There was William
Galston at the European Council on Foreign Relations, listening
to his fellow elitists and foreign policy honchos caviling about the rise of
Donald Trump and bemoaning the fate of the European Union (EU) at
the hand’s of Britain’s Euro-skeptics. As the assembled luminaries
had a collective sad in their five-star hotel, wondering how the proles
could’ve gotten so far out of hand, Galtson – longtime Democratic party hack,
former domestic advisor to Bill Clinton, and a senior fellow at the “centrist”
Brookings Institution – heard a call to arms. It was almost as if Cecil Rhodes, the British imperialist and original founder and
financier of the Council on Foreign Relations, had spoken to him from on high –
or, rather, from below – and commanded him to spread the Word far and wide:
“I realized that the stakes in the U.S.
presidential election are even higher than I had thought. The fate of the
entire postwar order hangs in the balance, and with it the prospects for
democracy world-wide. Without vigorous American leadership, the prospects are
not bright.”
Oh, yes, those shortsighted Little People are “turning inward,”
and “this is understandable,” but, hey, “liberal internationalism is back on its
heels” and the dreaded “ethno-nationalist populism” – i.e. resistance to the
One World “global governance” schemes of Galston and his comrades – “is on the
march.” What’s a globalist to do?
And it’s not just the English-speaking world that’s resisting the
globalist agenda. Those Frenchies are getting restive, too, and the rest of
Europe is balking at “the obvious candidate for continental leadership” for
“historical reasons.” After all, everyone remembers the last time the Germans
tried to impose “union” on the Europeans, so there’s that. See how prejudiced
the Little People can be? They just don’t have the foresight to worry about
the New Hitler – Vladimir Putin, if you even have to ask –
who “senses a historic opportunity to exploit Europe’s divisions for his own
purposes.” Why, he actually wants to trade with Europe, and that would
undermine the war plans of the CFR types, who are fixated on restarting the
cold war. Of course, they don’t actually say that in so many words, but the
intent is clear enough. They put it like this:
“If Europe doesn’t hold together when facing a
rearmed and resurgent Russia, the gains for democracy and free markets since
the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union may well be
rolled back.”
You know, “democracy” – like in Ukraine, where EU–inspired mobs overthrew the elected President and the
coup leaders immediately launched a vicious war against their own people in
east Ukraine, killing many thousands and unleashing neo-Nazi regiments like
the Azov Battalion on those who dared to resist. That’s “democracy” for you! And alarm bells should go off
whenever you hear a top advisor to Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Walter Mondale
hail “free markets.” It’s a signal for the looting to begin.
As usual, everything depends on the United States – as inheritor
of Rhodes’ beloved British empire – but, alas, the “ethno-nationalist”
contagion has spread across the Atlantic, and it may be that the Yanks
are not coming:
“Now is the worst possible time for the US to
pull back and, as Donald Trump would have it, to reframe America’s relations
with Europe as a transaction to be terminated if the sums don’t come up right.
Franklin Roosevelt understood that a democratic Europe was a vital national
interest of the US So did Ronald Reagan and every other postwar president. US
diplomacy in 2017 and beyond must reflect this core reality.”
In the transaction preferred by Galston and his ilk, America
always comes out the loser. That’s because we have a Mission, and it doesn’t
matter how much it costs: we must bear the weight of Empire on our shoulders
without complaint and without regard for the welfare of our own citizens. After
all, anything less would be selfish: no, we mustn’t succumb to the requirements
of common sense and fiscal sanity. It’s our sacred duty to police the world, so
people like Galston can sit around in the Hague and determine the fate of
entire peoples.
Forget Asia: we can’t “pivot” eastward while the Poles are
pining for American aid and arms and the Romanians are unhappy with their lot.
If we pay too much attention to where more than a third of the world’s
population resides, as opposed to focusing on Estonia (population under two
million) we’ll miss out on a real opportunity to start World War III with Russia.
And let’s stop with the “complaints about insufficient European military and
diplomatic burden-sharing” since these “have proved ineffectual in the past.”
Just like that good-for-nothing uncle who keeps coming to you for “loans” that
are never repaid, you just have to buck up and keep handing out the cash –
because your own ineffectuality is your best friend.
As for those trade agreements which are mislabeled “free trade” but are really justprotectionist trade blocs meant to “integrate” us into
supranational entities – it’s really a shame the two presidential candidates
have bowed to pressure from the Little People and come out against them. But
it’s not too late to shore up the failing EU by signing the Transatlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Galston and the globalists are frightened to death: their plans
for a world-spanning Empire on which the sun never sets seem to be sinking
beneath the same waves that have overwhelmed all the empires of the past. But
they aren’t giving up their grand plans just yet: far from it. As Galston puts
it:
“None of this can succeed unless the American
people are persuaded that outward-facing military, diplomatic and economic
arrangements are consistent with their own well-being. Increased defense
spending, which enhances job-creation as well as national security, may well be
needed. New measures to cushion vulnerable Americans against the wage and
employment shocks created by trade are essential.”
All this “America first” nonsense has to be dispensed with, and
fast: Americans must be weaned away from their selfish parochial concerns and made
to see that we’re all citizens of the Global Village. And if all this
“outward-facing” policy means pouring our wealth into renovating some
ramshackle Ukrainian hamlet until it meets the standards of a typical American
slum, well then let’s create jobs on the home front by arming to the teeth –
after all, we’ll be needing a lot more bombs if we’re going to be fighting the
Russians. Just keep those government printing presses rolling!
And here’s the punch line you’ve been waiting for, where the
Galstonian agenda is revealed for all to see:
“Given
current circumstances, robust internationalism is inconsistent with the fiscal
austerity imposed by budget sequestration, let alone Paul Ryan-style proposals
for retrenchment in the social programs that working Americans rely on for what
is left of their security. Whatever its proponents may say, a smaller
government at home means retreat abroad. This is the road to disaster, and
we must not take it.”
Galston has understood what the National Review crowd
and the Ted Cruz conservatives refuse to acknowledge. As that Old
Right prophet and polemicist Garet Garrett put it:
“Between
government in the republican meaning, that is, Constitutional, representative,
limited government, on the one hand, and Empire on the other hand, there is
mortal enmity. Either one must forbid the other or one will destroy the other.
That we know. Yet never has the choice been put to a vote of the people.”
More than fifty years after those word were written, the people
are rising up against the globalist agenda – against Galston and his fellow
World Planners – and demanding that the issue be put to a vote of the people.
The Republican party, long a fortress of internationalism, has been breached
and taken by self-avowed America First nationalists, and our British cousins
have thrown off the shackles of a supranational super-State -in-the-making,
reasserting their sovereignty and inspiring rebels on the continent to follow
their example.
The revolt against
globalism is going global – and that’s a good thing for libertarians and for
all opponents of Empire. Whatever the contradictions and ideological
idiosyncrasies of the various anti-globalist forces now on the move, their
victory is a precondition for the recovery of liberty in America. Because Galston is perfectly correct to say that “a
smaller government at home means retreat abroad.” He understands what the
leadership of the post-World War II conservative movement has spent decades
evading – and, more importantly, now the rank-and-file are beginning to
understand how they’ve been lied to all these years, and why the promises of
their leaders have all come to naught.
This is a great step forward for libertarians: the consciousness
of the masses is being raised to new heights. Our task now is to engage them,
educate them, and recruit them as soldiers in the fight to take our country
back from Señor Galston and the regnant elites he represents.
SCHEDULING NOTE: Yes, I’m
baaaack! After a “vacation” that consisted of editing the late great
Murray Rothbard’s unpublished book on libertarian strategy, I’m returning to my
regular schedule of three columns per week. So stay tuned to this page, because
there’s a lot more to come.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But
please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made
in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to
peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993
book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative
Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by
Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert andDavid Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).
You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus
Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.