Lux Lucet

George Will is a smart guy and widely recognized as such. He’s also to a large degree intellectually enslaved to establishment ideas about how the world works, or at least how it ought to work.

In a recent column analyzing various Republican presidential candidates, Will was quite good in his analysis of Newt Gingrich, saying that he, “was the least conservative candidate,” in the field and did a good job supporting this claim. According to Will, a vote for Gingrich is a vote for the status quo.

In general, Will was pretty good in his analysis of the other candidates as well, with one exception: his analysis of Ron Paul. Paul, in Will’s thinking, is an isolationist.

Now perhaps a case can be made that Will is right in what he says. For indeed Paul wants to isolate the young men of this country from the curse of dying in a foreign land whose internal business is not our concern and whose culture we do not understand. He would like to isolate families from the grief of mourning the loss of a son, who died fighting in an endless, undeclared war in pursuit of an undefined victory. He would like to isolate the weary taxpayers of our nation from the crushing debt burden laid upon their shoulders by foreign wars the US cannot afford for the purpose of maintaining an empire that unnecessarily makes us the target of hatred. He would like to isolate us from the moral shame of extraordinary renditions, collateral damage, and covert operations, not to mention the danger to the rule of law posed by undeclared, unconstitutional wars.

Come to think of it, maybe calling Ron Paul an isolationist isn’t such a bad thing.

Except it is.

I say this because calling someone an “isolationist” is a swear word used by those who defend the current US foreign policy of empire and preemptive war to intimidate and silence anyone who would dare question them. They would have us believe that anyone who advocates a foreign policy of peaceful engagement, voluntary free trade and defensive war as a last resort are at best irresponsible, unrealistic Neville Chamberlin types, and at worst possible anti-Semites.

Now perhaps George Will doesn’t intend to swear at Paul. Will has had some good things to say about Paul in the past and seems to respect him, but I wish he would not have dragged out the “I” word. For on top of being a pejorative term, it is also inaccurate. Calling someone and an isolationist suggests that he wants nothing to do with the outside world, dig a moat around the country, fill it with alligators and pull up the drawbridge. This is clearly not the case with Paul. For example, few people realize that throughout the long running Iranian nuclear bomb crisis, the US has never had direct diplomatic contact with the Iranian government. In fact, the US has not had direct diplomatic contact with Iran since May 21, 1980, when Switzerland became our representative to that nation.

Paul has advocated we open direct diplomatic discussions with the Iranians in an attempt to avoid a potential war in that region. And all this at the same time, the State Department, headed by Hillary Clinton who has never been accused of being and isolationist, is threatening to nuke them. Will the real isolationist please stand up? Here’s a hint, it’s not Ron Paul.

The situation with Cuba is much the same. The US has had no diplomatic relations with that country since 1961. Yes, I know about the missile crisis and I know that Cuba is a communist nation. But the missile crisis was nearly 50 years ago and we have a long history of diplomatic relations with communist countries. There is no good reason to continue this standoff, but for most of the folks in Washington, even thinking about breaking the diplomatic ice with Cuba seems strictly verboten. “Isolationist” Ron Paul, on the other hand, has advocated talking to Cuba. Who being isolationist here, those who stubbornly cling to the momentum a stale dated policy, or a man willing to hold a civil discussion with a foreign nation?

Ron Paul has presented many “radical” ideas over the years. I say radical, not because they’re un-American, not because they’re unconstitutional, but because this nation has drifted so far from its limited government moorings that when a man advocates ideas based on our founding documents, people don’t know what to make of him. Ron Paul’s foreign policy of peaceful engagement is solidly American and soundly Biblical. The founding fathers of America often warned against involvement in foreign wars. The Bible tells us that as far as it is in our power, we should live peacefully with all men (Romans 12:18). This is God’s command to individual men, but it applies equally to nations. Our current foreign policy of empire and preventive war has brought this nation to the brink of a major armed conflict in the middle east. Perhaps it’s time for wiser heads to prevail, even if some folks are moved to swear at them.