Our Greatest Strength is Liberty, Not Force

Our failure in foreign policy is bipartisan. It fails to recognize that use of military force doesn’t work. It fails to recognize there is no American empire. The conversation of good vs evil no longer is effective. Countries will preserve relationships with Russia and China. Our economy is no longer the strongest in the world. It has competition. And we no longer have a strong currency. 

We refuse to recognize the state of the world as it is. This is no longer the Cold War. America vs Russia. Good vs evil. Where America was by far, the biggest economy in the world and the dollar reigned supreme. 

We need to be honest with ourselves and recognize we are no longer a superpower. The era of military hegemony and dollar hegemony no longer exists. We abused both for too long. The day of reckoning is here. We need to accept this. And it was a bipartisan failure that got us here. 

At the end of Dirty Harry, Clint Eastwood says that a man has to know his limitations. We need to learn and accept ours as a nation. We were militarily profligate. Financially profligate. We debased our military. We debased our money. We were reckless with all the power we had. We treated both with disrespect. And now, here we are. No longer a superpower. In a very competitive world. Where we have limited to no influence. Again. We need to return to the wisdom of George Washington. Avoid foreign entanglements. Our relationship with the world should be based upon commerce. Trade. 

We need fiscal responsibility which means not to increase taxes but a significant reduction in spending. We need to abolish the Fed and legal tender laws. We need to significantly lower taxes and have a neutral tax code so that the income taxes we pay are independent of how we organize economic activity. We need to deregulate. We need to, as we have throughout most of our history, trust markets over politicians. Markets have significantly more wisdom!

And unfortunately we refuse to recognize that coercion is a bad policy. Always and everywhere! Our founding was predicated upon our own fight to be free on our own terms. It had nothing to do with conquering others. We have a legal principle that force is only legitimate when the threat is direct and imminent. We perverted that principle in the world stage. We used it not to defend ourselves but rather in attempt to bend the world to our will. And have used the dollar as a weapon in the same capacity. Hegemony. We are an even greater nation when we reject the concept of hegemony. And embrace voluntarism, liberty and freedom.