WHAT HAPPENS IF YOU'RE NOT AN "ISOLATIONIST" | 2003-02-22
Earlier Americans took what we call "isolationism" for granted. As Secretary of State John Quincy Adams put it, "We are the friend of liberty everywhere, but the guardians only of our own."
The same liberals who require conservatives to gibber and cry if they are called "isolationists" are now complaining that America has abandoned "isolationism."
Liberals are moaning that the Bush Administration is going to attack a country that has not attacked us. This complaint would be okay if I made it, but it is truly ridiculous coming from liberals.
If you are not an "isolationist" it means that you believe that America's vital interests are all over the world.
As President Bush would be the first to point out, only an "isolationist" would take America's borders seriously.
Earlier Americans objected to using force outside our own borders unless we were attacked. But if you condemn "isolationism" you have condemned the assumption that our borders are critical to our vital interests.
Where a country has "vital interests," that country has the right to use force. If you are not an "isolationist", you are saying that our vital interests are everywhere.
So if you are not an "isolationist" you are saying that America now has the right to use force all around our "interdependent" world.
Liberals say so.
Conservatives say so.
So we can attack anywhere we damned well please.
If you condemn "racism," you are anti-white. Anti-racist is a code-word for anti-white. By the same token, if you condemn "isolationism," you are saying that America has as much right to use its forces
outside our borders as inside them.
No conservative will ever mention this, so WhitakerOnline will.