LatinsforPaul
01-07-2011, 12:05 PM
Where Is the Tea Party Revolution on Foreign Policy?
by Stephen Kinzer
America’s latest populist movement, which reaches back to revolutionary history by calling itself the “Tea Party,” helped shape the remarkable results of last November’s midterm election. Some dare to hope that candidates elected in that political uprising might help arrest America’s alarming decline. Others see the uprising as no more than a cover for the corporate power that lay behind many so-called insurgent campaigns of that extraordinary political season.
One thing about Tea Party ideology is clear: it is almost entirely a reaction to the Obama administration’s domestic policies. The decline of American greatness, however, is due at least as much to profoundly misguided foreign policies. Unless those policies are reevaluated and changed in some fundamental way, there will be little chance of reclaiming America’s immense promise.
Where do the self-described insurgents stand on crucial questions of America’s role in the world? It’s hard to tell. Daunting global challenges face the United States, but Tea Party activists have no coherent approach to them.
When it comes to dealing with those challenges, the newly triumphant insurgents are of two minds. Some, such as Sarah Palin, seem to embrace what has become known as neo-con ideology: that the United States is the world’s enforcer, and that to protect America’s interests, the U.S. government needs to rattle sabers every day and wage war on those who defy it. Senator-elect Marco Rubio of Florida seemed to embrace this view with his chest-thumping proclamation that the United States is “the most exceptional country in the history of mankind.” That is the opposite of insurgent thinking. It sounds like a depressing reaffirmation of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s famous assertion, “We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.” That view, endlessly echoed across the political spectrum, holds that Americans have been granted unique insight into how societies should be organized, and they have the right and duty to impose their political, social, and economic values on others.
A few of the elder statesmen who helped inspire the Tea Party movement, such as Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul, take the opposite view. They argue that the world will not collapse if Bolivia and Sudan and Kyrgyzstan are left to deal with their own problems without tutelage from Washington. Even after last year’s so-called political insurgency, however, theirs seem to be lonely voices in the hypermilitarist Tea Party wilderness.
Continue reading: http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd1101e.asp
by Stephen Kinzer
America’s latest populist movement, which reaches back to revolutionary history by calling itself the “Tea Party,” helped shape the remarkable results of last November’s midterm election. Some dare to hope that candidates elected in that political uprising might help arrest America’s alarming decline. Others see the uprising as no more than a cover for the corporate power that lay behind many so-called insurgent campaigns of that extraordinary political season.
One thing about Tea Party ideology is clear: it is almost entirely a reaction to the Obama administration’s domestic policies. The decline of American greatness, however, is due at least as much to profoundly misguided foreign policies. Unless those policies are reevaluated and changed in some fundamental way, there will be little chance of reclaiming America’s immense promise.
Where do the self-described insurgents stand on crucial questions of America’s role in the world? It’s hard to tell. Daunting global challenges face the United States, but Tea Party activists have no coherent approach to them.
When it comes to dealing with those challenges, the newly triumphant insurgents are of two minds. Some, such as Sarah Palin, seem to embrace what has become known as neo-con ideology: that the United States is the world’s enforcer, and that to protect America’s interests, the U.S. government needs to rattle sabers every day and wage war on those who defy it. Senator-elect Marco Rubio of Florida seemed to embrace this view with his chest-thumping proclamation that the United States is “the most exceptional country in the history of mankind.” That is the opposite of insurgent thinking. It sounds like a depressing reaffirmation of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s famous assertion, “We are the indispensable nation. We stand tall. We see further into the future.” That view, endlessly echoed across the political spectrum, holds that Americans have been granted unique insight into how societies should be organized, and they have the right and duty to impose their political, social, and economic values on others.
A few of the elder statesmen who helped inspire the Tea Party movement, such as Pat Buchanan and Ron Paul, take the opposite view. They argue that the world will not collapse if Bolivia and Sudan and Kyrgyzstan are left to deal with their own problems without tutelage from Washington. Even after last year’s so-called political insurgency, however, theirs seem to be lonely voices in the hypermilitarist Tea Party wilderness.
Continue reading: http://www.fff.org/freedom/fd1101e.asp