Why I Hate Isolationism!

Put isolationism together with siblings libertarianism, individualism and cultural liberalism and you have the most repulsive of ideologies. And it has become widely popular, even dominant, especially among the young. You will ask: Aren't Communism, Nazism, and Jihadism worse? No! They are far more materially destructive. But they at least invite to a transcendence of the Ego on behalf of a greater good. These goods are, of course, false gods: care of the poor and oppressed, love for the Motherland, and obedience to the will of Allah. But each is a heresy against integral Christianity: an exaggeration of a definite good to an excess and a denial of other goods. But interiorly, spiritually and morally, I would argue that the isolation of the Self is worse than a disordered allegiance.

In a world of bad, bad, bad actors (China, Russia, Isis, Iran, North Korea) I see that weakness is worse than mistakes in the application of force. Yes, in a world still rife with Hitlers and Stalins, Chamberlain and Churchill remain our defining moral binary.

- Our abandonment of Afghanastan was far worse than our invasion of it.

- Our invasion of Iraq, despised indignantly by the right and the left, was not, in my view, much worse than the alternaties: a blockage that hurt the poor and strengthened Hussein or a hands off approach.

- The worse trajedy of my lifetime was the Rwandan slaughter of about a million innocents. This could have been prevented by 300 marines.

Is it a mistake to take on the role of world policeman? No, not at all. If you are the toughest kid on the block and the only one that can take the bully in a fight, you have no moral alternatives: you have to fight him. The father's sheepdog speech in American Sniper says it best: "there are three types...the sheep, the wolf, and the sheep dog...we are not raising any sheep in this family...and (taking off his belt to his wife's horror) and if I find you are a wolf I will beat the death out of you." We remain the most powerful, rich nation in human history and our moral duty is clear: face down the predators and assist the weak. It is quite simple!

I have asked myself why I am so fiercely internationalist. Two reasons present. First, tempermentally I have always had a vivid imagination about the suffering of others across the glove. One of my clearest memories of childhood is about 7 years old and I learned about the starving babies in China and I paced rapidly back and forth in our small house quite tortured by the thought.

Secondly, the two fundamental facts about the world in which I was born. First, the Cold War: as a Catholic I learned what Communism does to our faith and all our freedoms. I was raised in what some now disparage as a "Manichean" universe: the good and the bad. Secondly, I learned that just prior to my birth all our men risked their lives to defeat Hitler and Japan. I was devastated to learn of the holocaust of the Jews and have never really gotten over it. Yes indeed: I was born into a Manichean world: there are the bad guys and there are the (however flawed and imperfect) the good guys. And I still believe that.

In college (1965-9) I imbibed, of course, all the anti-Americanism of the New Left: military-industrial complex, imperialism, capitalism, racism, et al. And I still see truth in that. Our society is fundamentally flawed, but not inherently evil. The culture of individualism, isolation, and bourgeois materialism is corrosive of the bonds of faith, family and the very human soul. But liberal institutions of freedoms, democracy, rule of law, and market economies basically draw from our Catholic heritage. Their inherent goodness shines brightly in contrast to our enemies.

As a moral conservative and an internationlist patriot I deal with tensions: resistance to the slide into woke cultural liberalism combined with loyalty to my flawed nation and an urgency to share what is best of our heritage with the entire world. It is an interesting positon!