United Liberty

Way back in July of 2003 Ron Paul wrote an article entitled “We’ve Been Neo-Conned” in which he laid out facts showing that the “Neo-Con” philosophy had taken over the foreign policy of the USA (For a quick primer on the Neo-Conservative movement please click the link above). As I was reading this article one question kept repeating in my head:

“How did it come to this?”

The only place to start I believe is with the American person (notice I didn’t use the plural “people”). I will use myself as an example since I believe my story is common to many modern-day libertarians and members of the Liberty movement.

In short, I was raised a Reagan Republican, became a Neo-Con after 9/11, converted to a Goldwater conservative after the invasion of Iraq and became a full-fledged libertarian after finding the writings of Murray Rothbard(OK, maybe every libertarian didn’t become one because of Murray but I think many have a similar story).

But here is what I believe is key in my story and the reason why there aren’t more capital “L” Libertarians: I didn’t get their foreign policy. Like many I actually referred to myself as libertarian on social and monetary issues, but not when it came to our “enemies”. I hear the same from freedom loving people over and over again, especially in the wake of 9/11.

The reason the Neo-Cons were able to seize power is FEAR. I am not putting anybody down because of it. I can certainly relate, but we still have to figure out why the American person is allowing our government todrop bombs and declare war on anybody they want to while we cheer them on. When does fear translate to lunacy?

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi believes that President Barack Obama’s proposed spending freeze should apply to all discretionary spending, including defense:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Wednesday that defense spending shouldn’t be exempt from President Barack Obama’s proposal for a three-year freeze on federal spending.

 

In his State of the Union address Wednesday night, Obama is expected to address worries about the federal deficit by proposing a three-year freeze on all “non-security” spending. But just hours before the speech, Pelosi told POLITICO that any spending freeze should be “across the board.”

 

“Everybody has to make a sacrifice,” the San Francisco Democrat said in an interview conducted as part of POLITICO’s “Inside Obama’s Washington” video series. “If you’re asking everybody else in the country who has an interaction with the federal government — and that means our states and cities and all the rest, too — to cut back, then I think we have to subject every federal dollar to the very harshest scrutiny.”

The Department of Defense received a 12+% bump in spending ($663 billion) in President Obama’s first budget. Pelosi makes an argument that defense spending could be cut by 5%.

Here is a rare area of agreement with Pelosi. Defense spending is bloated and wasteful. Contracts are often awarded because they are popular in a district or state, such as the F-22 Raptor (just an example, there are more).

The new round of NATO expansion has placed Russia on the defensive again. The EU’s flirtations with Belarus are certainly annoying the hardliners in Moscow as well.  From Reuters:

“Attempts to expand the military infrastructure of Nato near the borders of our country are continuing,” Medvedev told an annual meeting with the Defence Ministry’s staff.

Russia has described plans by the previous US administration to grant Nato membership to ex-Soviet Ukraine and Georgia, and to deploy elements of a US missile shield in Eastern Europe, as a direct threat to its national security.

George W. Bush’s administration started off badly on Sino-American relations with the 2001 spy-plane crisis (often eclipsed in the collective mind by the major incident that occurred in Manhattan and Washington DC seven months later). I agree with Evan Osnos’ piece in the New Yorker, in which he argues that Obama should make a diplomatic visit to China as soon as possible:

There’s been alot of hubbub over the murder of a pinned, unarmed man by BART police in Oakland. Bloggers over at Reason magazine have been relentless, posting the citizen-shot video of the murder, which firmly illustrates the police were totally out of line.

The offending police officer has now resigned. Brian Doherty noted a San Francisco Chronicle article in which Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff said, ”These things normally take weeks rather than days, but I am trying to expedite this and get it resolved as quickly as we can.” Doherty correctly asks whether it would really “take weeks” if this were an average citizen pinning an unarmed man down and shooting him in the back and not a police officer. Working for the government gets you special privileges, like the ability to destroy lives with no repercussions.

Earlier this month, I commented on the indictment of several Blackwater Worldwide security guards for their role in the killing of 17 Iraqis. There’s more news to this story, as apparently during the heat of the Democratic primaries Hillary Clinton cosponsored with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) the Stop Outsourcing Security Act.

The Act specifically called for the Secretary of State, an office she will be occupying next year, to act in making sure that American defense is provided for by the military:

Max Boot, a contributing editor of the fervently neoconservative publication The Weekly Standard and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations has stated what progressives and libertarians dread most, that Obama is warming up nicely to neoconservatives in Washington. Some might contend that his appointments thus far have gained more approval from the statist right than from his own party. Maxx Boot in his own words regarding the matter-

Dan Carlin, the host of the poular podcasts Common Sense and Hardcore History, gave me his thoughts on various subjects, varying from the attacks in India to Obama’s cabinet appointments.

What do you make of rumors that President-elect Obama will be keeping Robert Gates as Defense Secretary?

Well, as far as I can tell I am the only person in the world who doesn’t like the pick (and it sure looks like, at least for the early part of the Administration that Gates IS the likely pick).