Our Interests and Theirsby
Dmitry Chernikov
The US has "interests." All over the world. These interests are arbitrary, unpredictable, and always changing. Protecting them usually involves giving money to some countries (that is, their governments) and beating up others. Why? Who knows! Who cares! It’s "interests" – of the United States. They are "geostrategic" (or "geopolitical"; I have no idea what either of these words means). Also, sometimes they may have something to do with natural resources or foreign investments. What is unclear here? Before we get confused any further, the crucial problem here is the collectivism entailed by talking about the interests of the US as a whole. America is not a person; the interests of one American may be very different from the interests of another American. As Rick Blaine says in Casablanca, "Your business is politics, mine is running a saloon." What sense is there in amalgamating different people’s divergent views on how to be happy into a monolithic "interest" of the nation-state? Literally then, the phrase "US interests" is meaningless. But there are, as a matter of fact, two reasonable ways of interpreting it figuratively. The first is to say that they are the interests of the state or what is fittingly called the "political class." The interests of the US government, its connected tax-consumers, and the ever-shifting pressure groups are to maintain their power and privileges at the expense, inevitably, of general welfare. Thus a war may be in the interest of the President who gets increased powers, the military officialdom, the arms industry, and the ideological "laptop warriors." None of these people are concerned with the killing, maiming, destruction, and poverty in which a war results. Or a protective tariff is in the interest of some politically powerful industry. The interests of the consumers are harmed, but who protects them? Central banking is in the interest of the banks, but it causes economic distortions and makes everyone poorer. An anti-trust lawsuit against a highly successful company may be in the interest of the company’s competitors, despite that fact that it results in no benefits to the public. And so on. The second interpretation is to describe what interests all people of the United States share or have in common. They are essentially: liberty, protection of life and property, and peace. These have nothing to do with the interest of the state in exercising dominion or influence over some piece of land. They have nothing to do with the interest of the rulers in having their supposed subjects bow to them or in enlarging their kingdom by conquest.
July 14, 2006 Dmitry Chernikov [send him mail] is a graduate student in philosophy at Kent State University. Copyright © 2006 LewRockwell.com |
Notice
that these are exactly the interests that governments are supposed
to secure. Yet we have just seen that the interests of the people
and the state are to a great extent contrary to each other. What
to do? Here is the fundamental problem that political theory has
tried to solve. How to keep the government in check, focused on
defending liberty? The study of this subject is rewarding, and I
would encourage everyone to engage in it. It is in their and potentially
everyone’s interest.