Suppose for a moment that we actually had a limited government. Its main job would be to ensure our pre-existing rights. These rights would have been the reason for creating and consenting to a police power lodged in the government. We’d have wanted to defend against aggression against our rights. By the theory of such a limited government, we’d also be dead set against its police power being turned against us. We’d retain the right of revolution to alter or abandon a government that was misusing its police power against us and our rights.
In this light, the only possible reason for a sanctions bill aimed at Russia is Russian aggression that is confronting our rights. And this is exactly what the Left-Right coalition against Russia alleges. For example, conservative Richard A. Epstein, a Chicago School law professor, states the case clearly:
“The Russians have no doubt meddled in American politics, and they have undertaken aggressive actions in the Ukraine, and are poised to take aggressive actions along its borders. It is no wonder that the President, or at least parts of his divided administration, and Congress think that some sanctions should be imposed against Russia. The hard questions are what sanctions, and by whom?”
The hard questions are not about what sanctions and by whom. They are about whether or not Russia is aggressing against Americans and their rights. They are about whether or not a limited government should be attempting to protect the rights of anyone in the world wherever they may be located.
There is very great doubt that Russia meddled in our politics, specifically the DNC. Even if some hacking of state and local data can be linked to Russia, and we are not even sure about that, was that aggression if it occurred? Did it compromise the rights of Americans? If it undercut our rights, how serious was it? How serious was it in comparison with the perpetual and large incursions against our rights of our own local, county, state and national governments? Indeed, whose fault was it if a few state and local computers were hacked? Wasn’t that a failure of our own governments? And how serious was such hacking in comparison with the massive hacking by our own intelligence agencies, here and abroad?
It does not follow from alleged election meddling that sanctions are a remedy or that the sanctions already imposed are anything approaching a sensible remedy. It, in fact, is a “wonder” that Congress and members of the Executive favor sanctions. It would be a lot simpler and far more peaceworthy to secure the voting systems in this country, something that one might even think is a task allocated to a limited government. It would be a lot more just to punish the guilty hackers than to punish Russians and Russian interests that are remote from whoever these hackers might be. It would make a lot more sense to have the responses be proportionate to the alleged meddling.
There are the other charges, including “they have undertaken aggressive actions in the Ukraine, and are poised to take aggressive actions along its borders.” Whether or not these two assertions are true, are they proper grounds for imposing sanctions? I am saying that one way to answer such questions is to ask if such measures would be proper if our government actually were a limited government. If we had a limited government, would it consider the relations between Ukraine and Russia as matters of concern for the Americans under its protection? Are our rights under attack because Ukraine and Russia have frictions?
Although a negative answer seems obvious to me, there are those who will say that the world is a big village, and that an assault on rights anywhere is an assault on rights everywhere, and that the world needs an American police power, and that there exists a responsibility to protect people on the receiving end of aggression. These kinds of ideas unite Liberals and Conservatives into a global quest for universal peace (rights protection). The idea is to make the world safe for democracy. We are told that Wilson’s “words implied that Germany’s militarism threatened democracy everywhere.”
Sanctions against Russia are a case in point, showing why we should not think of the world as a village, why we should not make ourselves a global police power, and why we should not assume a responsibility to protect. These sanctions don’t protect our rights in any conceivable way. Choosing to be on the side of Ukraine and against Russia doesn’t protect our rights. It simply makes a military and political ally out of a people foreign to us and an antagonist of another people foreign to us.
The world-is-a-village idea inserts us into the middle of endless conflicts. The quest for worldwide peace is to be on our terms, but this disregards vast differences in a hundred plus other countries. Sometimes this thinking will take us into wars, and very large wars. During these wars, our rights deteriorate at home and our government grows more powerful. The domestic police power enlarges through its exercise abroad.
Limited government is not about creating a wonderful world everywhere. It is not about protecting our rights by attempting to protect the rights of whatever side we might choose in some conflict in another hemisphere or continent. That goal of a universal police power, thought to be so worthy both on the Left and Right, is typically hijacked by military, business and government interests who stand all to profit by far less than proper or just applications of power. If a limited government tries to protect domestic rights by attacking aggression anywhere in the world, it quickly becomes what we have today, which is big government. A limited government cannot remain limited while getting into the business of intervening in foreign conflicts, disputes, massacres, wars, frictions, secessions, rebellions and revolutions. Big government, in turn, is the plaything of all sorts of special interests and a source of increased injustice because of its increased powers.
2:18 pm on August 8, 2017
