"Freshman Rep. Cotton challenges isolationist wing of GOP" – NBCNews, March 14, 2013.
"Santorum Objects To Rand Paul's 'Isolationist Policies'" – TPM, March 13, 2013.
"McCain Says He's Not An "Interventionist," Calls Rand Paul An "Isolationist." – RealClearPolitics, March 8, 2013.
Of course they're all talking about the so-called "libertarian wing" of the Republican Party.
Libertarians have long been labeled "isolationists" by their detractors – conservatives, neocons, expansionists, empire-builders, the militarists of the "War Party" and anyone with a political, ideological or financial interest in perpetuating war.
Isolationism, once the cornerstone of Thomas Jefferson's cogent advice of "peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none," has been twisted by America's sociopathic empire-building world-conquering ruling class into meaning naïve ignorance of global military threats.
It's time for libertarians to reject this forced rebranding and its stupid cartoon ostrich iconography.
It's time for all libertarians, including libertarian-conservatives, left libertarians, and Libertarian Party supporters to start aggressively pounding detractors with this message:
"Libertarians are non-Isolationists and non-interventionists." Repeat as needed ... firmly and frequently. Libertarians fundamentally reject coercive force but retain the right to use defensive force against coercion.
And since in today's Realpolitik world we're going to be stuck with some kind of nation-state in the foreseeable future, along with an awkwardly unfortunate "Republican-Libertarian" political party, the freedom movement needs to champion and promote its "realpolitik-plus-idealistic" non-interventionist foreign policy.
Non-interventionism means maintaining clear, rational, eagle-eyed surveillance of all potential enemies everywhere and striking, hard and decisively, only as a matter of self-defense.
Spying on potential enemies to determine their war-making capabilities and intentions doesn't violate the non-aggression principle; destabilizing societies, overthrowing regimes and assassinating leaders does. The CIA has created millions of enemies for the US. What we need is a Covert-Intelligence Agency.
That means focusing on building defensive weapons such as anti-missile shields and countermeasures against cyber assaults along with our attack weapons.
That's because everyone from the builders of the Great Wall of China to Medieval armorers knows that purely defensive weapons can always be overcome.
The difference between defense and attack isn't so much a matter of the weapons but how they're used. For most of America's history the nation's leaders have been ruthless killers, not aggressive defenders.
Libertarians must demand that America adopt a "protect-first-attack-last" defense policy.
Kent McManigal's "Time's Up" flag says "Time's up for all who support coercion against those who are harming no one."
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