Foreign Policy

If America has Foreign Policy wrong, who’s got it right?

The idea of missionizing transcends Right and Left, but the essential difference that I’m interested in pointing out is that the Left does it in the name of humanitarian intervention, and the Right in the name of freedom; using the term Freedom as an explicit appeal to religious motivation. When George W. Bush came to power he set free the, Religious Right, to use overt religious language, missionizing language that actually moves from “freedom” to “salvation,” as a justification for American power. We cast ourselves against Saddam Hussein and the “Axis of Evil” entirely in terms of a binary evil-versus-good contest, and in doing so set into action two negatives forces: the “eating away” if you will of the ‘Wall of separation” between politics and religion, and our relationship with other religions.

 

American fundamentalisms…

conversion or death; however the first seeds of descent, during the first generation of Colonist, was spread by Roger Williams and his concept of a “wall of separation” between the magistrate and the religion. Thomas Jefferson would latter use that phrase to describe the distinction between the church and the state. “Go forth and teach all nations,” Jesus commands and that mandate is still fundamental to American fundamentalisms.

Today it is perpetrated by Mr. Bush and his chosen administration where the word freedom is equated with the concept of salvation. Holding to the tradition of Abraham Lincoln…“The last best hope of mankind.” The United States of America is justified by the virtue of its mission… the “manifest destiny” of a free people extending freedom. A key doctrine in what I am calling American fundamentalisms.

So that today whether it be a Liberal or a Conservative, in the matter of Iraq, the destruction of Iraq was an act of purification and the failure is not on Americas but rather on the Iraqis failure to yield on their “sectarian” agendas. These people won’t get together and form a cohesive government. America is a city on a hill, exceptional and virtuous. If we’ve gone to Iraq and it turned out to be a fiasco, it can’t be our fault because we were motivated by good intentions.

Immigration

 

Thomas Paine once alluded to the concept that, in one respect, he was not a member of only one community, but rather all communities. It seems clear enough to me that his reason for believing so is because all communities, to one degree or another, affect one another.

In the very broadest of terms “a community is a social group of organisms sharing an environment…” Hence, the very reason for government, geographical boundaries, and politicians; that is, to intermediate between all the various communities.

The great majority of my life has been spent in two geographical areas, what is loosely termed “North County Coastal,” where I attended primary and secondary school, and San Diego proper where I attended post secondary school.

There is not a great deal of difference between the two geographically, or in the context of “values”. I’m a registered Republican and probably to some extent because the two areas have traditionally held Republican values; although it has been argued that the margin of difference has lessened for San Diego County, California in recent years.

Am I a Republican…more than a few people have labeled me a neo-liberal because my position reflected a sort of Neoliberalism.

Given that I am not a politician or an activist I have not been active in any of the many communities that have surrounded me for more than half a century; I suppose that in one respect my beliefs are similar with those of Thomas Paine…I am ‘not a member of only one community, but rather all communities’.

There is however a new community that I have been heavily involved with these past eight years. In fact I devote approximately fifty hours a week to it, and that community is a virtual community, or online community; although some people are contentious as to whether it is a community. Is that public speaking, not really but there is always an unseen audience, and believe me they are not hesitant to comment if they see an opening or feel slighted.

It is there that I engage in the political process; it is there that ideas are exchanged; it is there that I do my research; it is there that I get my news; it is there that I both influence, and am influenced on every aspect of government and values. One of the most important values that I have come to realize in all of this is that diverse perspectives each have an argument to be made in its favor; what is important is to discover the “best argument”.

 

 

Voteing Rights

 

Should the right to vote require a college education?

 

The best theory so far in ethics is that good judgment of individuals emanates from the development of good character and that has to do with habits, virtues and knowledges concerning how one should live one’s life. Does the study of philosophy develop good character and good judgment?

I’ll take an example of good judgment as I see it: it’s impractical to say that beer X is the best beer on earth but there is wisdom in saying that person W is well known and widely respected for his/her views on beer and if he/she says beers 1, 2, and 3 are great beers, chances are great that they are.

Character [moral excellence] can easily be judged by the same method as good judgment was judged.

My conclusion…a high school drop-out can decide their vote by that method and it can be just as sound as a professor of philosophies.

What more can one ask of a political candidate than good judgment and good character.