In a subscriber-only article in National Review, Jonah Goldberg is not unthoughtful on Ron and the right-wing peace movement. Of course, Jonah is prowar and prowarfare state, but by neocon standards, this is a rave. (And thanks to Nick Bradley.)
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The tradition of Ron Paul: defeated in the Cold War, it is back in this current war.
Jonah Goldberg
WAR is the health of the state,” proclaimed Randolph Bourne, one of the comparatively few progressive intellectuals not to be seduced by the siren call of World War I. Bourne himself was but a momentary courier of the warning torch meant to illuminate the threat that standing armies, militarism, and foreign intervention supposedly present to liberty. “Brutus”–the author of the leading essays against ratification of the Constitution (the Anti-Federalist, as it were)–warned repeatedly that a permanent military and the strong central government necessary to sustain it were inimical to liberty at home. Thomas Jefferson famously shared similar anxieties.
One irony of the Bush years is the Left’s sudden–and convenient–interest in the Founders’ intent. It seems no Democrat can refrain from invoking Ben Franklin’s hoary maxim that “those who would sacrifice liberty for security deserve neither.” Whatever happened to the “living Constitution”? Apparently abortion and gay rights require unlimited elasticity and penumbrae galore, while transnational terrorists seeking nuclear bombs are protected by the Left’s conception of “original intent.”
But there are more credible Cassandras, and not surprisingly they reside on the right. Bourne was no conservative, but the insight that involvement abroad fuels the expansion of the state was central to the formation of the modern conservative and libertarian movements. Albert J. Nock, the elitist, near-anarchist libertarian who influenced William F. Buckley Jr., among others, came of age chronicling how social planners and war planners were capable of switching from one job to the other as quickly as a new sheaf of papers could be placed on their desk.
1:33 pm on December 11, 2007
