Lux Lucet

Republican Sen. Marco Rubio at the Republican debate, November 10, 2015.

There is no bigger swear word in the neo-conservative vocabulary than “isolationist,” and Marco Rubio showed his true neo-con colors by employing it against Rand Paul during Tuesday’s Republican presidential debate. Said Rubio of Paul, “I know that Rand is a committed isolationist; I’m not.” When a neo-conservative uses the “I” word, his intention is not to have a discussion, but to smear his opponent’s foreign policy views as beyond acceptable and shut down the debate.

In truth, the term “isolationist” is simply a caricature of the historic foreign policy of the United States: non-interventionism. As proof, consider the following statements on foreign policy from the founding fathers;

• “Peace, commerce and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none” (Thomas Jefferson).
  
• “The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is, in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible” (George Washington)
  
• “Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her [America’s] heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own” (John Quincy Adams).
  

To put it another way, the foreign policy of the United States originally was based on Christ’s Golden Rule, “Therefore, whatever you want men to do to you, do also to them, for this is the Law and the Prophets” (Matthew 7:12). From the response Ron Paul received in South Carolina four years ago, apparently Jesus would not be welcomed in today’s Republican party.

But a neo-conservative of Rubio’s ilk isn’t happy unless the US is bombing, strafing or droning some hapless third world country, all the while uttering self-congratulatory platitudes about the world’s need for a strong America. But neo-conservative boilerplate aside, is it too much to ask Rubio and other militarists to provide even one coherent reason why, after 14 years, US forces are still in Afghanistan? Can he give us even a single coherent purpose behind America’s current attempt to overthrow the government of Syria? Why is it he wants to increase Pentagon funding at a time when US defense outlays are greater than those of the next ten biggest military spenders combined?

The United States is going bankrupt, in part due to the out of out of control militarism espoused by neo-conservatives such as Senator Rubio. He would do well to stop with the name calling and consider what the Bible, the only source of knowledge about foreign policy, has to say on the subject.