President Bush entered office without a philosophy. By philosophy, I simply mean an approach: a set of clear and core principles to guide his hands in a world encapsulated by shades of gray.
To be sure, he had all the right moves, so to speak, on his way in. He spoke like a fiscal conservative calling for tax cuts, lower spending, smaller government, government reform and open markets. He leaves us with tax cuts, as well as one of the largest expansions in the size and role of government in decades. He leaves us with an omnibus bailout that his successor plans to double or triple. Forgive me, what I meant to call it was, “a decisive measure to safeguard our economy,” as the president called it in his Farewell Address.
From what? Free markets? The necessary detraction of the housing market? What are we safeguarding? The one trillion plus that we’re ultimately going to spend to “safeguard” ourselves is not only money that does not currently exist, but it will manifestly come right out of the private sector. I digress.
Still, he rode in on the ‘walk softly and carry a big stick’ rhetoric of peace through strength: a strong military that ‘goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.’ He leaves a neoconservative bent on global-reorganization, indeed execrating all who would “seek comfort by turning inward.” He’s learned well the new rhetoric of the neo-right, avowing that we must “reject isolationism, and its companion protectionism. Retreating behind our borders” he says, “would only invite danger. In the 21st century security and prosperity at home depend on the expansion of liberty abroad. If America does not lead the cause of freedom, that cause will not be led.”
I become utterly confused when President Bush makes grandiloquent pronouncements about American destiny. One may think I am simply reading too much into his nice speech. Perhaps. Or perhaps I know history.
While he is not as cunning or able to persuade the easily-persuaded, Bush enjoys a striking ideological continuity with President Clinton: we are, as the Clintonians put it, “the indispensible nation.” Bush says we were, “born alone in liberty,” and that, “America did nothing to seek or deserve [conflict].”
Clearly, most of these words, while soothing, are false, at best. In fact, they are worse: they intentionally mislead. The neoconservative philosophy purposefully advances their cause through such high-sounding statements. What good patriot can argue that America is not indispensible? [Imagine that I’m raising my hand right about now]
Pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall. (Proverbs 16:18) Historically, America’s greatness was measured by the character of her people, the universal compassion expounded by her law, the vitality of her prosperity, guided by, what was once, our “indispensible” philosophy of individual autonomy and freedom. Moreover, This is was philosophy which subjected itself to moral responsibility and self-correcting moral scrutiny.
That is all over in an age where we call ourselves “indispensible”; where we say “freedom” is something we have a mandate to advance by aggression; where we deny history and say we were born “alone” in freedom, as if it never preceded us; where we coronate ourselves the grand marshals of world order and peace; where we deny the evils we allow to exist in our own nation, by saying that we did nothing to ‘seek conflict.’ Of course we have.
I sincerely believe that President Bush considers himself a Christian – but what kind of Christian nation abounds in unrelenting hubris and ignorance of the past? There is nothing indispensible about such a nation.
“Good and evil,” Mr. Bush said in his Farewell Address, “are present in the world.” True, but he went on to say that, “murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time, everywhere. Freeing people from oppression and despair is eternally right.”
One wonders whether (1) his speech writers failed Philosophy 101, or (2) wrote the book on neoconservative propaganda speech. I suppose either premise would lead to the same result. At a minimum, even one who fully embraces the cause of the Afghan-Iraq War as one of the expansion of liberty abroad cannot make such a claim.
First, one cannot say that murdering the innocent to advance an ideology is wrong every time. Now, this is an alarming assertion on my part – thus underscoring the rhetorical mastery of the Bush speech writers: if you disagree with it you must be some kind of monster. Still, only the professed, convinced, and unwavering pacifist can make this statement with a straight face. For if it were wrong to kill the innocent to advance an ideology, any amount of collateral damage inflicted in a “war to expand liberty” (i.e.: the advance of an ideology) would thus be wrong. It isn’t that I’m trying to make the “peace-and-love all the time” argument here. But, quite simply, innocent Iraqis and Afghans have died. Even those who support the cause (ideology) cannot deny this.
Further still, one who never supported the Iraq War would still have a difficult time justifying the statement. Did innocents not die in the Revolution? WWII? The Civil War? Should these wars have thus never been fought? Am I being nitpicky during the president’s nice speech, or just honest and realistic?
Second, is freeing people from oppression and despair eternally right? One certainly would like to think so. But would any expense be justified? What if we spend so much money, lives and political capital abroad that our position is no longer “indespensible.” Say, aren’t we right about there now?
In Criminal Law, there is a hypothetical which asks one to suppose that Evildoer has kidnapped two children, Mary and John, and placed them in a ‘compacting machine.’ You walk passed said machine and Evildoer says, ‘if you press this button, Mary will be compacted and John will live; but if you don’t, John will automatically be compacted in ten seconds and Mary will live.’ Do you press the button, or do nothing?
Although he likes to think it was, Bush’s problems weren’t even so black in white, and it wasn’t entirely known what would have happened whether or not he ‘pressed the button.’ But he pressed it. Today we have two wars and increased antipathy for our nation. We pressed the button and allowed Hamas the opportunity to be elected in Palestine. Now Israel is at war, and we call Hamas unstable and illegitimate. We pressed the button in Pakistan and got a military dictator to set up shop. Later, the people began to revolt, the opposition was killed and the Chief Justice was imprisoned. How goes the cause of freedom that no one else would have led in our absence? We pressed the button and ousted Saddam Hussein. Now Iran’s power is increased, America is hated more than she is feared or respected, and Bush’s own party is in a shambles because of it.
President Bush arrived without a philosophy, but bids us farewell with a warning to adopt the philosophy the neoconservatives have convinced him of, or else. But, maintaining our sovereignty, law, economic vitality, freedom, values and culture does not require, as Bush would tell us, “isolationism” as the only alternative to new world globalism. It requires the conviction to stay true to our founding covenants. When Washington bid farewell, more than two hundred and twelve years ago, he gave us stern advice that echoed through at least the next two or three generations of Americans: Don’t debase the currency, trade with nations but stay out of the affairs of Europe and reject political partisanship. Stay out of entangling alliances. And what a tangled web we weave two centuries later.