Cross posted from
It Affects You
Paul Weyrich is writing a series on "The Next Conservatism" if anyone has an interest. The recent entry in the series is titled, "A Foreign Policy for Americans." What caught my eye was that the sort of foreign policy Weyrich is proposing is diametrically opposed to what currently passes as foreign policy among the Conservative community.
Weyrich is a prominent Right Wing Sexual Conservative going back to the days when the movement helped elect Ronald Reagan. He's a regular at sites like Concerned Women for America and the American Family Association, and he's a close friend of the LaHayes. His Social Conservative credentials are rock solid. If you're wondering where you've seen him in the news recently, he's the Conservative John Roberts described back in the early 80`s as "of course no friend of ours."
The Religious Right has largely gone along with Bush's foreign policy, but below the jump read what Weyrich has to say about it:
Do we now have a foreign policy that requires a federal government, and particularly an executive branch, so strong that it is a danger to our liberties? If we do, then we have a fundamental contradiction at the heart of our foreign policy. Why? Because the most basic purpose of our foreign policy should be to preserve our liberties. [...]
Then, after World War II, we instead began to play the great power game, which the Founding Fathers had opposed. Because of the threat of Communism, that was necessary for a time. But when Communism fell in the early 1990s, we did not return to our historic policy. Rather, we declared ourselves the dominant power in the world, "the only superpower," the New Rome as some would have it. We set off on the course of American Empire, despite the fact that empire abroad almost certainly means eventual extinction of liberty here at home.
The next conservatism needs a different foreign policy, a foreign policy designed for a republic, not an empire. It needs to recognize that the Establishment wants to play the great power game because it lives richly off that game. But the next conservatism is about throwing the Establishment out, not enriching it further. The next conservatism's foreign policy should proceed from these wise words of Sen. Robert A. Taft:
I do not believe it is a selfish goal for us to insist that the overriding purpose of all American foreign policy should be the maintenance of the liberty and peace of our people of the United States, so that they may achieve that intellectual and material improvement which is their genius and in which they can set an example for all peoples. By that example we can do an even greater service to mankind than we can do by billions of material assistance - and more than we can ever do by war.
Truth is I have not at all followed Paul Weyrich, so I did not know if this represented his jumping ship, or if had had long opposed the Conservative's irresponsible and reckless foreign policy. So I did a little digging (with an admitted emphasis on
little.)
Here's what
he wrote just after the London Bombings:
If President Bush doesn't want to repeat his statement after another terrorist attack, then he immediately needs to re-direct resources to learn how to fight this different enemy. He needs to import people from abroad who understand Fourth Generation Warfare.
Terrorists will win if they force our leaders to jettison time-honored liberties guaranteed Americans by the Constitution and our Bill of Rights. It is important that we do everything possible to sustain those liberties as we fight the war against terrorism. That Western Governments have provided their citizens with freedom and democracy incenses terrorists. While 9/11 forced us to enact the USA-Patriot Act, sensible leaders in both parties realize that the scope of the powers could be extended far beyond fighting true terrorism. What happened in London does not change the fact that sensible safeguards are needed to ensure the powers of the Patriot Act are used to do the very thing Congress intended - to fight real terrorism - not indiscriminately diminish our liberties and freedom.
Maybe this is what Roberts meant all those years ago when he said Weyrich was no friend of the Conservatives.
Cross posted from It Affects You