A friend told me I have to vote for Gary Johnson the Libertarian Candidate if I don't vote for Trump. So, like a good political junkie I go to the Libertarian Party and look at their platform. A lot of it I agree with, but I always stumble when I get to that last plank!
The Libertarian love of isolationism.
Now, my friend tells me that the world hates us and we shouldn't try to be the world's police, because it offends the world and that's why they hate us so much. I always stumble over this one, especially when this same dude tells me immigration is our biggest problem. We need to keep out all those nasty immigrants.
So tell me this, then. If the world hates us so much why are its best and brightest trying so flippin' hard to get here to America. A whole bunch of folks from "the rest of the world" that finds us so offensive, risk life and limb by sneaking over the border. They uproot themselves from their homes and lives and spend years trying to get here? Why would anyone who hates a country so much want to come here so badly.
They don't seem like they hate us all that much.
As to our offending the rest of the world, that doesn't really stand up to scrutiny. I don't deny that we offend some people out there in "the rest of the world". Many of them are offended by our wealth, our freedom, our movies, music and literature. Many of them are offended because we come to their countries to trade and make money and actually take some of the money we make home for ourselves. I get it that we offend some people in "the rest of the world".
So what?
I'm offended by Muslims lining up Christians and beheading them. That really offends me. I'm offended by Russian troops invading a sovereign nation and taking their territory. I'm offended by Hutus murdering Tutsis. I'm offended by petty African warlords stealing children and forcing them to be soldiers. I'm offended by Islamic terrorists blowing up things and killing innocent people. I was really offended when they destroyed the World Trade Center and tried to destroy the Pentagon and killed hundreds of innocent people in airplanes and thousands on the ground. I'm offended by the international sex slavery trade going on in North Africa. I'm offended by the Chinese annexing an ocean and threatening to stop ships that sail on it in violation of international law. I'm offended by the murder of Christian tribesmen and women in Malaysia by the government. I'm offended by someone who believes we can build a damned wall around our country and let the evil people of the world just have their way out there when I know all we're doing is giving them time to reload and rearm before they come pouring over the borders from their cesspool countries to muck up ours.
Am I, as a liberty-loving American not entitled to be offended by the awful things done by "the rest of the world?" Why do Libertarians think everyone else should be allowed to be offended by us but that we shouldn't be offended by what happens to ANYONE ELSE except ourselves. I mean, the other libs (liberals as opposed to libertarians) think we shouldn't be allowed to be offended at all. Yeah, sometimes we play cops around the world. That's not a bad thing. Bill Clinton may have been covering his behind for diddling the White House Interns, but intervening to stop the genocide in Yugoslavia was a righteous mission. Too bad he wasn't serious about that mission when he sent an under-armed, under-manned army into Mogadishu. He could have done a lot of good for the people there who were starving and being murdered. Should we be the world's cops? You bet. Who else is going to do it? The Russians? We already know what kind of strings are attached to Russian "help". Vladamir Putin is a former KGB officer for crying out loud.
The only way to slow terrorism and global bullying down is to fight it at the source. George Bush was absolutely right about that. If someone is draining sewerage onto your property, the thing to do is not to sandbag around your house and hope to stay ahead of it. The thing to do, no matter how many sandbags you may have, is to find the pipe and shut off the valve. Eventually, if you don't, you're going to run out of sandbags.
© 2016 by Tom King
1 comment:
I remember Gary Johnson as governor of New Mexico, and the record is a little muddled.
For the first time in my life, I am seriously thinking of not voting, simply because I don't want any of these people thinking they have a mandate.
This feeling will pass. The sense of worried disappointment, I'm afraid, is fairly permanent.
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