Can a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats, largely shielded from public accountability provide something as ambiguous and vast as “national security” ??? - Without turning the entire project into a giant pork-barrel scheme and making a general mess of things ??

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Super Conservative Republicans : The Future Freedom Foundation : Article : "Conservatives and American Empire".

Randolph Bourne’s declaration : “war is the health of the state”.

“American exceptionalism : This is the notion that the United States is a uniquely virtuous nation, one committed to human rights, liberty, and peace; and therefore her government can pursue global hegemony without becoming a menace".

The Future Freedom Foundation
Conservatives and American Empire
October 21, 2011


by Tim Kelly

Tim Kelly is a columnist and policy advisor at the Future of Freedom Foundation in Fairfax, Virginia, a correspondent for Radio America's Special Investigator, and a political cartoonist.

Conservatives and American Empire


Some excerpts :

Conservative columnist Charles Krauthammer said in 2002, “People are coming out of the closet on the word ‘empire.’” Krauthammer even boasted that America is “no mere international citizen. It is the dominant power in the world, more dominant than any since Rome.” Robert Kagan has written of “The Benevolent Empire.” Dinesh D’Souza, after writing in 2002 that “America has become an empire,” approvingly added that it is “the most magnanimous imperial power ever.”

Andrew Bacevich is one conservative who takes a skeptical view of America’s global predominance. He ridicules the idea “that the promotion of peace, democracy, and human rights and the punishment of evil-doers, not the pursuit of self-interest, has defined the essence of American diplomacy.” Bacevich believes the goal of the U.S. military has been “to achieve something approaching omnipotence,” and he mocks the idea that such power in the hands of American officials “is by definition benign.”

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U.S. officials justify America’s globe-girdling hegemony as a necessary condition for the preservation of world peace and stability. Like the Roman Empire of the first century or the British Empire of the nineteenth, the United States is the “indispensable nation,” standing taller and seeing further than all others. But even a superficial examination of the facts exposes such claims as delusional self-aggrandizement. The U.S. government is merely a group of very fallible people who have proven incapable of managing even domestic affairs, let alone the world. Far from giving Americans protection, the U.S. government’s imperial foreign policy has been creating enemies in every corner of the world while debauching the currency, draining the treasury, and burdening future generations with crushing debt.

Perhaps the enthusiasm so many conservatives show for American militarism and adventurism abroad can be explained by their misunderstanding of the fundamental nature of the state.

As Murray Rothbard said, “the State is nothing more nor less than a bandit gang writ large.” It is naïve to expect a bunch of politicians and bureaucrats, largely shielded from public accountability, to provide something as ambiguous and vast as “national security” without turning the entire project into a giant pork-barrel scheme and making a general mess of things. But Rothbard was purged from the Right for his heresy of rejecting the Cold War consensus, and his libertarian insights were largely ignored by the postwar conservative movement.

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