On Wilsonianism and isolationism

A couple of posts below I promised a long post here, but I am going to cut it back to a smaller post. Events compressed my time for this tonight, but I didn't want to put it off. Here are my semi-condensed thoughts on the two articles.

First let's take a look at the Wilsonian tone of the Bush Administration. The Administration entered into the Iraq War with a certain high mindedness. The war was actually predicated on several issues beyond just the WMD, and freeing and democratizing the Iraqi people was part of that equation. The liberation of Iraq from Saddam Hussein was followed by democratic "revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine, and Lebanon, as well as coinciding with a warming of relations with Libya. The wave of liberalization was in some ways intoxicating, and the Wilsonian rhetoric from the President, his administration, and his supporters became a little too high minded. It is not impossible to spread democracy amongst peoples not accustomed to it, but it is a long, difficult process. On some level, the right has realized this all along and has always casually warned how long a process would take, even if at times we got a little ahead of ourselves. A Wilsonian policy towards Iraq can work and it is strategically vital that it does. If a seed of freedom and capitalism can be sowed in Iraq and it can take root, then it gives the people of other Middle Eastern nations a new paradigm with which to view their relationships with their governments, turning their frustrated gazes inward where it can make a difference instead of outward where it cannot. In order for us to succeed, though, we will need to make Iraq the primary or sole focus of our efforts. The process is going to require our resources, our sweat, our tears, our time, our patience, and yes, even our blood.

One problem with this is that many conservatives, especially older conservatives, have a natural gag reflex that kicks in when it comes to Wilsonian policy. With Iraq, many of those conservatives were able to choke back that reflex for the first year or two, but once they became frustrated with the effort, it came back to them as naturally as can be. These are Lowry's "To hell with them hawks." As much as I hate to say it, they are wrong in the case of Iraq, even William Buckley. There is little choice at this point but to follow through. For them to throw up their hands in frustration is more grievous to the effort in Iraq than all of the Democratic obstinance up until this point. They were on this train when it left the station, and for them to bail out now is irresponsible. Once they decided to engage the Middle East, they forfeited their right to fall back on isolationist tendencies.

This leads into my second point. As the New York Times story points out, their is a growing trend towards isolationism. I think isolationism is a natural American instinct. We've always had these two oceans that acted as wonderful buffers from the rest of the world, and in the past all we've had to do in order to get a breather from world events is to pull back inside our buffers. Isolationism, as laid out by Washington, was a fine strategy...for 1790 or 1890. The world and the country changed radically in the 20th century, though. Technology, communication, and transportation gains began to shrink our buffers. Natural barriers like oceans meant less and less as it became quicker and easier to travel from place to place. As technology and machinery became more and more advanced, their possible use for evil became easier, cheaper, and more accessible to more people. Instant communication meant that one could virtually be 6,000 miles away. In 100 years, the oceans have been virtually bridged, and it is no longer possible to hind behind our shores.

More importantly, these three areas have made the United States the most powerful economy on the face of the planet. Up until the very early 20th century, we were a very agrarian country that could pull back without the world feeling it very much. By the end of World War I we had turned into a world power. Once that occurred, isolationism was no longer a choice we could realistically make. Oh, we could try, and at times we have, but world powers are simply not capable of being isolationist without ceding economic well being and basically capitulating on a military/national defense front. I'll break it down into an analogy. The world's "big dogs" will always have smaller dogs nipping at their ankles. Some little dogs always want the big dog's position, and that leaves the bigger dogs with two choices. The first is to involve itself with the little dogs to keep them from getting too out of line. The second is to ignore the little dogs and cede its place in the pack. What is not a choice is simply ignoring those little dogs, because they'll bite and chew and the big dog until it either dies or fights back with overwhelming force.

That is the folly of the modern isolationist movement. It believes that it can simply ignore the world and problems will pass it by. They won't. The problems will find us, and they'll find us because we rightfully insist upon maintaining our economic and cultural strength. We can ignore the problems all we want, but they will keep at us until we face the choice of dying or fighting. Getting the point of having to make that choice is to place the nation in a perilous position.

In the big picture, the Bush Administration is doing the right thing for this period of history by engaging the world and putting the breaks on those who would opt for a false isolationism. In the small picture, the Administration an error here and there. Take the guest worker policy that the Times touches on. One of our challenges today is to be globally involved while maintaining a strong social fabric. The United States has always been able to do this by holding out citizenship as a reward that must be earned by immigrants. Because immigrants had to work hard to gain their citizenship, they prized it and were proud to become Americans. This and this alone lead to ethnic groups that would readily weave themselves into the American fabric. That immigration policy has been eroded in this day and age. Today, anyone who wants to be here can be here. There are very few repercussions for not going through the immigration process. The problem is that it is now about being here and no longer about becoming an American. That weakens the American social fabric because there is very little drive for immigrant groups to become part of the country. This creates internal problems that will force us to cast our gaze inward and create further isolationism at time when we really cannot afford it.

In many ways, Wilsonian foreign policy and isolationism at are opposite ends of a bell curve, and the space under that bell curve is the benefit we derive. Swinging to far towards either in its purest form is not going to provide us much benefit. Striking a balance between the two will make us the strongest we can be as we progress through the 21st century-a century that may not end up being another American Century. We are struggling with that balance right now, and I think we will end up finding it in the next ten years or so as long as we don't trip ourselves up along the way. It will be a painful process at times that will require much more patience than reactionary impulses.

Flu craziness

I'm going to give Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Michael Levitt the benefit of the doubt here, because it sounds like his comments may be out of context, but ABC News is reporting that over the weekend he recommended that Americans start storing up tuna and dried milk under their beds as the avian flu approaches. If mis-reported, shame on ABC. If he actually said it in the alarmist context that ABC presents it, then this guy has an even worse case of diarrhea of the mouth (no pun intended) than Tommy Thompson.

Don't get me wrong, I think everyone should have a supply of non-perishable food for emergencies. The hoarding of supplies under beds is alarmist, though. I've also said over and over again that the government should be preparing us for the possibility of a avian flu outbreak in calm, factual terms. This alarmist talk only serves to get the public edgy, and an edgy public is much more prone to panic, and panic is the last thing we need in the case of an avian flu outbreak.

Wilsonianism, isolationsim, and charting our future course

There are a couple of articles/posts this morning that I'm going to put on everyone's recommended reading list. The first is a Power Line post that summarizes a Rich Lowry article in National Review, "The 'To Hell With Them' Hawks," and the second is a New York Times article on the Bush move away from isolationism. Both of them touch on very important aspects of our foreign policy going forward. I hope to have a post on them later today in which I'll touch on why isolationism is an outdated concept for the United States, why we should practice only a limited Wilsonian foreign policy, and why Bush's new globalism is the right idea in the big picture but also why his administration may be about to get the small picture all wrong. For Belle and Aaron, it will be a shiny keys piece (i.e., long).

U.K. is scarier than the U.S.

How much scarier, you ask? So much so that kids in the U.K. are starting to wear stab-proof vests:

The vests are made from material too thick for a knife to get through.

Some kids as young as 10 are now asking about stab vests in shops even though shopkeepers aren't allowed to sell them to them without parental permission.

In the U.K. you cannot own a gun, you cannot defend yourself with lethal force, and according to the article, you can't carry a knife. That means if a criminal, who has no qualms about owning a gun or carrying a knife, attacks you, you may as well grab your ankles because there isn't a damn thing you can do about it. Some country, huh? In an effort to prevent violence, they've given criminals carte blanche to beat, stab, and shoot because they have nothing to fear from their victims.

Spirit of '48

Remember all of the 'revolutions' (Orange, Cedar, Purple, Rose, etc) of 2003-2005? It was a heady time, but always nagging at the back of my mind was 1848. 1848 was a revolutionary year in Europe, and with it came hopes of more liberal governments. Their effects were felt for a long while, but ultimately, they almost all failed. That was what was nagging at me-the very real prospect that the revolutions could be short lived. As it regards the Orange Revolution of 2004 in the Ukraine, that very thing may be happening:

LESS than 15 months after he was forced from power by crowds of pro-democracy protesters, a former communist hardliner is finalising his plans to end Ukraine’s orange revolution.

Viktor Yanukovich, 55, the former prime minister whose presidential campaign in 2004 ended in humiliation when he stepped down amid allegations of electoral fraud, is expected to win the largest number of votes for his party when Ukraine elects a new parliament later this month.

His astonishing comeback has severely undermined the authority of Viktor Yushchenko, 52, the embattled pro-western president and hero of the orange revolution. Yanukovich has promised to steer Ukraine away from the West and back into Russia’s sphere of influence.

One can only hope that if the revolutions of the 2003-2005 period all peter out that they will at least have a long term peaceful influence.

Blah blah Frist blah blah Straw Poll

Bill Frist has won the the Southern Republican Leadership Council's straw poll. At least we now know that the SRLC straw poll is an exercise in futility. I hope that Senator Frist enjoys being the "front runner" for the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination. It will last long enough for another poll to come out that shows Giuliani or McCain on top.

The most interesting part of the straw poll is the voting for "second choice". I think that, once you take out a little home turf favoritism for George Allen, reflect Republicans around the country much better than the "first choice" portion of the poll did. Here are the results for "second choice":

2nd Choices Of Frist Voters (%age Only)
George Allen 18.4%
Mitt Romney 12.0
Rudy Giuliani 12.0
John McCain 10.6
Pres. Bush (write in) 7.0
Mike Huckabee 4.0
Newt Gingrich 3.4
Sam Brownback 2.7
Condi Rice (write in) 2.1
Chuck Hagel 1.0
George Pataki 0.8

It's a little closer to reality than the first poll, but I still can't help but wonder if they took the straw poll before or after the bar was opened.

Zero to hail storm in 30 minutes

Only in Wisconsin in March. Over a half hour period, we went from warm & sunny with nothing on the radar, to cloudy with a small storm on the radar, to windy, rainy, and thundering with a nice sized cell on the radar, to clearing skies with pea sized hail falling.

Jiblog correction

On February 26th, I quoted from a Times of London article a paragraph on the coming extinction of natural blondes. The Times was wrong, and by extension, so was I.

Good riddance

There is a very, very small number of people walking the face of this earth at any one time that mankind is better off without. One of those people died today.

Slobodan Milosevic, the former Yugoslav leader, who was branded "the butcher of the Balkans" and was on trial for war crimes after orchestrating a decade of bloodshed during the breakup of his country, was found dead Saturday in his prison cell. He was 64.

Milosevic, who suffered chronic heart ailments and high blood pressure, apparently died of natural causes and was found in his bed, the U.N. tribunal said, without giving an exact time of death.

Milosevic found death the easy way. He didn't deserve an easy death.

Happiness is...

...a toilet auger and the sound of water flushing.

Without getting into too much detail, we held a small party last night. After the party, we learned that the toilet was plugged. After a couple of hours of plunging and snaking the toilet, it was still plugged and full of its noxious stew. We only have one bathroom in our 70 year old house. We started calling plumbers. Here's a little tip for anyone who is interested: When a plumber says they have 24 hour emergency service in the yellow pages, they're lying. One good guy did call me back at 6 a.m. He was on his way to a commercial account, and recommended that I go out and invest $12 in a tool I had never heard of before, a toilet auger. At 8 a.m., that's just what I did, and after ten minutes, the toilet magically flushed.

Don't own a toilet auger? Save yourself some nausea and pick one up today.

Goodbye, Javon

I've had just about enough of Javon Walker's diarrhea of the mouth. Now he's saying he doesn't want to be a Packer anymore and will not play for the team again. I'd like to take a look at a few of his quotes:

"I just don't feel like this is the best place for me to be right now," said Walker, whose relationship with the organization remains fractured following the team's refusal last summer to renegotiate his contract and public criticism at his expense by Favre. "I really have no interest in being in a Green Bay Packers uniform or playing for Green Bay again."
...
"I just don't like the way the organization runs itself. They want players to come up there and play hard and work hard, but when it comes time to be compensated, it's like, 'We forgot what you've done.'"

What is exactly that you have done in Green Bay, Javon? You've had one Pro Bowl season. Prior to that, we didn't even know if you were going to pan out in the pros. You had a world of potential, but a bad case of the dropsies. You want to be paid amongst the top receivers in the game for one Pro Bowl season?

"If I had to go back there, I'd retire," he said. "I don't have to play."

I think the Packers should call his bluff. He isn't going to get paid a hell of a lot in 2007 by a new team if he sits out 2006 after missing all of 2005.

"Why should I risk another year of getting beat up playing for a team that I don't want to play for? That's stupid," Walker said.

"I love the game," Walker said. "But I'm not going to risk what I went through this year, tearing an ACL and taking pain pills. If I'm going to go out and take hits, it's going to be for a team that I love playing for."

Ahh, I see. This is all about the love of the game, right Javon?

"I'm not going to grandstand," Walker said. "I just want the Packers to give me peace of mind."

I guess not. If the Packers give you millions of "piece of mind," it looks like you'd be happy to stay.

Shut up already, Javon. You've got a world of potential, but potential only pays for draft pics.

WHOR

Finally, talk radio Democrats can get on board with:

Prostitutes in the Brazilian city of Salvador are starting up their own radio station.

The Association of Prostitutes of Bahia state has won government permission for the project, enabling FM station Radio Zona to start broadcasting in the second half of the year, project coordinator Sandro Correia said on Thursday.

That'll be some interesting radio. Something tells me that even the prostitutes won't take Al Franken, though.

DPW deal dead

I can't say that I'm very surprised. The writing has been on the wall since day one. The only surprise is that DPW divesting itself of the U.S. ports, taking the wind out of the sails of many a bloviating Senators in Washington.

Pick and choose the right Roe battles

At Blogs for Bush, Mark Noonan elucidates why he thinks now is the right time to challenge Roe:

All conservatives know that Roe is a wrongly decided opinion. It has no basis even in a broad reading of the Constitution. The Roe majority simply made it up out of whole cloth because they wanted abortion to be legal, come what may. Such a decision should not be given the respect of a genuine Court decision. It should be attacked and attacked and attacked until it is done away with.

We can't fight fire with squirt guns; eventually, we have to place ourselves squarely on the line and push our views in the public square. Abortion is murder - it destroys innocent life and constitutes gross abuse of the women bamboozled into having an elective abortion. If abortion isn't wrong, then nothing is wrong - and I'd rather fight it out now rather than cravenly just hope by chipping 'round the edges we might eventually, in 20 or 30 years, get what we want. No, thanks - that would mean tens of millions more murdered children, and I don't think I have the moral option of not trying to overturn Roe by the swiftest possible means.

I can respect Noonan's thoughts, but they have one glaring weakness. Why wasn't Roe challenged by a state banning abortion in 1976, or 1986, or 1996? Because the fight could not be won in the Supreme Court. What is different in 2006? The answer is "not enough." The fight still can't be won at the Supreme Court, and this challenge is only going to take wind out of the sails of future attempts. Pick the battles you can win, Mark. This one can't be won yet.

IT'S ALIVE!!!

Good lord, it is getting to be very Night of the Living Dead-esque out there in the world's forests. First there was the ivory-billed woodpecker in the southern U.S. that came back from extinction, and now the rat-squirrel (isn't that like a double-negative?):

It has the face of a rat and the tail of a skinny squirrel — and scientists say this creature discovered living in central Laos is pretty special: It's a species believed to have been extinct for 11 million years.

The long-whiskered rodent made international headlines last spring when biologists declared they'd discovered a brand new species, nicknamed the Laotian rock rat.

It turns out the little guy isn't new after all, but a rare kind of survivor: a member of a family until now known only from fossils.

Nor is it a rat. This species, called Diatomyidae, looks more like small squirrels or tree shrews, said paleontologist Mary Dawson of Pittsburgh's Carnegie Museum of Natural History.

If you see a dodo walking down the street with rotten flesh falling off its bones, avoid it but do not be alarmed. It'll just be another species coming back from the dead. If you see a (tree) rat-squirrel, shoot it. We don't need no more stinkin' tree rats.

Thank you...

...to the Senators that voted to indefinitely postpone the ethanol mandate. This bill was a terrible idea from the get go, and I'm pleased to see that it was effectively killed by this action. I'm also pleased that it did not go to a vote because from what I've read and heard, Senator Fitzgerald would have voted for the bill. Because the bill was indefinitely postponed and he voted for that action, I will not condemn Fitzgerald. He was in a tough position politically. If it had gone to a vote and had he supported the bill at that time, I might then be a little closer to Chris's pre-postponement position, but Fitzgerald played the political game as well as he could today.

A letter to Wisconsin State Senator Scott Fitzgerald

My Wisconsin State Senator Scott Fitzgerald looks like he'll be a swing vote on the state's ethanol mandate bill. As James Wigderson notes here and I note at the BBA, it is important that those in Fitzgerald's district contact his office on this bill. I have, and what follows is the text of my letter. If you live in Scott Fitzgerald's district and are having trouble writing a letter, feel free to use this as a guide.

Dear Senator Fitzgerald-

I urge you to oppose the ethanol bill which is now on the Senate schedule. While a small number of people in your district stand to benefit from this bill, the vast majority of your constituents will not. The science on ethanol has been highly politcally charged and therefore difficult to decipher, but a couple of things are apparent. An ethnol mandate will not make for a cleaner environment. Even this state's DNR cannot say that it would. Gas mileage of vehicles will decrease, meaning that the 10% ethanol will not reduce Wisconsin's gas consumption by 10%. Also, it is apparent that there will be a shortfall of domestic ethanol production this year, meaning we will still be importing more expensive ethanol from Brazil. That, combined with possible distribution difficulties this year and transition costs that gas stations occur, and this mandate could add a significant premium to already expensive gasoline prices in Wisconsin.

The Wisconsin consumer is intelligent enough to make good purchasing decisions. If all of the science in favor of ethanol gasoline turns out to be dead on accurate, I'm quite sure that Wisconsinites will migrate to ethanol blends without the intervention of the government. If the facts touted by ethanol supporters is not correct, however, and this bill is passed and becomes law, it could stand to be an economic and environmental hit to the entire state. The safe course of action is to let the market make this decision, and I hope that is the course that you chart. Thank you for your time.

Ryan Ojibway

Wisconsin ethanol bill to the Senate

I'm baffled. I cannot fathom what is going through State Senate Majority Leader Dale Schultz's head right now. He turned his back on his caucus and pushed the ethanol mandate bill to the Senate. In doing so, he is placing himself on a political island that is surrounded by Democrats and he is further alienating himself from the Republican base in Wisconsin. If that is not a difficult enough political situation to put one's self in, there is the potential that this bill alone will be responsible for even higher gas prices in Wisconsin this summer, and Wisconsin voters will focus their anger right back on Schultz. We already know that there will be a shortfall of domestic ethanol production this year, and that we will be importing ethanol from Brazil. We also know that there are going to be distribution problems transporting ethanol, which will also affect supply this year. If Senator Schultz is looking for a one way ticket out of Senate leadership and the Senate altogether, then he is doing a hell of a job of it. This bill is going to backfire when Wisconsin consumers actually start using the mandated gasohol, and everyone involved in its passage is going to pay a political price.

"Harm and pain"

Iran threatened the United States with "harm and pain" today in Vienna, Austria, for bringing Iran in front of the security council. Harm and pain could mean a lot of things, and they could end up being just as bad for Iran as for us. The United States historically has a large anti-war minority, but the vast majority of the country does not respond well to this type of overt threat. If Iran takes its actions too far with this threat, it is going to find itself with a very unified, angry enemy.

A terrible way to die

I don't even want to imagine the unpleasantness of this:

A dairy worker and his 8-year-old son died in a manure pit on the farm where they lived, authorities said Tuesday.

Luis Gutierrez, 27, and Luis Armando Gutierrez went to feed calves Saturday night and apparently stumbled upon the manure pit in the dark, investigators said.