John Schwenkler and Clark Stooksbury point to this Bill Kauffman column on the importance of identification with and loyalty to place, and he makes many of the points that need to be made, especially with respect to the policy implications of a rootless and boundless internationalism.  The connection between a lack of local horizons that define a person and the lack of any sense of limits on what constitutes national interest is an important one.  Unable to mind their own business, because they do not really have their own business, rootless people seem to find meaning in supporting projects everywhere and anywhere.  As I and Brendan O’Neill have argued before, Obama’s interventionist vision is on an unprecedented scale, and Mr. Kauffman agrees:

Obama’s limitless internationalism is encapsulated in his statement that “When poor villagers in Indonesia have no choice but to send chickens to market infected with avian flu, it cannot be seen as a distant concern.” This is, quite possibly, the most expansive definition ever essayed of the American national interest. It is a license for endless interventions in the affairs of other nations. It is a recipe for blundering into numberless wars-which will be fought, disproportionately, by those God & Guns small-town Americans evidently despised or pitied by Mr. Obama.

Kauffman advances the critique, not just of Obama, but of all three interventionist candidates by linking this endless international ambition to a lack of rootedness at home.  All the more reason why I think it is imperative to cultivate a culture that stresses loyalty to place, because without that it is extremely difficult to develop a political movement dedicated to resisting intervention.