Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Pris Stands Corrected

Although I generally support Ron Paul, heretofore I've referred to his foreign policy as "isolationist." The crowd at Freedom Connector insist that this is inaccurate. As a user known as Ratio411 puts it, "North Korea is isolationist. Switzerland is non-interventionist." Or, as this pro-Paul site puts it...

http://www.prisonplanet.com/opposing-imperialism-is-not-isolationism.html

Fair enough. "Isms" breed schisms, and the recent histories of North Korea and Switzerland show enough divergence to justify identifying two distinct "isms."

Next question. Some countries are immunized to imperialism by being too small or too poor to make it work. (Switzerland isn't poor, but it is small.) The United States doesn't have either kind of natural immunity to imperialism. So, although I have no foreign policy and for all I know an idealistic policy of free trade and non-intervention might work, I have to ask: Is it realistic or reasonable for the United States to try to behave like Switzerland?

I still suspect that a majority of Americans will say that it's not. I still suspect that a majority of Americans think we have to support at least Britain, Israel, Japan, Canada, and (country where you have relatives here) even in their wars with other countries that have no particular quarrel with us. And, if so, in order to be the democratically elected President of a constitutional democratic republic, Ron Paul will have to reach some sort of compromise between his own personal views and the views of the rest of the country. I still hope he will do that, and can do that.

But I stand corrected on semantics, anyway. Neutrality and free trade can't fairly be called isolationism.

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