THE ROBERT W. WHITAKER ARCHIVE

The State Department is notoriously leftist and so is the foreign policy establishment in general. And the basic tenet of American liberalism is American self-hatred. Many conservatives have pointed out the odd fact that American foreign policy is considered legitimate only if it does not serve American interests, but that is the inevitable result of its being based on self-hate.

So "blame America first" is one foundation of American policy planning. "Blame whites" is even more fundamental to the foreign policy of all white majority countries. A statement of morality in our age is incomplete if it doesn't include a condemnation of Americans and whites.

This leads to a truly bizarre idea of what "legitimate concerns" are for America abroad.

In the sane world, you have no right to interfere with what another country is doing unless it affects your own interests.

When the USSR insisted that Communism should be imposed on everybody, for their own good, they were generally considered to be wrong, even by other leftist countries. In fact, for one country to impose what it thinks is best on another has a name. It is called colonialism.

But if your foreign policy and your armed forces are not aimed at forcing them to do what you think is best for them, what must your foreign policy be based on? In other words, what is there in a foreign land that is really my business?

Liberals say my only legitimate business in other countries is doing what they consider best for those countries. The difference between that and outright imperialism is semantics, and tortured semantics at that.

The first thing liberals and respectable conservatives agree on is that our Middle Eastern policy should NEVER concentrate on the oil supply. In fact, the one charge liberals make about Middle East activities by the United States is that "It's all about oil."

As soon as liberals say "It's all about oil" conservatives go into their standard grovel.

But back in the world of sanity, oil is about the only reason we have any right to interfere in Middle Eastern affairs. Their oil is, in every sense of the word, our business. Nothing from that part of the world has the direct effect on us that the supply and price of oil does.

So everybody agrees that our policy there must be imposing what we think is best, not assuring our supply of oil. Yet if I put it in those words, liberals would deny it fiercely. They say that what they want to enforce is not imperialism. It is Goodness.

No imperialists, Communist or colonial, ever said anything else. All colonials and all totalitarians just want what is best for you.

But if you don't want to decide what is best for other countries and enforce it, there is only one other possible guide to go by. This is the same guide free societies use in everyday life. In a free society, as in a free world, your right to interfere is limited to your interests.

I normally have no right to force you to do anything unless what you are doing might harm me. That's the first rule of freedom. But if I hate myself, I cannot apply this rule. That is why people who hate themselves are so often dangerous. Self-hatred is a mental illness which makes it impossible for people to deal with each other rationally.

The pathology of self-hatred is no healthier in international affairs.