Joseph Sobran’s Conservative Foreign Policy
I’ve only subscribed to two newsletters ever, one being former National Review editor Joseph Sobran’s “Real News of the Month.” In the mid-1990s I was in my early 20s and the discovery of past conservative thinkers like Russell Kirk and Richard Weaver encouraged me to seek out their contemporary intellectual descendants, of which Sobran was one of only a handful. Most right-wingers in the ’90s, including many pundits and intellectuals, were so obsessed with Bill Clinton that conservative first principles took a backseat to hyper-partisanship and conspiracy theories, neither of which interested me. No doubt Clinton was an awful president, but so was his predecessor, and of course his successor proved far worse–yet even today most conservative journalists cannot bring themselves to bash in a bipartisan fashion. Sobran was not only one of the few exceptions to this rule, but would combine news and politics with deeper philosophical and civilizational concerns similar to men like Kirk or Weaver. At the time, I realized that if being a conservative simply meant hating Democrats then it meant nothing. But if being conservative was to think like Sobran, it had immeasurable meaning precisely because he constantly encouraged his audience to remember and reexamine what that term meant.
Learning of Sobran’s passing last week at the age of 64, I began to recall so many of his conservative reminders, particularly his Jeffersonian views on foreign policy and how valuable they are today. One of the beautiful things about the Tea Party is it n ow encourages conservatives to remember and reexamine what they stand for–Sobran’s specialty–a reflection that was even less in evidence under George W. Bush than it was under Clinton. Sobran had to leave his 18-year job as editor of National Review in 1993 due in part to his traditionally conservative views clashing with the neoconservatives’ agenda for the Middle East, or as he wrote in his final column before his death:
“I saw thirty years ago that we were headed for needless war with the Arabs, and I had two boys in their teens. By 1991 I hated Bush with a murderous fury. He was willing to get young men like my son Mike killed for no clear reason. I didn’t want them dying in the Middle East, where we always seem to be defending democracy and freedom these days… Nobody else at National Review seemed to have this worry.”
Today, the neoconservatives that so worried Sobran are worried themselves about a Tea Party movement hellbent on cutting spending, particularly if grassroots conservatives begin critiquing the monstrously big government program of American empire. Last week, columnists representing the American Enterprise Institute–Danielle Pletka and Thomas Donnelly–warned in the Washington Post that Tea Partiers should stay away from the likes of Ron or Rand Paul, Sen. Tom Coburn, Indiana Governor Mitch Daniels, and any other Republican who would dare question our current foreign policy. Neoconservatives Pletka and Donnelly seem to believe that America’s superpower status is what makes it great, forever spreading “freedom” and “democracy” around the world through perpetual war. Needless to say, the conservative Sobran took a more traditional view:
“[M]any Americans admire America for being strong, not for being American. For them America has to be ‘the greatest country on earth’ in order to be worthy of their devotion. If it were only the 2nd-greatest, or the 19th-greatest, or, heaven forbid, ‘a 3rd-rate power,’ it would be virtually worthless… . This is nationalism, not patriotism… . When it comes to war, the patriot realizes that the rest of the world can’t be turned into America, because his America is something specific and particular–the memories and traditions that can no more be transplanted than the mountains and the prairies… . But the nationalist, who identifies America with abstractions like freedom and democracy, may think it’s precisely America’s mission to spread those abstractions around the world–to impose them by force, if necessary. In his mind, those abstractions are universal ideals, and they can never be truly ‘safe’ until they exist, unchallenged, everywhere; the world must be made ‘safe for democracy’ by ‘a war to end all wars…’ For the nationalist, war is a welcome opportunity to change the world. This is a recipe for endless war.”
Endless indeed. The Wilsonian vision Sobran describes is progressive in origin, yet is also the neoconservatives’ vision and to the extent that the neocons continue to define the Right’s foreign policy, this will forever prevent even the rambunctious Tea Partiers from truly achieving their stated limited-government desires. As George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Joseph Sobran once warned, a state of perpetual war is simply incompatible with republican government. As evidenced by Pletka and Donnelly’s recent column, the neoconservatives now fear too many conservatives are beginning to waking up to this. Sobran spent years trying to wake them up, reminding his right-wing friends that “War has all the characteristics of socialism most conservatives hate: Centralized power, state planning, false rationalism, restricted liberties, foolish optimism about intended results, and blindness to unintended secondary results.”
The countless examples of Sobran’s wit and wisdom are too many to revisit here, but he should be remembered not only as one of the greatest conservative minds of our time–but of all time. Sobran’s genuine patriotism informed his genuine conservatism thus putting him at odds with neoconservatism for the last decades of his career. To the extent that neoconservatives took over the larger movement, there was simply no place for a man like Sobran. And to the extent that traditional conservatives can now take back their movement from the big government neocons, they will be fighting the same battles as the late, great, Joseph Sobran.
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Strictly FYI:
7 Examples of Radical Libertarian, Anti-American, Leftist Lunacy
Barry, I am both embarrassed for you and ashamed of you that you would present the neocon bucket of garbage from longtime Commie David Horowitz. Going from blind worship of Third World Maoism and Communism generally to Israel State worship is not a form of Americanism or Conservatism but another form of treason.
David’s ONLY decent work was his 1965 The Free World Colossus, the first popular work of liberal Cold War revisionism. It was 95% recycled D.F. Fleming but with full credit to Fleming given and much more readable than plowing Fleming’s two massive, not particularly well written volumes
(The Cold War And Its Origins, Doubleday, 1961.) Fleming
was a Soviet apologist and anti-revisionist on both WW1&2
but he did present the Soviet of things and his chapter on the 1956 Suez Crisis read like an Israeli Government handout.
In those the Left didn’t recognize the Palestinians.
Later David made a complete ass of himself here in Oakland by supporting the Black Panther criminals and a lady friend that he recommended to the Panthers as a bookkeeper was killed by them. Hence his conversion to “conservatism.”
Witness The New Republic, the most Sovietphile journal of the 20s-40s has been for almost forty years an organ of the Israeli State. In the 50s when The New Republic editor Michael Straight was writing anti-McCarthy editorials he was a Soviet agent.
Chomsky wrote me many years ago that David Horowitz would work for Stalin or Hitler if the money was right.
His opportunism has paid off, he now longer struggles in a Berkeley apartment but lives in a Bel Air mansion. The only thing he had to do was sell his soul and be hereafter known for all eternity as a swine. Take your Savages, Becks, Hannitys, O’Reillys, Limbaughs and all the rest of the neocon hatemongers and perform the physically impossible.
Thanks, Jack, for a beautiful and more importantly entirely accurate tribute to a real patriot. Unfortunately there was another thread here that damned Joe with faint praise and brought the interventionist hatemongers from out of their ratholes. Later just outright censorship was used to prevent responses to these neocon lackeys.
So your tribute here is doubly appreciated.
I meant to write that Fleming presented the Soviet view of things but left out “view.” My apology.
MH wrote: “Chomsky wrote me many years ago that David Horowitz would work for Stalin or Hitler if the money was right.
His opportunism has paid off, he now longer struggles in a Berkeley apartment but lives in a Bel Air mansion.”
Like so many of the other “conservative” neo-cons, Horowitz started out doing good and has done very well indeed. No one will ever accuse him of being a man of integrity.
Mr. Hunter:
If traditional conservatives and libertarians ever want to have a governing majority, they need to appeal to evangelicals and traditional Catholics. Ron Paul’s being pro-life helps. Another plus would be more empathy for Israel. One reason the neo conservatives do well is they speak out for Israel and give lip service to social conservatism. The Bible says the Jews are God’s chosen people. Even if you don’t agree, don’t offend those of us who do hold to this view. This web site has so many good articles and view points, but some of the comments and letters are anti Semitic. Can’t we argue that empire building and perpetual war is bankrupting the US and that would be harmful to Israel as well?
Right on, Jack.
The word is out on the neocons and the Lobby, and spreading fast.
The next steps are to get them out of our government, then to reduce them politically, socially and financially to something beneath subsistence. More or less what they did to Sobran, in other words, except for being well-deserved and long overdue.
Steve, your spouting utter nonsense here. Israel relies on the US Empire. Just because some ignorant fools believe in a racist Chosen People concept is no reason to cater to their ignorance.
Paul is wrong on abortion too. As Murray Rothbard wrote in The Ethics Of Liberty, what human has the right to remain inside another human against that person’s will ? It is the most horrendous invasion of personal property rights imaginable. There is no right to be born.
It is not “anti-semitic” to be against Israel’s displacement of the Palestinians or to question standard mythology on WW2.
We do not need to emulate the neocons in their wrong positions nor do we need to elect pseudo-libertarians who carry on the wrong policies of the neocons. We need to reach out to rational people and shove off the fundies.
Herein lies the problem – we still have people that call you anti-semitic if you don’t buy into the Jews as the “Chosen people” philosophy. We can’t even question an ambiguous religious notion that just happens to rule our foreign policy without being called an anti-semite. Dispute Israel as a sacred nation and you are practically warming up the ovens in Auschwitz.
Perhaps people that believe such silliness will find a home at the neo con trash dump The American Spectator.
Dear Mr. Hardesty,
What part of “Strictly FYI” didn’t you understand?
As for MY view of the Hannitys and Limbaughs, please see here.
But I must comment on one thing: “Chomsky wrote me many years ago that David Horowitz would work for Stalin or Hitler if the money was right.”
Such slander should be beneath all of us. If anything, it tells us more about Chomsky than Horowitz.
Excellent as always, Mr. Hunter.
Reviewing the comments, I think the already-fraying alliance between paleoconservatives and some libertarians is starting to show why it can’t be a lasting one. Like the Meyer fusionism before that, there are too many irreconcilable differences. The insurmountable differences between libertarians and the Right started in the Enlightenment; and libertarians, being partisans of the Enlightenment, never really belonged on the Right anyway.
And, Matt: You do know that Rothbard supported the Black Panthers, right?
Besides, I see no alliance with conservatives-paleo or otherwise.
Rothbard did during his brief ,crazy New Left period in the late 60s but then totally repudiated the Panthers.
I wouldn’t call that period all that crazy, but I would consider it misguided. Same for his paleo-period.
Mr. Purtell,
I appreciate your point of view, considering you seem to be open to finding some common ground between libertarianism and conservatism. With respect to the treatment of Israel, let’s set aside all the talk of anti-semitism, AIPAC, and ‘The Lobby’ for just a minute.
First, we as Americans all have the right to voluntarily support whatever cause we feel is just. Whether that be your local elementary school, the Mises Institute, cancer research, or Israel. However, I don’t think we should conflate our individual support for a foreign entity with governmental support for that same foreign entity. Put another way, I don’t believe our government should be sending taxpayer money to Israel or Egypt or Fiji or Uzbekistan or any other nation. While God may call on us to support Israel, that does not mean the US Government is obligated to do so. As believers we can, of course, choose to individually support Israel in whatever way we see fit.
This also means that Will Kristol or Hannity or Krauthammer can certainly scratch a check to an Israeli charity if they like, but they shouldn’t demand that the rest of us use our taxes or our soldiers to support their pet cause. Much as conservatives would say that welfare can be bad for the recipient, the same can also be said of our relationship with Israel. They must be able to handle their own business without receiving US handouts. Indeed, our unquestioning support will only hurt (not help) their situation. If they want to stay in that neighborhood, they must learn to talk with their neighbors. But since we always ‘have their back,’ there is much less incentive for them to do so.
With respect to ‘anti-semitism,’ the term should really only apply to negative statements regarding the Jewish people. Making statements regarding Israel’s actions as a state should be viewed no different than discussing the policy decisions of the UK or Turkey or Australia. One can be objectively critical of the State, without being critical of its citizens, just as we can be critical of Washington without being angry at fellow citizens.
I don’t want to open this can of worms but, while many libertarians are not pro-life, there are certainly some who are devoutly religious and pro-life as well.
Peace be with you.
The Tea Party is a terrible threat/
Which the neocons dare not leave unmet./
Memo from Bill to Sarah: “Co-op now/
The Tea Partiers, or I can’t pow-wow/
With you for the big year two-oh-one-two–/
Big bucks you won’t be able to accrue./
The thing about the whole Tea Party crowd/
Is that their populism is much too loud/
And it endangers the hegemony/
Of neocons and all the powers that be.”
Steve, I think you mean the neocons cater to the Dispensationalist version of the Bible, which is not traditional Christian theology and not biblical.
It’s one thing to have imperial ambitions; another to deal with geopolitical reality in which the United States has by default become the world’s major power.
To deal with founding principles as though they were a timeless set of axioms that imply the exact same kind and degree(s) of liberty that (perhaps) existed in the 18th century is, arguably, to turn the principles themselves into ideological abstractions.
To argue that one ought promote liberty and representative republics in various parts of the world where there is real possibility that such can be established, and where the establishment of such will have long-term benefits, not only for humanity, but the interests of the United States of America in the foreseeable future, is an acceptable objective that transcends polemics between statists (whether neo-cons lor liberal one-worlders), and anti-statists.
How this has been pursued by this or that past administration (whether ‘progressive’ or not) may be disputable; but that it can, and ought, to be cautiously and prudently sought, given the increasing dispersal of awesome technological power throughout the world, seems to me to be indisputable.
We are not in the 18th, 19th or 20th centuries.
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/youtube-clip-shows-idf-soldier-belly-dancing-beside-bound-palestinian-woman-1.317177
Barry might want to run this on Front Page’s exaltation of Jewish supremacy ongoing series.
Barry, I understood your point all too well. And that’s your problem, not mine.
No Chomsky was not guilty of libel, it was in writing so it’s not
slander, Chomsky was right on target as to what Horowitz is.
A political whore.
I could care less about your views on Hannity or Limbaugh.
Tristan, the 60s were worse than crazy, they were utterly insane.
The paleos are better than the New Left so Rothbard had some good judgments there as well as some erroneous ones,
like sucking up to the Fleming cretin at the Chronicles.
Also his new states’ rights position on abortion was absurd.
His better view was in The Ethics Of Liberty.Raico, Liggio, Rockwell and others were very bad influences on Rothbard
during his paleo period. Their anti-Ayn Rand religiosity.
Thanks, Ken. Barry is a basket case so he might not get the point.
Mr. Hunter you calling Joe Sobran’s foreign policy views conservative does not make them conservative when they are clearly left wing isolationist cut and run appeasement crap. Mr. Sobran was a fine Christian man and had some conservative social views (though in my opinion real conservatives are not extremist nutballs on social issues and are only for ending late term abortion and are pro civil unions) but he was definitely a leftist on foreign policy and was even sympathetic to anarchist views, which are anti Christian and anti-American.
Isolationalism is a smear term invented by FDR and his Communist associates in the late 30s and the Stupid Right
types like you regurgitate this nonsense. Paul’s foreign policy is the traditional American one going back to Washington. We
don’t need to fight anymore of Israel’s wars, the Europeans,
Japanese and South Koreans can well defend themselves,
20 or 30 trillion dollars down the Pentagon Socialist rathole since 1945 is enough !
Anarchism is not anti-American, people like neocon Kyke K are the real anti-Americans. Anarchism should be anti-Christian as that Christ Cult is the biggest source of Communist belief on the planet but there are, unfortunately Christian Anarchists.
Stop off the Savage morons and try to educate yourself with revisionist history, go to ihr.org or antiwar.com or lew rockwell,com.
Kyle K wrote: “they are clearly left wing isolationist cut and run appeasement crap”
Like that famous left-wing isolationist and cut-and-run appeaser George Washington? I’d say it’s past time you read his Farewell Address. It’s full of similar “crap”. Then you can treat yourself to another new experience and read the Constitution.
“people like neocon Kyke K”
I sincerely hope you meant Kyle K…
Montario Hardesty, You are a traitor to America. Kyle K is a real patriotic pro-war pro-American pro-freedom pro-Reagan Kristolite conservative. Stop reading the anti-American filth found on those left wing liberal websites you just name dropped and check out some real conservative websites like FreeRepublic.com, RedState.com, FrumForum.com, WeeklyStandard.com, and Hannity.com. If you are not afraid to learn about true conservatism you will abandon this Ron Paul liberal crap and check these awesome anti-racist conservative websites out. Montario, just pen your mind a little bit and you will see the truth.
Seth, look I appreciate and respect George Washington as an American icon, After all he did cut down that cherry tree and threw a silver dollar across the Potomac river and all that good stuff. but lets face it he was living in a different time where racism was accepted and there was not a thermonuclear terrorist threat. Even his predecessor Thomas Jefferson moved away from Washington’s isolationist foreign policy of terrorist appeasement and declared that America was an “Empire Of Liberty” that would spread freedom and democracy throughout the world and let no injustice go unpunished. Liberals don’t get it and want to just sit back and wait for the inevitable terrorist attack on our shores. Supporting an isolationist foreign policy equals hatred of America and a love of Jihadistism.
“While God may call on us to support Israel, that does not mean the US Government is obligated to do so. As believers we can, of course, choose to individually support Israel in whatever way we see fit”
Amen although thru thru the lens of history ir seems to me that Israel’s survival as a Jewish State is essential to the well being of the world. If the Jews and the rest of the world understood this I belive the redemption would be at hand and the righteous of all mankind would benefit.It seems to me it’l likely be , slow going but may we be motivated with the light of truth which seems to be so needed. A Ron Paul administration is a step in that direction but I think Romney is the more likely choice,
Steve,
I’ve got some bad news for you. You are going to be offended. Just like the liberals are offended when a small but insistent minority tell them their plans for saving the earth before man, is not only wrong, it will fail. This country will not be what it is for much longer for them to push their misguided misinformed agenda.
This holds true for the republican social conservatives (because not all social conservatives hold your views on the bible), they refuse to see that their very own actions have put Israel at risk by such great measure, it is the very definition of unforeseen consequences, or blowback. The Bible says a great many things. I insist you read it again. Maybe some day you’ll listen to the orthodox jewish, and surprisingly large number of authentic Christians (i.e. not Bush/Palin Christians) that have been trying to tell you for a long time that your fantasies involving Israel are self fulfilling. You and your ilk have created it. This is not the work of God’s hand. This is the work of your hand. And what man has made, will crumble. The truth of the matter is, a large percentage of the social conservatives, aren’t conservative at all. They like big government, they are statists, and are ready to put their views on other via the full resources of the government, given half a chance, they would start a mind numbing number of initiatives that have no proper role in government…. I actually don’t think this ship can be righted. There are a lot of people to blame, but the social conservatives should be blamed more then anyone else. We looked to their wisdom, and common sense, and the ability to read the entire Bible, provide guidance, and serve as role models of grace. What we got instead is a bunch of suckers who think 6 million people, should be put before 300 million Americans. I’m at the point where this dual allegiance should not go unpunished. I think this country needs to keep the social conservatives that have their head on straight, and start deporting the rest to Israel.
BE CAREFUL, MR. HUNTER!
Not all of the Tea Party people are anti-empire. Many of them are neocons themselves, or at least lean in that direction.
The Tea Party MUST split over this issue. No man, or party, can serve two Masters.
The sooner there are two Tea Parties, the better. One for the empire, and one against it.
Brian, the real Tea Partying Rraganite patriots support Thomas Jeffersons true conservative foreign policy that America should see itself as an “Empire Of Liberty” that spreads freedom throughout the world through preemptive wars and not taking any crap from terrorist or enemy nations.
Pletkas an Australian for a start and deeply unpopular in her home country. Not much chance of her getting her nails dirty in Afghanistan. Yet another jewish neocon who’ll fight to the last American. She was a prime instigator of Iraq2 with her championing of Chalabi who turned out to be working for Iran. Boy did he take the Doug Feith crowd for a ride. Why did a 40 yr old Australian have so much influence in…America?
Then you have Ron Kantor who could well be the Republican whip of the House stating that America’s and Israeli security interests are identical. Such a statement frightens. The time is long past for Israel to succeed or fail on its on efforts. 60 years of dependency is more than enough. It is time to end all financial subsidies of it and instead spend it in America rebuilding our decayed bridges, our pipelines, etc. becoming energy independent.
When people think of nuclear weapons, they think of Bikini Atoll. I thus was flabbergasted to read that the North Korean bomb (which I am told would be similar to an Iranian bomb) would about have the impact of an American 175mm nuclear shell from a nuclear cannon. It might destroy 4 city blocks. It set off in the middle of Central Park, it would have minimal impact on the buildings around it. If it were to be imported into the U..S., a person would have to removed the heavy shielding. The unchecked radiation would kill the person carrying it.
I say this for the specter of a nuclear North Korean or a nuclear Iran is the cliched smoke and mirrors. SO WHAT.
Steve P,I’m not God’s accountant and am in no position to be certain who are “authentic Christians” and which “Orthodox Jews” are acting correctly. I’m uncertain what is the work of God’s hand and what is man’s alone.It does seem to me that allowing the Jews a return to their biblical homeland and the rebirth of a dead language after 2000 plus years has God’s imprint just as taking a slave nation out of Egypt and delivering them to the promised land approximately 3500 years ago did as well. I do not five fingers clarity but I have an opinion based on evidence that makes sense to me. As I understand it God’s ways are deliberately mysterious and the fact that the rebirth of the modern State of Israel was at least consciously a secular movement at odds with the religious establishment there is another oddity. There is much conflicting opinion and misinformation on the net and in print media so getting to the truth is difficult and requires wise teachers. It is my hope that Israel gets it right this time as opposed to the first and second temple periods and this results in a glorious age for the righteous of all mankind. I believe that God does not lie and his covenant with the Jews is eternal. Sadly,the vast majority of Jews in America are ignorant of their heritage and have at best a vague emotional tie to Israel[discounting the hard core leftists and a small fringe of anti Zionist ultra Orthodox extremists who both oppose the State outright] much like a 3rd or 4th generation German or Irish American may have a vague connection to the land of his ancestors. Proof is that despite the efforts of the Neocons well over 70% of Jews in America voted for Obama over the Neocon choice McCain. . While possible it seems unlikely to me that Israel and the USA would be on on opposing sides in the foreseeable future. If so it would not be the first time Jews chose sides and found themselves firing on other Jews. Just think as recently as the first World War. At present I believe a strong Israel not dependent on US aid would be good for the USA as trusting the shaky regimes of other countries there to safeguard US interests seems foolhardy to me.Of course developing alternative energy to oil would be even better so we’d have no vital interests in the region.
Mr Burton,
“How this has been pursued [promote liberty and representative republics in various parts of the world] by this or that past administration (whether ‘progressive’ or not) may be disputable; but that it can, and ought, to be cautiously and prudently sought, given the increasing dispersal of awesome technological power throughout the world, seems to me to be indisputable.”
You are quite eloquent in your words, but I believe you gloss over the real point. Most of us would agree that it would be great for all peoples to enjoy the blessings of a liberal republic; that much goes without saying. The crux IS the ‘how.’
Interventionists, whether neocon (e.g. David Brooks, Will Kristol) or progressive (e.g. Woodrow Wilson) argue that this can and should be accomplished through force (i.e. democracy at the point of a gun.) Ironically, THIS is the old way of foreign policy. But we aren’t in the 4th, 5th or 6th centuries.
Non-interventionists, however, believe that this is best accomplished when we try to provide the best possible example of that form of governance (‘the City on a Hill’)…and focus on providing the most liberty for the greatest number of our citizens. In lieu of the technology of unmanned Predator drones, we would argue that the use of technologies like the internet, air travel, voluntary commerce, and mass communication are the most cost-effective (and moral) methods of spreading the message of freedom.
Based on the disasters that we have set in motion in Iraq and Afghanistan, do you really expect to see a clamoring for representative democracy by the peoples of the Middle East?
Peace be with you.
To Ken Hoop:
“Barry might want to run this on Front Page …”
If I may: What part of “Strictly FYI” didn’t YOU understand? I am not an editor with that site. It was simply a heads-up regarding what was elsewhere on the Web.
To Michael Hardesty:
Your original statement: “Chomsky wrote me many years ago that David Horowitz would work for Stalin or Hitler if the money was right. His opportunism has paid off, he now longer struggles in a Berkeley apartment but lives in a Bel Air mansion.”
And Chomsky is not well compensated for his writings and speeches? It’s an empty insult that can be hurled at any public figure.
“Barry is a basket case so he might not get the point.” See AD HOMINEM.
Barry, it’s not an ad hominem in YOUR case, it’s an observed empirical fact. And by the way in Chomsky’s spring, 1991 letter to me he was referring to both Horrorowitz and Peter
Collier, two braindead rejects from the old left Ramparts magazine.
Chomsky lives in a modest house in Lexington, he’s not poor
and I disagree with him more than I agree but compared to
Horrorowitz he’s an Aristotle. David just proves that intellectual charlatans can make it big time here in P.T. Barnum land.
And WHY would you give a head’s up to a totally discredited
neoconman site that promotes raving anti-semitism ? Which is what anti-Arab racism is.
“Nate” or Eichmann Junior, Thomas Jefferson was a non-interventionist and he was for a Republic, NOT an empire.
Thomas Jefferson was NOT for going around righting every wrong in the world.
“Nate” aka Eichmann Junior, I know all the neoconman anti-American sites that you list. They are all anti-semitic sites promoting the most virulent anti-Arab racism.
The whole interventionist mania going to Wilson has been promoted by the Communists, the socialists, the liberals, the progressives AND the “ex” Trotskyite Communists called the neoCONservatives. The very term “appeasement” is of 1930s
Communist origin, see American Liberalism And World Politics, 1931-41, two volumes, by Dr. James J. Martin,
Devin Adair, 1964, with a foreword by the great conservative
writer John Chamberlain. I knew Jim for decades as a very close friend.
“NATE” Eichmann Junior your a traitor to America and the lowest of persons, a political agent provocateur.
Try to learn to SPELL Reaganite while your at it.
Montario Hardesty, Sorry, but your antisemitic Alex Jones conspiracy theories don’t hold any value here. Please Google “Empire of Liberty” and you will see that the Reaganite Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was very much for it. In fact he originated the term, so you sir are 100% wrong on that claim. Most Ron Paul followers are liberals and seem to be 100% wrong on just about everything anyways, so it really doesn’t surprise me that you cannot deal with the truth. Only patriotic Reaganite Sean Hannity approved great American moral conservatives who love America such as myself can see the light. I just want to continue the pro-preemptive war foreign policy guidelines laid down by our most influential Founding Father Thomas Jefferson. Liberals like yourself want to institute a foreign policy of isolationism and terrorist appeasement that would certainly lead to many terrorist attacks, the rise of the next Hitler, and the ultimate destruction of America.
I meant co-opt, not co-op:
” . . . Co-opt now/
The Tea Partiers, or I won’t pow-wow/
With you in the big year two-oh-one-two/
Big bucks you won’t be able to accrue” etc.
To convey the proper note of Machiavellian deviousness, the end-quote should probably appear after the word “accrue” instead of at the very end.
“Nate” Eichmann Junior, it was the US intervention in WW1 that tipped the balance of power, brought about the infamous Versailles Treaty and then quite predictably a Hitler to power.
US intervention in WW2 brought the Communists to power in half the world.
US intervention in Iraq brought Iran’s ideology to power in Iraq.
Ronald Reagan was a liar, mass murderer (Nicaragua, Lebanon, Grenada, Libya, El Salvador, southern Africa.)
How dare you compare a noninterventionist patriot like Thomas Jefferson with a discredited traitor like Ronald Reagan, who was a lifelong liberal with Communist connections.
Reagan voted for the destroyer of the Constitution, FDR, FOUR times and Reagan voted for the pro-Communist Truman in 1948 and the pro-Communist Helen Gahagan Douglas for US Senate here in California in 1950. see Murray Rothbard’s Reagan:An Autopsy, avaliable from Lew Rockwell.com archives.
Sean Hannity is a blithering idiot and an anti-patriot like yourself, Eichmann Junior.
Montario Hardesty, this is a Reaganite conservative website, it is not a liberal crapfest like INFOWARS.com. If you can’t handle the facts and truth about Thomas Jefferson and his Empire of Liberty you might find it to be right up your alley. They also deny 9/11, the moon landing, and that JFK was killed by a communist. So why are you wasting your time here? They have a tinfoil hate in your size waiting for you over at INFOWARS.
Thomas Jefferson was a noninterventionalist “patriot” who didn’t believe in empire?
Thomas Jefferson used a version of this phrase several times:
“…we shall divert through our own Country a branch of commerce which the European States have thought worthy of the most important struggles and sacrifices, and in the event of peace on terms which have been contemplated by some powers we shall form to the American union a barrier against the dangerous extension of the British Province of Canada and add to the Empire of liberty an extensive and fertile Country thereby converting dangerous Enemies into valuable friends.” – Jefferson to George Rogers Clark, 25 December 1780
“we should then have only to include the North in our confederacy, which would be of course in the first war, and we should have such an empire for liberty as she has never surveyed since the creation: & I am persuaded no constitution was ever before so well calculated as ours for extensive empire & self government.” – Jefferson to James Madison, 27 April 1809
Montario Hardesty, how do you like them apples?
“Nate”: The quotes and introductory text you just used were cut-and-pasted verbatim and without attribution from another Internet site.
http://wiki.monticello.org/mediawiki/index.php/Empire_of_liberty
The Alan Dereshowitz approach to scholarship is a neocon characteristic that won’t win you many friends among real conservatives.
“Nate” Eichmann Junior, giving out of context quotes from Jefferson proves nothing. He did NOT mean that America was to become an Empire in the Roman, Persian, Mongolian OR
British sense. The phrase “empire” of liberty is just that, a meaningless phrase. Jefferson would say stupid things on occasion such as “All men are created equal” which is the stupidest thing ever said.
We revolted against the whole idea of empire when we split from England.
THE GRAVEYARD IS THE DESTINATION OF EVERY EMPIRE FROM ROME TO THE USSR TO US.
The Founder of our country, George Washington, warned us in his First Inaugu Address AGAINST ANY INVOLVEMENT IN FOREIGN WARS, ENTANGLING ALLIANCES AND HAVING FAVORED NATIONS. LIKE ISRAEL OR THE UK.
The Founder of THIS SITE, Pat Buchanan wrote a book in the late 90s titled REPUBLIC OR EMPIRE.
This is NOT a Reaganite “conservative” liberal-Communist-neoconman Trotskyite warmongering site.
In case you didn’t notice “Nate” Eichmann Junior your fascist warmongering views are in a distinct small minority here.
Go to The Weekly Standard or The New Republic, there you will find simpleton morons who share your Nazi viewpoint.
By the way, my first name is MICHAEL.
Who is “Montario” ? Is that your long last Daddy ?
Montario Hardesty, Oh grow up. There is nothing out of context in those quotes. Go spew your liberal racist conspiracy theory nonsense somewhere else. Pat Buchanan is a decent man, although I find that he has a serious blindspot when it comes to foreign policy and defense issues. Buchanan used to be a staunch supporter of Isreal, but has recently went off the deep end. However, a few of his pieces on domestic issues like the Ground Zero mosque are still chock full of pretty good conservative thought, but his current liberal foreign policy views of isolationism and terrorist appeasement would cause me to classify Pat Buchanan as a moderate at best.
Wow, I was gone for a day and missed out on all the fun.
Andy-thanks for your thoughtful response to my post. I would agree with most of what you said.
Mr. Weinstein–do you really think we can afford any more foreign wars? The federal government grows everytime we go to war and doesn’t shrink when we return to peace time. I think our mutual hero Ronald Reagan understood that and refused to be provoked when the Soviets shot down that passenger plane over Korea or when the crazies killed our Marines in Lebanon.
Mr. Hardesty–I’m not sure how you can love Ron Paul and hate Ronald Reagan so much. Reagan and his hero Barry Goldwater had strong libertarian streaks. I believe he would have started bringing home the troops if he were still president when the iron curtain fell.
Steve Purrell, Do you really think we can afford to lose the War of Terrorism that is being waged against us by the Jihadistists who will not quit until we are have been defeated and are part of their Global Caliphate of Islamofascist world order?
“Nate” I accept your total apology on all counts and your admission that your real name is Adolph Eichmann, Jr.
Pat’s book is actually titled A Republic, Not An Empire.
As you point out Jefferson advocated very limited governmrnt
which is totally incompatible with any empire.
I agree with you that Reagan was a total scumball and that foreign wars are the quickest route to socialism as WW1, WW2, Korea and Vietnam proved.
I also agree that any terrorism by Arabs or Iranians is a direct result of our support of Israel and Arab Reaction in Saudi Arabia & other rightist Arab States. As you say, the “war on terrorism” is a total fraud designed to set up a police state here at home with endless wars abroad.
I deeply appreciate your denunciation of Hannity and Savage.
I’m sorry to hear that Montario was your first lover and that you met him in the Argentine White Peoples’ National Socialist Party and that he abandoned you. Life is tough,
Adolph.
Steve, Reagan had no libertarian streak at all, see Murray Rothbard’s Reagan:An Autopsy at the lewrockwell.com webite under the Rothbard archives. He instituted the state withholding tax here in CA as governor and had no relation to either Goldwater or Paul ideologically & philosophically.
Reagan was a neocon Big Gov guy all the way.
Nate Weinstein,
You are an idiot. Thomas Jefferson owned slaves and was a racist. I would not listen to anything that evil man Thomas Jefferson says. But apparantly you admire him. What’s next Nate, are you going to come out in support of racist Jefferson Davis’ foreign policy of total war against the Union?
Also Nate you overlook the fact that Jefferson’s “Empire of Liberty” didn’t seem to include the thousands of African American slaves he owned and used to accumulate power and wealth.
Kyle, are you really as stupid as you appear ? All The Founders were slave holders, north and south. Originally slavery developed in tribal warfare as an alternative to killing
your captives.
It was your fellow blacks in Africa who sold their people to Arab, Spanish, Portugese and Anglo slavers and a few Jews
too, though they were not a major factor.
Imagine if our 40 million Negroes had to live in modern day Africa in Rwanda, the Congo, Zimbabwe and the other hellholes that make up the Dark Continent.
Africans do not recognize African-Americans, that’s a bit of Jesse Jackson jive that the media picked up in 1984.
Jefferson Davis rightly wanted to secede from what he correctly guessed was going to be a tyranny under Dictator Lincoln. Up till then the right of states to secede was universally recognized. The total war was Lincoln’s and Sherman’s genocidal march through the south.
As JFK said, Jefferson was a brilliant man, smarter than all the Presidents since.
You really are a stupid anti-American, KK, and you need to educate yourself. Maybe add another K to your blighted name.
Kyle, for some strange reason Buchanan is following Dougherty is censoring my posts.
So on this one free speech bastion at TAC let me respond to your incredibly stupid comments on Pat’s thread.
The libertarian intellectuals like Rothbard, DiLorenzo and many others are genuine intellectuals, they have all forgotten more about any given subject in history, economics, politics, philosophy, art, literature, sociology and psychology than you ever knew.
There is no such thing as “holocaust denial,” only holocaust revisionism which totally debunks the Soviet Communist originated tall tales here. Check out ihr.org and see if you can learn something.
Yes, we would all be better off if the lumpen of all races had no kids at all. That is a fact, nothing to argue about here.
Montario Hardesty, why do you refuse to condemn Hamas, the KKK, and the Neo-Nazi’s and Altright.com?
Talk about turning the term “conservative” on its head.
I’m guessing these neocons posting here are so young they never even heard of Robert Taft and the old right.
“I love peace, and I am anxious that we should give the world still another useful lesson, by showing to them other modes of punishing injuries than by war, which is as much a punishment to the punisher as to the sufferer.”
- Thomas Jefferson, May 1, 1794
Michael and Nate,
Are guys real or just a joke to mess with new readers such as myself.
Assuming you’re both real, let’s try to find some common ground. If the GOP nominated Rand Paul in 2012 or beyond and he ran against a typical leftist Democrat, would both of you support him?
“The Bible says the Jews are God’s chosen people.”
You know, the Bible does not actually say that, and it’s disturbing that so many people who consider themselves “Christians” think that it does. The Bible actually says that Gods “chosen people” are those who accept Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. Read your New Testament, please.
(According to Paul, “Israel” does not refer to genetic Jews at all, but to all people who have accepted God’s promise)
“Thomas Jeffersons true conservative foreign policy that America should see itself as an “Empire Of Liberty” that spreads freedom throughout the world through preemptive wars”
You might want to actually read the passage by Jefferson in which the phrase “Empire of liberty” appears, because it’s a call for commerce and not for war.
Steve P, I have no relation to “Nate” aka Eichmann Junior.
He’s an agent provocateur, has no arguments and just spouts moronic neoconman loud assertions. Don’t even mention
my name in the same breath. In fact my policy from here on
out is to simply ignore him. Don’t dignify garbage.
Of course, I’d gladly support Ron Paul.
To the other Steve, thanks for your welcome clarification on both points in your two brief posts.
Mr. Hardesty, Is Hamas a terrorist organization?
Steve Purtell, I generally support Republicans, but in the race for Kentucky’s Senate seat I have to endorse the Democrat Jack Conway because he is tougher on terrorism and not an isolationist like Rand Paul.
The US and Israel are the leading terrorist states in the world today since the collapse of the Communist Bloc. Israeli state terrorism has killed Palestinian Arabs at the rate 100 to 1.
Israel CREATED and funded Hamas in the late 70s as an alternative to the PLO’s one person, one voter secular democratic. A case of the chickens coming to roost and it couldn’t happen to a more deserving state.
State should be after democratic in line three. And of should be after rate in line two.
Wll there you have it. Montario Hardesty refuses to condemn Hamas. He refuses to condemn Hamas. I don’t think anything else needs to be said.
Anyone that wants a good list of books on the Middle East just holler and I’ll supply a list.
A list of books on the Middle East from you? That should be good for a few laughs.
The Zionist Connection by Dr. Alfred M. Lilienthal
Israel And Palestine by Avi Shlaim
Zionism:The Enemy Of The Jews, 3 volumes, by Alan Taylor
Perceptions Of Palestine by Kathleen Christensen
A Question Of Palestine by Edward Said
The Truth About Camp David by Clayton Swisher
The Birth Of Israel by Simha Flapan
The Ethnic Cleansing Of Palestine by Ilan Pappe
The Invention Of The Jewish People by Shlomo Sand
The Decadence Of Judaism In Our Time by Moshe Menuhin
(father of Yehudi)
The End Of The Peace Process by Edward Said
The Great War For Civilization by Robert Fisk
Israel And The American National Interest by Cheryl Rubenberg
The Other Side Of The Coin by Dr. Alfred M.Lilienthal
The Iron Cage by Rashid Khalidi
The Gun And The Olive Branch (Rev.Ed) by David Hirst
Blood And Religion:The Unmasking Of The Jewish And
Democratic State by Jonathan Cook
Dishonest Broker:The US Role in Israel And Palestine
by Naseer H. Aruri
Palestine In Pieces by Kathleen and Bill Christensen
(both longtime CIA analysts)
What Price Israel ? by Dr.Alfred M. Lilienthal
The Iron Cage by Avi Shlaim
The Fateful Triangle:The US, Israel And The Palestinians
by Dr. Noam Chomsky
Will The Middle East Go West ? by Freda Utley
There Goes The Middle East by Dr.Alfred M. Lilienthal
The Transparent Cabal by Stephen J. Sniegoski
The Politics Of Partition by Avi Shlaim
The Arabs In Israel by Sabri Jiryis
The Founding Myths Of Israel by Zeev Sternhell
The Case Against Israel by Michael Neumann
Jewish History, Jewish Religion by Israel Shahak
Jewish Fundamental by Norton Meshinsky and Israel
Shahak
The Transformation Of Palestine by Ibrahim Abu-Lughod
A History Of Modern Palestine by Ilan Pappe
Palestine Diary:Two Volumes, 1914-45 And 1945-48
by Robert John and Sami Hadawi
Bitter Harvest by Sami Hadawi
Ok, this should more than suffice for the many of you who have requested references. Most authors are American Jews
and Israelis.
Every pro-Israeli argument is totally destroyed including the phony Cold War arguments of the neoconmen.
Happy reading !
Michael Hardesty
Looks like you left off your favorite book Mein Kampf by your hero. Adolph Hitler you anti semitic raving lunatic. It’s funny not a single book you list was written by a conservative but all are by far leftist authors. Michael does your Jewish wife know your a Jew hating anti-semite?
Kyle K, Montario Hardesty also left out his copy of the Koran which I am sure that he reads his daily devotions out of. No suprise that his list is chock full of authors like leftist kook Noam Comsky as well as a handful of Holocaust deniers. Also shocking is that the list doesn’t include “The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion” seeing as that piece of antisemitic conspiracy trash is right up there in Montario’s wheelhouse.
Two more additions to my list:
The Power Of Israel in The United States by James
The Founding Myths Of Modern Israel by Roger Garaudy
Most of the authors are pretty conservative to libertarian.
Chomsky’s the only leftist and his is the least hard hitting
book but still very valuable since he writes from a Left Zionist
view.
My wife, like most progressive Jews is ashamed of and disgusted with Israel’s apartheid policies, see Jimmy Carter’s
book here.
Kyke K is another pseudonym for “Nate Weinstein” who is a fake agent provocateur. Ignore this mentally ill person.
I’ll keep updating this great list.
Montario Hardesty, If your wife is indeed a real Jewess as you claim her to be you should know by now that no Gentile can ever satisfy her deepest needs. Let her know that if she ever wants a real piece of Kosher sausage that she can always give Nate Weinstein a holler.
Ok, two more listings:
The Essential Middle East by Dilip Hiro
Suez:The Twice Fought War by Kennett Love,
a former NY Times correspondent in the Middle
East during the 50s.
Montario Hardesty, wow what a shock, you recomend some more antisemitic crap. I am sure I will be hearing from your wife soon.
If Mr. Rothbard really was implying a right to abort because no “human has the right to remain inside another human against that person’s will,” he will drop a few notches in my book. The Rothbard’s question called the “undesirbale” human; a human that by no fault of his own came to be in a place that he cannot leave of his own will for 9 months, give or take.
So much for the non-agression mantra.
As to Israel, those of the circumcision of the heart are the true Israel, the spiritual descendants of Abraham, and the apple of God’s eyes. Those who reject the one who God sent, Israel included, will not enter into the promised rest.
Am I the only one indifferent to Israel? I don’t think so. I think we are automatically smeared as “anti-Semitic” and counted as Israel-haters simply because we don’t care, or don’t care enough. The fact is I have no religious or ancestral reasons for caring about Israel. My ancestors are English and German. I care nothing for England and Germany, my own “homelands” if you want to call them that (I don’t). Why should it come as a surprise to a member of another group, tribe, race, or religion that I do not care for HIS homeland? I do not want the US in NATO; I do not get up when I hear “God Save the Queen” on TV. I do not want to protect South Korea and Japan. Those two countries can fend for themselves very well. I do not want to give weapons and money to Israel. I do not want to be called pro-Arab or anti-Jewish just because my only loyalty is to America.
From a “Charter Subscriber” –
“How the Jewish People Were Invented” – Dr. Shlomo Sands
“The Thirteenth Tribe” – Dr. Arthur Koestler
Both of the above books were authored by Judaists, and quite neatly dispose of “The “Greatest Lie(s) Ever Told”, those being the fables and falsehoods which underpin the fallacious argument to a historic claim to the land of Palestine for a non-existent people.
Other interesting arguments:
From the 1905 “Jewish Encyclopedia”: “It would be a mistake to assume that our roots are from those of the Israelites of the Old Testament, but, rather, our roots are in Phariseeism.”
Phariseeism as a philosophy had and has its Talmudic roots in ancient Babylon, not biblical Israel or Judea. And these so-called “Evangelical Christians” somehow believe these people are “God’s Chosen?” Talmudic Pharisees? Did not Jesus himself refer to these peoples as “Of their father, the devil?”
Talk about falling under a “deluding spirit!”And heavens to Betsy! Don’t Google the name Benjamin Freeman for his insights on this topic.
It may also be of interest to the gutter-minded Weinstein and others of his persuasion to read the “Identity” section of the 1984 “Jewish Almanac.” In that section exists a clear re-iteration of the argument posited in the 1905 Jewish Encyclopedia. You are not descended from the Israelites of the Old Testament.
Further, over 95% of modern Judaists are descended from the Khazars, a nomadic people from the steppes of south-central Asia who migrated westward into Europe during the latter half of the first millenium. These are the “Ashkenazi Jews” of Europe, the America’s, and unfortunately, the modern state of “Israel.” Despite their claims to the contrary,they have no genetic link to any “Semetic” peoples what-so-ever. They are in a word, imposters.
As “The Who” so sang – “Who are you?”
As I earlier argued, the “Christian West” has “been had” by “The Greatest Lie Ever Told.” The Judaists are now the “Head” and in their own lands, Christians have been reduced to the “Tail.”
Wow. Your stuff is funny, “weinstein”.
But I think it’s a little antisemitic to post it using a Jewish name. You should go to freedom4um to get your antisemitism straight up. You don’t even have to adopt a pseudonym.
Jaime, the question of guilt or innocence of the zygote or spermatozoa or fetus is quite beside the point. These concepts only to people who exist solely in their own bodies and not in the body of another person.
If someone deposits an infant on your doorstep do you have an obligation to feed it ? Of course not. You might voluntarily turn it over to a charity or hospital but it would represent no claim on you morally or legally.
If men could get pregnant not only would there never been anti-abortion laws but abortion would be one of the sacraments.
Only the pregnant woman has the moral and legal right to decide whether to bring the fetus to term. For the rest of you it’s none of your business. You don’t and can’t play the game and you don’t get to make the rules. It’s that basic.
Rothbard took the only rational stand here.
Ghost Dog, many thanks. “Weinstein-Kyle K” are the same person. “Kyle” is the Negro half of “Nate” and “Nate” is the Jewish half of “Kyle.” In reality “he” or “it” as the shrinks prefer, is an Argentine German. The best course is to ignore it.
Richard, your comments are very rational and to the whole point. Thanks.
John, I think your basically correct but Shlomo’s last name is Sand, no plural. Thanks.
Richard,
You are an anti-semite like Michael Hardesty. Your irrational hatred of Jews makes me sad.
Kyle K, It truly is sad isn’t it? Whenever I hear these hateful antisemitic comments I just repeat the following phrase my mother taught me when I was a child. Sticks and stones may break my bones, but words can never hurt me.
“Nate-Kyle” it would be nice if you (singular) could cool it on spreading so much anti-semitism. Richard had a very intelligent, historically accurate post. The only hateful thing is your very demented response. And if words never hurt you then why do you respond to every post ?
Once again, your mental illness is on display.
A sad sight “Nate-Kyle” ! I have the utmost pity for you, now turn off Sean Insanity before you experience another major IQ point drop.
Montario Hardesty, I respond because I am a patriotic conservative American who is confident in my assertions and I know that I am right. People that listen to Sean Hannity on a daily basis have actually been shown to have higher than average IQs. Maybe if you took some time off from watching the MSNBC and Al-Jazera networks you might gain a few IQ points as well.
I think the moderator should strongly consider deleting the posts by Kyle K and Nate Weinstein. I am not usually in favor of censorship, but their posts border on parody, or, more sinisterly, they bear resemblance to efforts by an unimaginative government provacateur trying to stir up trouble.
Regarding Rothbard, it should go without saying he was a great polymath and is one of the top economists and theorists of political philosphy in the 20th century. Where ethics and philosophy overlapped with politics, he was equally skilled.
But, like others here, I disagree with him on abortion, frankly using the same principles he uses to defend it. However, unlike others here, he doesn’t “go down a notch” in my view, and I don’t stop reading the quite literally thousands of pages of unadulterated wisdom he left for us just because he held one unfortunate opinion that was outside the area of his expertise. Much has been written on this already, but I would hope that the forum community on this site has moved past the daily comment/belief witchhunt that substitutes for real thinking today.
Thanks for the positive feedback I’ve received on my Near East book list. Any others that I’ve missed please let me
know. I can compile similar lists for WW1 and WW2 and the
Cold War.
Micheal Hardesty,
I could compile a list of racist anti American and anti semitical things you’ve said. Unfortunately, they would shut down this website and possibly collapse the internet because the list would be that long!
Thanks, folks, I’ll start on a WW2 list. Good to be getting the word out about some great books.
With regard to whether or not conservatives should support Israel, or why they do in fact, I think a lot of it has to do with a continuation of the Cold War situation. It’s not just about a specifically theological “Christian Zionism” (which was not the predominant position among even Evangelicals until the 1970s). Most conservative intellectuals are not evangelicals. Their sympathy for Israel is not due to theology, but overall cultural sympathy.
As far as I see it, when the Soviet Union ended up giving full backing to the Palestinian cause, it was only reasonable that anti-communist conservatives would start to see them as just another fake third-worldist left-wing anti-colonial movement, taking a thin veneer of nationalism to cover Soviet foreign policy goals. With that, it was only natural that conservatives would start to sympathize more with the Israeli cause. Rather than being themselves uppity left-wing rebels, Israel morphed into a conservative defender of law and order.
As an analogy, just look at how the Nazi-sympathizing Afrikaner nationalists ended up being Israel’s greatest friend on the African continent.
Although communism is no longer a significant threat, Islam has taken its place as “the enemy of civilization”. Many of the former communist players are now the Islamic players, no more so than the Palestinians.
Some conservatives have enough historical memory to remember when the Zionists occupied the ideological place of the Palestinians: the days when communists armed the nascent Israeli state, and the Soviet Union was the first UN member to recognize it. Most do not, for the same reason that conservatives today automatically think that Islam has always been the greatest enemy of the West, when only a few decades ago political Islam (at least in its Sunni version) was seen as our natural ally against international communism. (For an analogy, compare the ideological sympathy for Islam, and hatred for Orthodox Christianity, generated in conservative Britain and France during the Crimean War).
I don’t have a problem with conservatives sympathizing with Israel, as long as we are honest about why Israel deserves our sympathy. I don’t believe it should be because we believe in God’s eternal covenant with the Jews: that is a highly particular theological position that goes against most of Christian tradition, which considers the Old Covenant to have been completely abrogated by the New. I also don’t believe conservatives should sympathize with Israel for essentially leftist reasons like the idea that the Jewish people have a “right” to a Jewish state. This is anarchical, revolutionary rhetoric that contradicts the conservative’s devotion to established order and tradition.
I believe that Israel deserves conservative support because, whatever it’s origins on the Left or in the anti-Christian Jewish tradition, Israel is now in the role of defender of law, order and civilization against essentially barbarian hordes of revolutionary Arabs.
What I strongly object to is reading this modern ideological sympathy back into the past, and trying to rewrite conservative history based on the chance alignments of contemporary politics. That is nothing more than being allowing our historical judgment to be completely determined by the Zeitgeist. In other words, a most un-conservative attitude.
Michael Hardesty wrote “… the Europeans, Japanese and South Koreans can well defend themselves …”.
Not when the USA prevented that and continues to stop it becoming possible again. The USA currently has moral obligations to defend them on the principle of “you broke it, you bought it”. It would be even better, of course, to stop holding them down.
Seth wrote ‘Like that famous left-wing isolationist and cut-and-run appeaser George Washington? I’d say it’s past time you read his Farewell Address. It’s full of similar “crap”.’
It is crap. It’s just a hypocritical, rhetorical gloss for welching on the revolting Americans’ moral (and contracted!) obligations towards their European allies, pointing out correctly that incurring such obligations was unwise and improper but then incorrectly implying that that meant that there weren’t already any such obligations.
Nate Weinstein wrote ‘Please Google “Empire of Liberty” and you will see that the Reaganite Founding Father Thomas Jefferson was very much for it. In fact he originated the term…’
Don’t forget that the term meant something else in those days, much as “rule of law” didn’t then mean that something called law was in charge of you. Rather, it meant something like “the places where liberty operated”. He was hoping that that would spread over the North American continent, as much as anything. Of course, he had no principled objection to achieving and sustaining that through forcible state action either, what with accepting attempts at invading Canada (twice), so Michael Hardesty‘s “We revolted against the whole idea of empire when we split from England [sic - it was actually the U.K.]” is wrong, too. (He also went along with pushing the revolting Americans’ former ally Spain out of what it recovered in the American War of Independence.)
Michael Hardesty wrote “… it was the US intervention in WW1 that tipped the balance of power …”.
Nonsense. Various delays meant that US involvement arrived in material strength too late to affect the outcome of the war, which was already locked in by then although nobody could be sure of that at the time. It did, however, greatly affect the form the peace took.
Michael Hardesty wrote “Originally slavery developed in tribal warfare as an alternative to killing your captives”.
In many times and places, in which slavery could pay owners better than hiring free labour or killing the conquered, that was the case. However, in Africa the usual pattern was not like that; there, women and children were taken into the captors’ households to build up tribal strength, while men were killed as a worthless by-catch that it was too dangerous to turn loose.
Nate Weinstein wrote “Mr. Hardesty, Is Hamas a terrorist organization?”
No more – and no less – so than the mandate era Jewish organisations it modelled itself on, even to imitating their manifesto wordings in ways that Israel considers prima facie evidence of terrorist intentions.
John wrote “… the fallacious argument to a historic claim to the land of Palestine for a non-existent people”.
Actually, they are mostly the descendants of the (Jewish) people living there two thousand years ago, after converting to Christianity or Islam (either directly or via Christianity), as shown by genetic studies, archaeology and historical records. For instance, Ottoman tax records show whole Jewish villages converting to Islam as late as the seventeenth century.
Yes, it was the US intervention in WW1 that tipped the balance of power to the Entente side, brought on the disastrous Versailles Treaties and eventually Hitler to power.
You try to weasel out by writing in effect the war was settled
but no one could be sure, etc. It simply wasn’t settled.
Read America Goes To War by Charles Callan Tansill
and The Roots And Causes Of The Wars (1914-1918), two
volumes by John S. Ewart. Also Why We Fought by C. Hartley Grattan and Shall It Be Again ? by John Kenneth Turner. You simply don’t know what you are spouting.
On Palestine it was not the descendants of Jews who were there in large numbers. Nor do the very incomplete Ottoman tax records (most avoided the Ottoman tax collectors like the plague) show any such thing. It’s also highly dubious that the modern day Ashkenazim Jewry are descended from the ancient Hebrews. See The Invention Of The Jewish People by
Israeli author Shlomo Sand. There were two very shortlived Hebrew Kingdoms over 2,000 years ago in Palestine, what is now Israel and the West Bank.
The difference between England and the UK is nil. England forcibly conquered Scotland and Ireland so England is really the correct name of the country.
And yes the American Revolution was a revolt against the whole idea of Empire and being governed from abroad. That
some of the revolutionaries later betrayed the anti-empire concept in no sense invalidates the anti-imperial basis of the American Revolution.
Your comments on African slavery are false too. Many African males were sent into slavery by other African males
and brought to the western hemisphere by the Arab slavers from the 9th to the 14th centuries and later by the Spanish, Portugese and English slave traders.
The US is not preventing the Japanese, Koreans and Europeans from defending themselves and there are no barriers to the US getting out except the mental ones in the
crazed minds of US policy makers.
Washington was absolutely correct in his no intanglements Inaugural Address and the US didn’t owe Europe zip.
The only “crap” here comes from the utterly ahistorical and pretentious pen of P.M. Lawrence in his tendentious attempt to falsify history.
Jonathan, your next to last paragraph is simply the standard Zionist racist screed. There is nothing barbaric about most
Arab nations. The worst one is Saudi Arabia, fully supported
by the US since FDR. Israel was brought into creation by the Soviets via massive arms shipments from their new Czech satellite in 1948. Israel has done more to create Arab terrorists than Osama could in his wettest dream. Israel
is a collectivist-statist-tribal state and should be forced to repay the quarter of a trillion dollars in stolen tax funds that it has received since 1967.
Conservatives need Israel like we all need another million cases of liver cancer. You need to read The Zionist Connection by the late Dr. Alfred M. Lilienthal, a great American Jew that I was privileged to have as a close friend for decades. Sorry to be harsh but I’m really tired of dummies spouting off nonsense on the Near East.
Michael Hardesty as a foreign policy expert, I must say that your knowledge of the middle east is tainted by your bizarre anti-semitcal beliefs which taint your worldview. If you would drop this bizarre fetish you might begin to make a little bit of sense on foreign policy issues.
“Kyle-Nate” has been having worse than usual psychotic episodes today according to Dr. Leonardo Magran, Superintendent of the Cordoba State Hospital for The Criminally Insane in the Argentine. The good doctor advises
that we should all ignore him in the future. They are upping his electroshock treatments and increasing the daily enemas.
Our deepest pity goes out to this very disturbed old man.
not sure why you believe tea partiers are for limited government. They are only in favour of limited govt for others. They appear, by and large, extremely happy with and fiercely defensive of what govt is doing for them (SS, Medicare)