For Secretary of State, there’s a horse race between Giuliani, Romney and Unknown at this time, according to most reports. We’ll soon find out the winner chosen by Trump. The publicized names are all Establishment figures. They want to save the world or extinguish evils through the use of government power.
For example, let us look at Romney’s positions in 2012. They are activist-interventionist-exceptionalist. From Romney himself:
“Strongly stand by our allies such as Israel, Poland, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Columbia [sic], etc.
Promote and defend democracy throughout the world.
Stop Iran from developing or acquiring nuclear weapons.
Work with moderate Muslims to defeat Jihadism.
Don’t enter into treaties or agreements that will not be honored or put the U.S. at a disadvantage.
Never publicly announce military withdrawal dates from a theater of action.
Allow our allies a faster path to becoming NATO members.”
Let us give Romney the benefit of the doubt and say that he is a man who wants the betterment of the human race worldwide and that if chosen as Secretary of State, he will attempt to bring that goal about using the powers of his office. Why should we question that role and that philosophy?
Pragmatically, why do Americans need the countries mentioned as allies and the many more included in “etc.”? Why should America be constantly involved in political struggles, conflicts, spending, commitments of all kinds, and sometimes wars because it has joined up with allies? The U.S. government has proven itself time and again since the Spanish-American War in 1898 as being incapable of improving American life or foreign life by becoming entangled in the foreign affairs and wars of other countries. Entering World War I is a prime example, since the allied victory led to World War II.
Legally, our government is not clearly chartered by its Constitution to remake the world by alliances, promoting democracy, stopping Iran, working with Muslims, enlarging NATO or any number of other policies that it has adopted for the last 118 years. Or is it so empowered? Does the Constitution actually allow and endorse such activities? If so, we have in place a government structure that allows indefinite expansion and tyranny in the name of supposed “good”.
What’s of much greater significance is that our federal government is not designed for these purposes outlined by Romney. It’s not suited for the betterment of the world’s nations in the areas it has chosen for itself. It’s not even suited for our own betterment in most of the domestic areas in which it has extended its power! Our defense places us at constant risk of nuclear catastrophe. How good is that? Our health, education, energy and welfare have all been undermined by our own government. Our own government has undermined the nation’s money. It has taken us into needless wars. It has erected a spy system that is a constant threat to our liberties. The criticisms of our own government’s capacities to produce betterment within this country’s borders are legion. It would appear from the constant dissatisfaction with government and the low esteem in which it is held that government is apparently not a tool, not an organization, that can choose good ends and accomplish them.
Why not? It’s because the betterment of Americans is not in any obvious way discovered and produced by shifting decision-making to a small group of elected people and giving them great powers over our lives. To the contrary, officials who sit atop a pyramid of power are deprived of the richness of information and detail at the lower levels that makes the difference between betterment and worsening. Too often, one might say always without being far off the mark, the decisions of high-level officials fail to take into consideration information that is available at lower levels, even widely available. Too often their decisions are made based on criteria that have nothing to do with betterment of Americans in general but have everything to do with their own biases and ambitions or the narrow goals of interest groups who have their ear and influence them.
Likewise, our government is not a structure that’s suitable for the remediation of foreign evils. Our officials know even less about foreign countries than they do about our own. As in domestic affairs, so in foreign affairs. In both cases, our government is subject to political pressures and interests that inherently shape, distort and corrupt its ends, that is, its understanding of evils and its choice of evils to remediate. Government is power, and power subverts both ends and means. Power corrupts the “good” that government claims to accomplish. As a means to its ends, government’s sword perpetuates the evils it claims to end. In the process, it causes other and new evils. Government as structured simply cannot save the human race, here or worldwide.
Romney’s philosophy is not unusual. Its intent, at least on the surface, is to make the world a better place. Its means is to use government to that end, and that’s where it goes wrong, completely wrong. It would appear that Americans support this philosophy. Although they disagree all the time about how specifically to use government for the sake of betterment, they do not doubt that government is an appropriate tool. That’s where they are wrong.
The debate over the role of government is a complex and many-sided debate. It is a debate over the nature of good and evil. It is a debate over who is in a position to recognize and name evil, or say what is evil and what is not. It is a debate over what to do about evils. In all these debates, the individual person’s authority and standing need to be reconciled with those of groups and social structures beyond the person, including government. Who should be deciding what’s good and evil? Who is in a position to judge what should be done about it? The individual? The government?
The libertarian position is clear. By endorsing non-aggression, it implicitly rules out the use of government aggressive power to decide what is evil and to deal with evils. The decisions are implicitly to be left in the hands of individual persons in the libertarian political philosophy. People may form voluntary groups to decide what is evil and what is not, and they make take steps to ameliorate such evils if they want to. But aggression as a tool is ruled out. In libertarian thought, Romney should not have the power to decide what will save the world and to use his power of aggression to attempt to bring that condition about.
Why should he or anyone not have that power? He will construe his office as having a power to decide what is in self-defense and what is not. But what Romney thinks is self-defense may be thought of as aggression by someone else. Why should he have the power to decide such an important matter for everyone? Why should Bush have had the power to attack Iraq on grounds of self-defense? The war power is given to the government. It’s delegated to it and it’s considered to be appropriate. The government decides what’s self-defense and what is not. Why? Doesn’t this open the door to very great evils? The government can thoroughly tyrannize the population in the name of defending the country.
In the end, the government is on a leash held by the citizens but it can be a very long and slack leash and government can run to extraordinary lengths of wildness. This happens. In America of all places, we are supposed to believe that the leash is short and tight. We’re supposed to keep it that way. We’re not, and we haven’t. But at least the degree of skepticism over government has moved higher. This needs to be translated into a deep-seated understanding that our government cannot save us or the world.
9:49 am on November 22, 2016 Email Michael S. Rozeff
