That our continued liberty ultimately depends on liberty elsewhere seems an inarguable, if inconvenient, truth. ~Kathleen Parker

Statements like this are simply maddening.  First, they claim something so ludicrous that virtually no one on the right in his right mind would have uttered it ten years ago (imagine Newt Gingrich saying then, “Our freedom depends on the freedom of Bosnians!”) and then say that it seems “inarguable” to them.  To dispute something that seems “inarguable” to them would probably seem pretty crazy, but here goes.  American liberty has never depended on liberty anywhere else.  There are good reasons to think that our liberty has actually been going into decline each time we make it our business to get into wars for the “liberation” of others, and that the more liberty there is everywhere else–insofar as we have become its uninvited guarantors–the more oppressive and powerful our government must become to preserve somebody else’s “liberty” at the expense of ours. 

But just think about the idea for a moment: why in the world would our liberty depend on liberty in any other nation?  It’s not as if there is some gigantic Liberty Web to which we all belong where each part depends on every other part.  There is no liberty in Zimbabwe; does that mean that our liberty will be forever imperiled and diminished until Zimbabwe has been set right?  To ask the question is to recognise that the claim is absurd.  The list of countries where there is no liberty and never has been any for the entire history of this country could go on for quite a while, and yet their lack of liberty has never substantially affected the liberties of Americans in any way.  In the end, this claim is not only not inarguable, but actually hardly seems credible.  How have so many people been taken in by something so plainly untrue?