As a libertarian, I find myself more and more finding justifications for the United States to adopt a policy of non-intervention. I believe that our nation should openly trade with other nations, but that should be the extent of our involvement. I believe we should loosen the standards of immigration and deny access to foreigners from hostile counties or of hostile nationalities. Other than that, we shouldn’t bog down the immigration process that only fosters black market labor.
My views on these matters run counter to the conservative movement. For a long time now, the conservative movement in the United States has been one of interventionism, closed borders, and regulated trade with foreign nations. I have read articles from conservative pundits lambasting our trade with China because of its immoral government (which isn’t any more immoral than ours, although a little less corrupt and more centralized). But I agree with them when it comes to things like fiscal responsibility, cutting spending, and cutting taxes. Heck, most of them want to eliminate the welfare state.
But there is a disconnect between libertarians and conservatives. There is the social agenda that many conservatives hold dear and there is the foreign policy agenda. Right now, many conservatives believe that there are tons of Islamic radicals out there who wish to do us harm, which is mostly true, and that by sending troops overseas, it is the only way to resolve this. While most libertarians disagree and look for other solutions, if there are any at all, conservatives tend to not see things that way. I have had more fights with conservatives than I care to discuss on this topic and I have been called everything from a terrorist supporter to an Anti-Semite.
All that aside, I think it is high time that libertarians consider backing off on the foreign policy issues and focus instead on an enemy that is probably much more destructive to our nation in the long term: the welfare state. Our nation is bankrupt and yet our leaders insist on following this farcical Keynesian roadmap to Hell (where Keynes probably is right now) because they’ve never met a program they didn’t like implementing.
The government is a parasite on society as it stands today. It can only exist as long as there is a large number of productive companies for them to take money from. Without that, they will wither, but they will be the last thing to go like any good parasite. Our welfare state is largely responsible for this problem and we need to end it in America. Only libertarians and conservatives can do since only they are the ones who desire to end it.
I wish we could content with them on every issue. But we forget that there is a greater enemy than the conservative movement right now and that is the Left-wing and other Statist movements that seek to destroy us from the inside. It is high time that we focus on this destructive domestic agenda that Republicans and Democrats have embarked on and forget about the foreign policy and social agendas of the conservative movement for now. If we bring the evils of the welfare state to the forefront and convince more and more people that you are hurting your children, then we will bring down the Left, who relies on stupid welfare state zombies for their support.
Then after the dust has settled and the Leftist are back on the fringe, as they should be, will be able to hash the other issues such as abortion or the war on terror.