Iran Deal Pullout or Not, American Interests Come Before Internationalism

In Trump and Iran: Has he traded peace for bloodshed?, New Jersey Star-Ledger editorialist Tom Moran argues against President Trump’s pullout of Barack Obama’s Iran deal:

It's not clear what will happen next, except that the United States will be more isolated than ever on the world stage. It follows Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, his abandonment of the Pacific Trade Partnership, and the new steel tariffs imposed on some of our close allies.

My emphasis. Moran repeated the isolation charge in the last paragraph:

We have a dangerously ignorant and impulsive president who is listening to poisonous advice from extremists. We are increasingly isolated, in a day when nearly every challenge, from climate to terrorism, requires international cooperation.

I left these comments:

There may be valid reasons to criticize Trump’s move. Treaties are complex. The U.S. probably should not have signed the agreement in the first place. However, once in it, one must be concerned with America’s future credibility and reliability that it will honor previous commitments across different Administrations when considering whether to pull out.

That said, whatever the arguments for or against pulling out of prior American commitments like the Iran deal--I believe Trump’s pullout from Paris was right, but from the Pacific Partnership was wrong--fear of being “isolated” should not be one of the concerns. The American government’s job is to protect Americans’ rights and security, regardless of how unpopular the policies may be in the world. Cooperation is valuable: Americans have a lot to gain from freedom of trade and migration or from multi-nation security agreements. But this cooperation is only valuable up to a point. It is not an intrinsic good. Agreements are not good simply because they are agreements. Don’t confuse mutually beneficial cooperation with national self-sacrifice. Sometimes the right thing to do is to go it alone. American interests should never be sacrificed on the altar of Internationalism.

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It should also be remembered that Obama refused to submit the treaty to Congress for formal ratification. This may be strictly legal, constitutionally (although I have my doubts). But when Obama made an end run around Congress, he made it as easy for future Administrations to arbitrarily alter or scuttle the deal as he had committing the U.S. to the deal. The same thing happened with Obama’s Paris Climate deal--no Congressional ratification, Trump pulls out without Congressional approval. When you rob the American people of a full and open debate through the ratification process--in effect, ruling more like a King than serving as president--you get what you asked for.
Related Reading:

"Tear Down This Wall": Reagan’s “Isolated” but Successful Drive to “Win” the Cold War

Trump’s Leadership on Paris Withdrawal versus Obama’s Delusions of Unearned Greatness

Buchanan’s Anti-Free Trade Tirade Under Cover of TPP ‘Fast Track’ Debate

NAFTA, Whatever its Flaws, Was a Good Thing

The idea of ‘Protected Classes’ Does not Advance Individual Liberty

Just before leaving office, a law signed by President Obama explicitly extended freedom of religion to non-religious people. Obama Signs New Religious Freedom Act Protecting Atheists, reports Tyler O’Neil for PJ Media. The subheading of O’Neil’s article states, "Non-theists are now recognized as a protected class."

The Act supplements the 1998 Frank R. Wolf International Religious Freedom Act (IRFA). Tyler reports:

The new version restates America's commitment to freedom of conscience abroad, and strengthens existing law in a few direct ways. It directs the president to sanction individuals who carry out or order religious restrictions, it instructs the U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom to report to the secretary of State, and it requires foreign service officers to be trained in the "strategic value of international religious freedom.

But perhaps the most eye-catching part of the updated legislation is the explicit guarantees of religious freedom granted to non-believers.

The "freedom of thought, conscience, and religion is understood to protect theistic and non-theistic beliefs, and the right not to profess or practice any religion," the updated act now states.

It’s refreshing to see America firmly standing up for its principles. Encouragingly, the Act received broad approval. “Both Christians and atheists praised this change,” O’Neil reports. And its certainly appropriate for America to non-sacrificially promote and stand up for these principles as a matter of international policy. But I have a few qualms. As O’Neil reports:

Roy Speckhardt, executive director of the non-religious American Humanist Association (AHA), praised this "historic legislation," and said his organization "looks forward to working with the US Department of State to ensure religious liberty for non-theists and religious minorities abroad."

"That non-theists are now recognized as a protected class is a significant step toward full acceptance and inclusion for non-religious individuals, who are still far too often stigmatized and persecuted around the world," Speckhardt added.

The emphasis is mine. In a country founded on the principle of unalienable individual rights protected equally and at all times under the law—political equality—there is something inherently wrong with the idea of a “protected class.” It implies that some people are “more equal than others.” It is thoroughly collectivistic. Given that the heart and soul of Americanism is individualism, the protection of classes (groups) rather than individuals is an un-American idea.

Despite the wording of the First Amendment, which specifically singles out religion for protection, the spirit of the First Amendment is to protect freedom of conscience. The Founders used conscience and religion interchangeably. Based on the original social compact as stated in the Declaration of Independence, American constitution and law presupposes the primacy of personal liberty based on unalienable individual rights as the starting point of law and politics. It is not necessary to single out specific “classes.” It is only necessary to protect individuals—all individuals, regardless of group characteristics—equally and at all times.

I also think O’Neil’s phrase about the new law “explicitly extending religious freedom protections to atheists and other non-believers” needs elaboration. Being an atheist is not just about being against religion or a non-believer in religion. Atheism is not a belief system. It’s not a philosophy. Religious freedom—that is, freedom of conscience—is about living by your own ideas, morals, and philosophy, not merely rejecting the idea of a God. I have encountered religionists who assume that not having a religion means not believing in any guiding principles. But being an atheist does not automatically make one a non-believer. For example, I am an Objectivist, the philosophy of reason and individualism developed by philosopher Ayn Rand. It’s a guide to life based on well-developed and reality-based principles. It differs from religion in several key aspects. Take morality. Whereas religion holds that morality is derived from God as a kind of unchallengeable dogma as espoused in sacred texts by people who claim to speak for God, Objectivism holds that morality is science, with proper moral principles derived from a study of the facts of human nature and man’s relation to broader nature. .Religious freedom is not just the freedom to reject religion, important as that is; it’s about freedom of conscience. I am an atheist. But I am primarily a believer in Objectivism.

The bill Obama signed makes a clear statement that religious freedom is not just about freedom of religion. It’s about protecting people from religion. That’s a good thing. Whether the term “protected class” appears in the text of the Act or is Speckhardt’s interpretation, we’ve got to get away from the growing practice of ascribing rights protections to groups—a practice encouraged by the proliferation of anti-discrimination laws targeted at the private sector. Only individuals, not groups, have rights.  

Related Reading:

Collectivized 'Rights' versus Individual Rights—Ayn Rand

Freedom Of Religion Demands Freedom From Religion

Private Sector Anti-Discrimination Laws are Rights-Violating and Destructive

Introduction to Objectivism

Philosophy: Who Needs It—Ayn Rand

The Objectivist Ethics—Ayn Rand

Castro’s Mortal Sins . . . PERIOD

After duly acknowledging the horror of the deceased Cuban Communist dictator—although it shockingly saw fit to praise Castro for bringing “medical care and education to the country's poor”—the New Jersey Star-Ledger saw fit to spend most of its editorial criticizing America’s foreign policy as it relates to Cuba since 1959. The Star-Ledger opens Castro's mortal sins, and our own imperial arrogance with;

Fidel Castro had a knack for driving Americans nuts.

No doubt, he was a tyrant and a liar, a man who tortured people for the crime of speaking their minds. The fact that he brought medical care and education to the country's poor does nothing to excuse that horror, nor does the fact that the dictator he toppled was a tyrant as well.

Castro was the sort of man who put poets in prison, and arrested people who dared to open a business. The moral depravity is matched by the economic stupidity.

What else needs to be said?

Just this: That the United States squandered its moral standing in all things related to Castro by responding to him with the arrogance of a colonial power.

Get that? America’s decades-long, bipartisan response to the Communist takeover of Cuba equates to “the arrogance of a colonial power.”

Now, United states government foreign policy is certainly fair game for debate and criticism. Some of the Star-Ledger’s criticisms are valid.

But for me, mixing a condemnation of Castro with a critique of American policies is morally nauseating. It amounts to trivializing the monstrous injustice imposed by Castro on the Cuban people, and even people beyond Cuba’s borders. Not content to enslave and impoverish only Cubans, Castro sought to enslave other nations through aid to communist-led “Wars of National Liberation.” And don’t forget the U.S.-threatening deal he made with the Soviet Union to bring nuclear missiles into Cuba, which brought us to the brink of nuclear war in 1962.

I left these comments, edited for clarity:

Castro’s treatment of dissidents is only part of the story. His “economic stupidity” is more than that. The economic devastation was by design and backed by perverted egalitarian moral fervor.

To the extent Castro “brought medical care and education to the country's poor,” he did it by confiscating almost all of the wealth that Cubans earned, and then spreading it around to a population kept universally poor. Cuba’s medical care came in part at the expense of medical care for the Cuban people. According to NPR, the Cuban government set up for-profit ventures that sent Cuban doctors on “international missions” to secure hard currency for Cuban rulers. Cuba’s “education” was really indoctrination that banned “subversive” books and ideas and mandated classroom chants of “We will be like Che,” an ode to the terrorist communist guerrilla Che Guevara.

I’ll never forgive President Obama for criticizing America for its economic inequality in the context of visiting Cuba and opening diplomatic relations there. He had it exactly backwards. Economic inequality is a natural result of a free country where each person has the individual liberty to rise as far as his talent, ambition, moral character, values, choices, tolerances, and ability to make the most of his personal circumstances will carry him. Economic inequality goes hand-in-hand with political equality, and that virtuous combination—economic and political freedom—is to America’s moral credit. In America, ordinary people can get rich, and they do so through businesses that produce mass-market goods and services and create jobs in the context of free trade, lifting everyone along with their growing fortunes. In Cuba, like all tyrannies throughout history, the rulers and their cronies get rich by looting the people and keeping them down.

And yet Obama goes to Cuba—the egalitarian socialist hellhole that essentially banned personal flourishing, the only way to establish economic equality—and criticizes the United States for inequality—the same capitalistic United States to which ordinary Cubans by the tens of thousands, not counting the thousands who died or were imprisoned trying, fled looking for the economic opportunity that Castro forbade. Shameful.

Whatever criticism America deserves for its policies toward Cuba pales in comparison to the horror that Castro brought to Cuba. His is a textbook example of socialism—the subordination of the individual to the collective “good,” as determined by an omnipotent state. The suffering of the Cuban people lies squarely at Castro’s blood-soaked feet, not America’s embargo. This editorial should have been, “Castro’s Mortal Sins . . . PERIOD.”

Related Reading:

After meeting Castro, I have no regrets choking Cuba—Robert Torricelli, former U.S. Senator

Contra Obama’s Pandering to Cuba’s Dictator, Economic Inequality is America’s Strength and Equality is Cuba’s Tragedy

Victims of Communism in Cuba: 73,000—Michael W. Chapman for CNS News

Mesmerized by Elections, the NJ Star-Ledger Forgot that Tyranny is Tyranny

Proponents of democracy are obligated to endorse any governmental action, as long as it is an elected government. This is the case regarding Egypt. As the New Jersey Star-Ledger editorialized in In Egypt, are we fighting terror, or fueling it?:

What we feared all along in Egypt is coming true: Islamists who used peaceful, democratic means to get their leader elected, only to see him forcibly deposed [by the Egyptian military], are increasingly picking up guns instead.

But what did the “peaceful, democratic” Islamists intend to do? Use their governmental powers to impose Sharia totalitarianism at the point of a legalized gun.

There is no question that the military leadership is not a rights-respecting regime. Neither would any Islamist regime be. Yet the Star-Ledger only condemns the Egyptian crackdown on the Muslim Brotherhood, which backs Sharia government. The Star-Ledger relies on a hollow distinction between the two in criticizing the Obama Administration:

The U.S. government decided in recent months to to end a suspension of hundreds of millions of the annual $1.3 billion in American military aid to Egypt, which we had cut off in the wake of the 2013 military coup. That now makes us complicit in the regime's repression. . .

Apparently, it’s OK for the U.S. to be complicit in Islamic repression, as long as  the Islamist repressors are elected. Would the Star-Ledger support a Christian theocracy in America if this country’s Christian majority were not constitutionally forbidden to vote to establish one?

I left these comments:

Keep in mind that the elected Islamist government immediately began establishing a theocratic dictatorship, making every non-Muslim a second class citizen, at best. That’s why the military stepped in.

There is no difference between a “peaceful, democratic” Islamist regime and a military dictatorship. Tyranny is tyranny, whether elected or not. Democracy unconstrained by constitutional protections for individual rights and equality under the law is no better in principle than any other kind of dictatorship. Our Founding Fathers went out of their way to prevent precisely what the elected Islamists attempted to do in Egypt; the establishment of religious tyranny by governmental law.

This is not to say that we should be pouring American tax dollars into Egypt. We shouldn’t, no matter who is in charge.

But neither should we be excusing any government just because it was elected. Our obsession with the right to vote to the exclusion of the more fundamental rights of life, liberty, property, and equality under the law has backfired big time in the Middle East.

As Ralph Peters observed about America’s approach to the Middle East and elsewhere, “Mesmerized by elections, we forgot freedom.” Before any of us can credibly criticize the Egyptian government, we must come to the realization that democracy doesn’t equal freedom or justice. But many Americans have themselves forgotten or evaded that truth.

Related Reading:

Why God Must be Removed from Government Buildings

Democracy is Democracy

Iraqi Democracy vs. Freedom

Democracy in Action in Egypt

Rights and Democracy

Hillary’s Cave-in to the Left on Free Trade

The New Jersey Star-Ledger last fall chastised Hillary Clinton for her failure to take a firm position on global trade, in particular her stance on President Obama’s Pacific trade pact, which suffered a defeat at the hands of the Senate on so-called fast track authority, mainly due to Democrat opposition. (Clinton has since come out against the pact.)

To its credit, the Star-Ledger is pro-free trade. But Clinton, whose husband pushed through the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in the 1990s, may be hesitant to take a stand in the face of primary opposition from the protectionist Bernie Sanders. The Star-Ledger asks, “Hillary Clinton, where are you hiding?” In Hillary's dodge on trade dilemma, the Star-Ledger explains the mutual benefits of free trade to trading countries, but also stated that “the concerns raised by reluctant Democrats are valid.” It also noted what it called “a dark side to globalization, too. American manufacturers have moved millions of jobs abroad since trade began to boom in the 1970s.”

The Star-Ledger also supports fast-track authority, which has been granted numerous times in the past to presidents of both parties, for Obama. Fast track authority “bars Congressional amendments to negotiated deals, [and] force[s] an up or down vote. That's a practical necessity. If Congress fiddles with the terms, other countries would as well, and negotiations would never end.”

I left these comments:

I agree that reducing political impediments to international trade is a major economic imperative. I would also argue that it’s a moral imperative. Americans have as much right to trade with people across national boundaries as New Jerseyans have to trade with Minnesotans, or Newarkers have to trade with Camdenites. Trade is a win-win, wherever it takes place.

But I take issue that the movement of manufacturing jobs abroad “is a dark side to globalization.” This narrow view ignores context. As Bastiat observed, a good economist takes into account not only what is immediately visible, but also secondary effects that are not seen but are just as real.

For example, the reduced cost of imports lowers the cost of living, thus raising the standard of living of Americans, particularly lower income Americans. The extra money Americans have to spend due to savings from the lower prices of the imports then fuels growth in other domestic industries, offsetting job losses with more hefty job gains elsewhere. The added spending power of Americans helped fuel the technology revolution. Furthermore, it’s not a one-way street. The  “offshoring” trend of U.S. jobs is beginning to reverse, thanks to the American-led Second Industrial Revolution and the trade-induced growth of prosperity abroad. Last year [2014], more jobs were brought into the U.S. than left. Obama’s Pacific free trade pact will accelerate that trend. Market forces are dynamic. The overall impact of free global trade is people around the world getting better together.

On the big picture, though, I agree with the editors here. Hillary is the best 2016 candidate the Democrats have [or, more accurately, the least bad]. It’s a shame she’s kowtowing to protectionist demagogues like Elizabeth Warren and Pat Buchanan. Protectionism violates Americans’ individual rights to spend and invest their money as they see fit, and makes us generally poorer. Hillary needs to step up and tell us where she stands on the issue of global trade.

Free trade is often an easy scapegoat for politicians who ignore the responsibility of bad domestic political policies for America’s economic problems. E.G.:

• The housing boom, bust, and related financial crisis and Great Recession and the consequent huge misallocation of human and capital resources into housing-related industries at the expense of other sectors—the primary cause of which was the Fed’s easy money policies and the Clinton/Bush “affordable housing” crusade.
• The huge expansion of the regulatory welfare state in the past 15 years.
• The highest-in-the-world corporate income tax, coupled with the fact that the U.S. is the only major industrial country to tax overseas earnings of domestic corporations. This is keeping U.S. capital locked up abroad, rather than reinvested in America.

All of this also coincides with reduced wage growth. Blaming global trade is short-sighted and narrow-minded.

Related reading:

NAFTA, Whatever its Flaws, Was a Good Thing

‘Buy American’ is UN-American—Harry Binswanger

New Jersey's Stupid, Immoral 'Buy America' Bill

Criminal Terror vs. Islamic Terrorism

Donald Trump said he remembered “thousands and thousands” of Muslims celebrating the 9/11 attacks in Jersey City, New Jersey, just across the Hudson River from the World Trade Center.

A subsequent investigation by NJ Advance Media did turn up credible evidence to support Trump’s claim, although not on the scale he believed. As Mark Mueller reports for NJ.com:

[A] police officer who worked on 9/11 and residents on the outskirts of Journal Square say they witnessed small pockets of people celebrating before the groups dispersed or were broken up by authorities.

The NJ Star-Ledger editorial board commented on these findings in an editorial titled Trump's story on 9/11 Jersey City celebrations is finally put to rest. The editors condemned Trump’s comments as “offensive [for] suggesting sympathy for terrorism is broadly shared among Muslims in America when in fact it is a fringe sentiment. It is the moral equivalent of smearing all white Americans for the actions of violent white supremacists.”

Maybe. But the Star-Ledger seems to minimize the threat from Islamic Jihad. Toward the end of the article, the Star-Ledger writes, “In fact, a cold body count shows that Muslims extremists have killed 26 Americans since September 11, while non-Muslim extremists have killed 48.”

I left this comment, edited for clarity:

In fact, there is a grave danger in this equivocation.

True, people like Elliot Rodger (2014 Isla Vista killings) and Dylan Roof and people like the Tsarnaev brothers and Tashfeen Malik and Syed Farook were all terrorists. That much they have in common. But this similarity is superficial and ends there.

Rodger, who was waging a “War on Women,” and Roof, a racist, were criminals motivated by personal collectivistic hatred. The Tsarnaev brothers and Malik and Farook were soldiers in a militant religious army. Rodger and Roof were crazed loners whose terrorist acts began and ended with them. The Tsarnaev brothers and Malik and Farook were part of an imperialist movement motivated by radical Islam aggressively fighting a war for totalitarian world subjugation under Sharia law. Their terrorism neither began nor ended with them. (By “radical,” I mean fundamental, as in a literal, ultra-conservative interpretation of the Quran that embraces submission and jihad.)

The Rodgers and the Roofs are dangerous thugs but don’t pose a threat to American or world civil society. Imperialist Islam is a major, broad-based threat to Western civilization. Even if it may represent only a “fringe sentiment” among American Muslims, radical Islamist jihadism has strong support among a substantial minority of the world’s Muslims. It is a dangerous force that cannot be wished away by refusing to name it or by sanitizing it as common criminality or isolated domestic terror.

The distinction between criminal terror and Islamic terrorism is the reason we have a police force to deal with crime and a military to deal with foreign enemies. This distinction cannot be whitewashed by lumping them together under the undefined term “extremist.” People who don't explicitly recognize and name the enemy can never acknowledge the long-term threat posed by the Radical Islamist movement. In turn, they needlessly put our national security at risk. The Islamic imperialist movement, left unrecognized and unchecked, could one day pose a threat greater than the Axis Powers or Soviet communism. That can never be said of “non-Muslim extremists” like the Charleston Church killer and his ilk.

Related Reading:

Boston Bombers; Part of a Vast Enemy Movement

ISIS 'Act of War' Against France Should Trigger NATO War Declaration

Winning the Unwinnable War, Elan Journo

Craig Biddle on Today's 9/11 Anniversary

In commemoration of the Twelfth Anniversary of the 9/11 Islamist Attacks, I direct your attention to Craig Biddle's post at The Objective Standard blog:

On the Anniversary of 9/11, Relativism and Religion Still Paralyze American Self-Defense

Related Reading:

9/11: A Decade Later, the Same Solution

Bush's Collapsing "War on Terror"

What is Objectivism—by Craig Biddle

We Cannot Be the World's Sugar Daddy and Policeman

After I posted a link to Elan Journo's book Winning the Unwinnable War just under my comments to Let's be certain about Syria, a correspondent took issue with the book and my comments, saying that I, the book, and Ayn Rand's theory of rational self-interest calls for "isolationism" in foreign policy. The correspondent wrote, in part:

Closing your eyes and yelling 'I can't hear you' isn't a valid option. Because either we get proactive by bringing the fight to our opponents, or you willingly and totally accept responsibility for the next 9/11.

Is the correspondent, who apparently supports Obama's impending strike on Syria as well as, more broadly, the neo-conservatives' "realist" foreign policy, advocating contextless involvement in every instance of atrocity anywhere in the world? Judging by everything he has to say here and here,  the answer is yes.  

I left this reply:

Ayn Rand's concept of rational self-interest is based on an objective scientific study of reality, derived from perceptual, perceivable facts of human nature. In practice—for individuals and by extension for nations—it means clearly and objectively identifying what and why something is in our long-term self-interest based on objective facts integrated by principles. As it relates to foreign policy, rational self-interest most definitely does not mean "isolationism"—turning a blind eye toward the rest of the world. 

The book's criticism of the neo-cons' "realism" is that it is actually not realistic, because it ignores the fundamental role of ideas in motivating human actions. The book is not a series of floating abstractions. Rather, it objectively makes the case for a principled, moral foreign policy, as against the "realists'" pragmatic, range-of-the-moment thinking that leads to endless, victory-less wars. The history of the last dozen years supports the book's thesis and at least calls into question the neo-cons' policies (among other war theories).

It is true that we "live in a world where chemical weapons can be delivered in an almost infinite number of ways." That's why we need to be vigilant about leaving no doubt in our enemy's minds that any threat to our national self-interest will result in immediate and total destruction. This requires world engagement, and as much intelligence gathering as we can muster, but also a clarity about our intentions.

To say "virtually everything is in our rational self-interest" is to obliterate any basis for an objective, rational foreign policy. Being the world's sugar daddy and policeman will not deter our enemies. Neither will half-hearted half-measures. That will encourage them. Only a foreign policy of uncompromising rational self-interest—one that clearly articulates our goals and the certainty of our government protecting Americans' lives, liberties, and property—will protect America from aggressive enemies, wherever they may reside in the world.

The primary contemporary threat to America and the non-Muslim world is imperialistic Islamic totalitarianism. If we engage in endless contextless involvements in every instance of atrocity anywhere in the world, where will that leave our ability to respond to actual threats to America?

Related Reading:

What is the Moral Purpose of America's Military?

Neoconservatism: An Obituary for an Idea—by C. Bradley Thompson with Yaron Brook

Obama's Hideous Moral Equivalence Toward Israel

We Should Stay the Hell Out of Syria

President Obama is considering another unwise foreign military incursion, this time in Syria. The New Jersey Star-Ledger editorialized that we should be certain about Syria. They write:

We are faced with mounting evidence that the Syrian regime is gassing its own people. And if that is the case, we must send a strong signal to President Bashar Assad that his attacks on civilians are not without limits.
But while it’s increasingly clear that we need to strike, we don’t have to do so right away, as U.S. Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.) and others are urging. Given our memories of Iraq, where we launched a war based on false claims of weapons of mass destruction, we should be careful about justifying our involvement now. And why the sudden rush?

Before attacking Syria, the editors say, we must be sure that we can prove that Assad is using chemical weapons. And if it comes to military action, the editors say, "We must carefully weigh our tactics here: Many of these sites are in civilian areas, and we must do everything we can to minimize those casualties."

I left these comments:

I commend the editors for urging caution, as far as it goes. Unfortunately, they completely ignore the bigger question.

Why the hell would we get involved in the Syrian civil war at all? There is no threat to America, and no compelling national interest. 

Since 9/11, we have placed bringing "democracy" to a region that hates what America stands for—individual rights and the rule of objective law—above American self-interest. We got Islamist enemies gaining influence and getting elected all over the Middle East, and the threat of Islamic totalitarianism is greater than ever. (Remember, the Islamists' openly stated goal is world domination under Islamic theocracy.)

Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya; enough with the altruistic welfare wars. We need a president who will proudly announce to the world that America will use its military only for national defense and only against those who threaten or attack us; i.e., only when American's lives, liberties, and properties are threatened or attacked—and then only with swift, overwhelming force. And if military action is required, rather than "do everything we can to minimize those [civilian] casualties," we should do everything we can to win with minimal cost to American military lives and American wealth. The safety of civilians is the moral responsibility of the aggressor nation that threatens or attacks us.  

Related Reading:

Ralph Peters: "Mesmerized by Elections, We Forgot Freedom"

Assad's "Moral Obscenity" Does Not Justify Obscenity of Sacrificial Military Intervention—by Ari Armstrong 

Winning the Unwinnable War: America's Self-Crippled Response to Islamic Totalitarianism—Edited by Elan Journo

Bush's Collapsing "War on Terror"

Iraqi Democracy vs. Freedom

Obama's Shameful Pandering

Here is the opening sentence in my latest post at The Objective Standard blog:

The Obama Administration is running ads throughout Pakistan condemning and apologizing for the video that allegedly sparked the anti-America riots across the Middle East, including the sacking of the U.S. consulate in Libya and the murders of the American ambassador and three other U.S. Citizens.

Read the rest of Obama's Apology vs. Responsibility Regarding the Libyan Murders.

End the Immoral "President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief"

A decade ago, the Bush Administration initiated its “President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief”; a massive foreign “aid” program funded courtesy of the American taxpayer. Recent studies indicate that “AIDS deaths are down 20 percent throughout sub-Saharan Africa, where the epidemic hit hardest,” according to the New Jersey Star-Ledger. The editors of this left-leaning newspaper cited those statistics and the occasion of this year’s recently concluded “International AIDS Conference” to praise President George W. Bush’s “stellar legacy on AIDS”:

And we have George W. Bush, in part, to thank. In 2003, when he occupied the White House, Bush launched the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief to address the global HIV/AIDS pandemic in partnership with 80 other countries. The foreign aid supported the free distribution of antiretroviral drugs for sick adults and medications that prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to infant. From 2003 to 2010, the United States committed about $46 billion, which also helps combat malaria and tuberculosis.

Bush put together this initiative with bipartisan support. Those were the days when the opposition party that was out of power — then the Democrats — put the greater good ahead of partisan politics. We hope that tradition is once more revived as Obama seeks continued funding for this worthy program.

But the editors engage in moral and factual evasion. The money Bush spent was not his. It was taken by force from the American citizens who earned it. By the editors’ logic, criminal cartels that use their loot to build playgrounds for the children of their communities should be lauded as moral heroes, their crimes forgiven, and their victims forgotten—except that in Bush’s case the crime and the victims are not even acknowledged.

True humanitarianism is not built on legalized theft. An good moral model for would-be do-gooders is the national response to the Great Mississippi River Flood of 1927. That massive relief effort—recounted by Margaret Hoover in her book American Individualism—was funded entirely by private donations, not federal tax dollars.

It is morally perverse, grossly unjust, and horribly dishonest to credit welfare state politicians like Bush for leading “worthy causes” paid for out of the financial hides of people whose rights to property and personal judgement have been trampled. There is no “greater good” than the sanctity of the individual and his inalienable rights—rights protected equally for all people at all times. Those who approve of the violation of individual rights—in this case, the forced confiscation of $46 billion worth of Americans’ earnings—forfeit all claims to the moral high ground, no matter the alleged results.

Rather than continuing the program, Congress should start thinking about the taxpayers they’re supposed to represent: End Bush’s immoral program, and leave Americans free to decide for themselves what, if anything, they want to give to this cause.

Related Reading;

The G-8 vs. the Immoral Bandwagon for African Aid