This past weekend I debated Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul on the war in Iraq. The event was FreedomFest, the annual libertarian gathering in Las Vegas, with C-Span and about a thousand people in attendance. It was billed as a Libertarian v. Conservative debate: Larry Abraham and Dinesh D'Souza for the conservative side, and Doug Casey and Ron Paul for the libertarian side.
So here is question for Ron Paul: shouldn't the United States do what it can to promote liberty worldwide? I posed this question and Paul answered that America should be an example of liberty and not try to impose freedom by force. Alas, where freedom has come to countries it has usually come by force. How did we get freedom in this country? We had a revolution. How did African Americans win freedom? It took the invasion of a Northern army to secure for the slaves a freedom they were not in a position to secure for themselves. And let's remember that America imposed freedom at the point of a bayonet on Japan and Germany after World War II, and the results have been excellent.
It seems that today's libertarians are divided into two camps: the principled and the unprincpled. The former believe in liberty as a universal aspiration. The latter believe in freedom for us but not for anyone else. Ron Paul isn't going to become president, but as America's leading libertarian he would do the group a service by upholding freedom as a universal principle, as the founders did.
Reader Comments ( Page 5 of 8)
61. Dinesh writes:
"upholding freedom as a universal principle, as the founders did"
Most of the founders and George Washington in particular advocated for an isolationist foreign policy. Sure, freedom was great for the new country but they were worried about the results of the French revolution. Certainly, they would not have argued for the forced spread of democracy and freedom. They were much more concerned about maintaining the Union.
Rob at 6:40PM on Jul 10th 2007
62. I've looked at the libertarian arguments here and they're pretty good. America would certainly be a different place if we ran it by all libertarian principles!
Everyone's forgetting the context of why we're in Iraq in the first place. An ongoing war with Saddam, the skirmishes, the ongoing charade with the UN inspectors, the threats to his neighbors with WMD's (Saddam said he'd 'make the fire eat half of Israel' -- with what, spitballs?) the open support of Palestinian terrorism, the open defiance of the US, UN, and civilization in general, the UN sanctions supposedly killing 10,000 people per month, and then on top of all that, along comes 9/11. Saddam's ruthlessness and unpredictability takes on an especially menacing character in the shadow cast by 9/11. And he did not let up, no, he kept playing with the inspectors and thumbing his nose at the world. Even notched it up a bit.
It's easy to forget the context of those days after 9/11, now that we've gone without attacks all this time here.
So George Bush decides to finish the unfinished, and deal with this menace once and for all. Surprisingly, large segments of the world disagree. The coalition his father built in '91 cannot be put back together in the post-Cold War world. He only has the choice to act alone or let the status quo continue.
Perhaps he was mistaken. Perhaps he did not handle everything as well as he might have. Perhaps. Perhaps he entered the WH determined to do this already; I think it's arguable that that was a good thing. However it was not my decision, nor Ron Paul's, nor Howard Dean's nor anyone else's: one man leads the free world and he must act without the benefit of the hindsight that so many pat themselves on the back for. He can only go on what we all knew at the time, substantial portions have turned out to be wrong. Have any of the list of Democrats that spoke war and thunder and invasion -- have any of them apologized or admitted their error? NO! They just blame Bush! A booming cottage industry, blame Bush, for everything from the war and Democrat's mismanagement of a major city's levee system to Earth's annihilation of global warming!
So now we find ourselves in Iraq. You broke it you bought it. I'm not sure that the picture painted by the media of the disastrous Iraq quagmire is the least accurate. I don't know how much solace and encouragement to go on that the Jihadists get from the daily denunciations of Bush (he lied he lied) and the NY Times splashing Murtha's declaration of America's defeat onto the headlines day in and day out, but I would guess that it's not insignificant.
And the ironic thing is we're supposed to attack terrorism at its root causes -- when we're 180 degree opposite at determining those root causes. Iraq as a functioning democracy would be a VERY VERY good thing. Even if they had the Koran in the government -- isn't that their right after all, self-determination? How much a chance of self-determination did they get under Saddam, and how much could they have looked forward to under Qusay and Uday? One of the root causes supposedly is these horrible Middle Eastern dictatorships -- so we knock one off and everybody just complains about it.
People were declaring we were defeated before we even started. For shame. Some of you people really make me sick.
Damn Wren at 7:43PM on Jul 10th 2007
63. Dinesh,
Your argument as many pointed out here is weak and mungled. Since when did "your neighbor's liberty" became the core value of libertarianism? You should know better that foreign interventions (or the top-bottom approach), be it military, economic, or political, in the past sixty years have been miserable failures.
shm
shm at 11:57PM on Jul 18th 2007
64. There are idiots, and then there is Dinesh. If Dinesh believes in universal liberty so much, why has he never served in the army of the "liberators". He is really not that different from that Trotskyite "laptop bombardier" Hitchens.
B. Chen at 8:24PM on Jul 10th 2007
65. I presume that Dinesh D'Souza is itching to enlist in the United States Army as part of his plan to enforce liberty on various peoples around the planet. What is stopping him? What a load of crap to lay on Ron Paul who has been defending libertarian principles in the House of Representatives for twenty years!,
Dennis Spain at 9:18PM on Jul 10th 2007
66. Gene Hawkridge,
Man you people just get more and more stupid every time I read the comments.
First of all, Ron Paul mostly talks about reducing incentives for ILLEGAL (But, we can't call them criminals, ok?) immigrants. Being a free marketer, he does not believe the federal government should be able to dictate to an employer who they can and can't hire. His plan is to remove the incentives that make them want to come here illegally. You know, the stuff that is HURTING businesses, like hospitals closing all along the border because they can afford the looting these ILLEGAL immigrants are doing to them.
A fence is built for national security because if ILLEGAL (again, let's not call them criminals) immigrants can cross over in the thousands a day then, so can terrorists and other enemies. Why don't we ACTUALLY start talking about national security and national DEFENSE!?
One isn't built on Canada's border, because so far Canada has been a wonderful partner in helping to secure it and to keep unwanted people out of their country. Mexico is a third-world country that is completely lawless. We cannot trust them to protect their side of the border or really pay any attention to who is coming in and out of their country.
My lord, people, stop being so willfully ignorant. Start thinking things through before making such important decisions about whom you will vote.
Ron Paul hasn't made the claims you state he did, which just means you will vote uninformed; the worst kind of vote.
Scott McDonnell at 9:28PM on Jul 10th 2007
67. Damn Wren,
Their self determination was that they did not rise up against Saddam and instead supported him. So, technically, they wanted him to be dictator. Are you that stupid that you don't understand how many people died in the revolutionary war fighting off the british? Do you think the people just decided they wanted America, and the British just said 'OK?'
And then, on top of all this stupidty, you lump 9/11 into Iraq, like Bush is a hero. Where is Osama again? How many troops do we have looking for him compared to policing a civil war in Iraq? Bet you think he is in Iraq, don't you, probably hiding with all the WMDs - "just to the north, south, east, and west of Baghdad?"
When people lie to you, you continue to believe them.... absolutely amazing. Where is OUR self-determination these days?
That's it, I can't read any more of these comments, you people are so frighteningly uneducated that I can't think of anything nice to say (and I try my best to take my mother's advice.)
Scott McDonnell at 9:22PM on Jul 10th 2007
68. RON PAUL 2008!!!
james at 10:01PM on Jul 10th 2007
69. I have my disagreements with Ron Paul. First off, I don't regard myself as a mainstream libertarian(I am more a Georgist). I'm deeply concerned that if Paul's economic program were implemented we would see enormous concentration of wealth. I think the gold standard is not a good idea. We differ on technology policy. However, Paul is far better than any other GOP hopeful-and I like his immigration ideas far better than Bush, Thompson, Mccain, Rudy G. or Romney. I'm a programmer that has seen what H-1b did up close.
Thus I will support Paul for the GOP nomination even though I am a Democrat--and will be making a donation soon.
Randall Burns at 9:40PM on Jul 10th 2007
70. I'm not going to bother typing a comment you probably can't read, but everything you've ever written is terrible. You are the worst blogger in the bloated blog-o-sphere.
Justin at 10:33PM on Jul 10th 2007
71. The amount of money and lives it would take Americans to force liberty onto anyone we want would prove to violate liberty here in America. So we end up sacrificing our liberty for the liberty of others. I don't think so. It is the US governments job to protect OUR liberty. Not sacrifice our liberty for oppressed peoples on the other side of the world.
Ryan Crowell at 10:32PM on Jul 10th 2007
72. Dinesh, your commentary is almost always way off base. We brought freedom to Germany and Japan at the point of a bayonet? How exactly were Germans and Japanese NOT free pre-1945? They weren't slaves, forced to go to war. They CHOSE to fight us, Dinesh. You may not like that, but it is a fact that Hitler was hugely popular in Germany. Joining the military was hugely popular in Japan, they had over 6 million men in the army in 1945. Americans CHOSE to fight the rule of Britain in the late 18th century, the revolution was not imposed upon them by the Dutch, the French, or some other foreign superpower. The African Americans did not win freedom by fighting for it, Dinesh. The Civil War was not about freeing slaves. Blacks fought for the South as well as the North. Were they fighting to keep slavery? The more you write, the more I come to believe your views are uninformed and totally irrelevant.
"Imposing freedom" and "Discerning Dinesh"...both oxymorons.
Cameron at 1:44AM on Jul 11th 2007
73. Mr. D'Souza, I'll ask you the same question Thomas DiLorenzo of LewRockwell.com did: If it's so important that we invade other countries to spread freedom, why haven't YOU served in the military?
Neocons are criticized (justifiably, in my book) for being warmongers while having no record of military service themselves. If you're of military age, it behooves you, as a supporter of the Iraq war, to enlist and get over there to help out.
Your fellow neocons would be enormously impressed, I'm sure!
Joe B. Carter at 1:46AM on Jul 17th 2007
74. You also seem to forget that the Civil War was completely unnecessary. Facts have proven Abraham Lincoln to be the worst president in history. The Civil War was NOT fought to free slaves. It was fought to control the south. While I detest any form of slavery, as a libertarian myself, Abraham Lincoln saw fit to tell the border states that they could KEEP their slaves, if they sided with the North to fight the South. The Civil War was a battle of economics, not a battle over slavery. Lincoln freed the slaves via the Emancipation Proclamation during the war only as a tactic to further disrupt the South.
Jason at 6:37AM on Jul 11th 2007
75. Ron Paul is a real American and a real Patriot. His strategies are the strategies that made this country great.
Ken Langston at 6:26AM on Jul 12th 2007