterical” would cover it, but would be considered insensitive to our proudly hysterical lunatics. “Rational” is now in the process of being stamped out as well.

I’d vote for “eunomic,” but I’m still bitter that I was not allowed to play EUNOMIA for 83 points in Scrabble. Or how about “mature”? That has a nice ring to it.

By: Grumpy Old Man

Grumpy Old Man — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 23:33:10 +0000

The difficulty is in finding a convenient label for a policy of limiting our alliances and commitments abroad in the post-Cold War era. “Anti-interventionist” is too limited. “Realist” covers a great deal of territory. One could imagine embracing the term “isolationist” the way the formerly colored population embraced “black” or homosexuals adopted “queer” as an emblem.

“Isolationist” is, however, as you say, a misnomer. Perhaps pre-Perry Japan, or China after it abandoned its fleet could be called “isolationist,” but a country that trades as much as we do; has a population tied culturally and emotionally to former homelands the world over; eats pizza, sushi, pad thai and bratwurst with relish; and engages in widespread overseas study and charitable work, can hardly be called “isolationist.” Even if we gave up many of our bases and alliances, stopped trying to get segmented societies of goatherds to become bourgeois democracies, and especially stopped preaching to the world, we would be far from “isolationist.”

A label would be useful. If not “isolationist,” what? “Anti-entanglement,” perhaps?