In reply to “It’s Always World War II,” by Justin Raimondo, 01/29/14:
Amazing piece!
I have wrestled with the fact we have not had a term that powerfully and clearly opposes “isolationist.”
“Anti-interventionist” doesn’t quite work for me. I believe there events that justify military intervention — just not all of them.
I travel widely and have been involved in international business, education, and culture for decades. I am hardly an isolationist.
I’m going to suggest an alternate, newly minted, term: Anti-aggressionist.
Since the US changed the name of the Department of War to the Department of Defense, we have not had a defensive war.
I have taken to calling the so-called Department of Defense, the Department of Aggression.
I do not refer to “defense spending” any more. It’s now “military spending.”
I no longer refer to the military as “the service.” Its just “the military.”
I often share your well-articulated opinions. Thanks.
Salvatore Zambito
In reply to “The Progressive Crack-up,” by Justin Raimondo, 01/27/14:
Thank you for this editorial. You pointed out absurdity in many ways. My favorite was …
“Any liberal-libertarian alliance, then, will necessarily be tactical and limited, or else one side will invariably lose out. With such fundamental disagreements, the center cannot hold, even on issues like NSA spying where the sides are broadly in agreement. Ideology, in very practical terms, matters.”
Being a liberal with libertarian leanings I can see a merger of politics between the two hold more firmly than the Democrat politicos that talk of peace but project warfare and empirical domination at every turn. Or ones that talk of helping the poor but are the first to talk of any non-military budget cuts when convinced that we are spending too much. The cognitive dissonance within the two major parties is staggering and because we are “used to” this dissonance they claim that any other political merger is impossible because of the internal conflicts that are likely to surface (as if the two major parties never have internal conflicts).
Alex Martin
