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Posted July 10, 2001
Judges of the Nations
I always read Mr. Stromberg's columns with great interest, but I found... "Who Made the Americans the Judges of Nations?," to leave a lot of questions unanswered, including its title. The article mentions "the long-standing American sense of boundless world mission," but a quick view of past presidents found the policy is not long standing. For instance: John Quincy Adams said that America should not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy". And president George Washington said: "It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world."
Didn't American interventionism overseas start with Woodrow Wilson? If this is the case, Mr. Stromberg's view that it is rooted in 200 year-old Protestant philosophy would be lacking.
~ Ralph Eckerson, Canada
Joseph
Stromberg replies:
The point wasn't that post-millennialist Protestantism made anyone do anything, immediately, but that with the near-total victory of that type of Protestantism in the later 19th century, the stage was set for certain parties to use its themes to justify their foreign policies. Further, the programmatic assumptions arrived at, say from 1890-1910, lived on as policy, even without the explicitly religious message. The late Murray Rothbard has a very interesting essay on the menace of the religious Left in The Irrepressible Rothbard, ed., Lew Rockwell (Auburn: Mises Institute, 2000).
Anyway,
George Washington, etc., were not necessarily influenced by that particular
viewpoint, although Tuveson does mention Timothy Dwight and Joel Barlow
as being among those who were. You might expect to find more of this
among the New England Federalists and their successors, not among
Middle State and Southern Federalists.
Bootstraps
[Regarding Justin Raimondo's column, "Milosevic's Martyrdom":]
I wish
that Yugoslavia could get infusion of so badly needed capital, without
Jinjic's machinations, for it is impossible for the people there to
pull themselves out of the economic death by their bootstraps or by
their pig tail (as Baron Von Munchausen did in one of his travels
to Russia). Milosevic was, he is, and will, forever, remain, like
all of his political ilk, a stupid communist.
Raimondo [is] one fine writer!
~ D. Radosavljevic
Agenda Debate
[Regarding Justin Raimondo's reply to Dimitri O.'s letter, "Slobo, Raimondo, & Kostunica":]
Justin
Raimondo has been just as guilty in splitting the antiwar
movement with his sideline right-wing, Libertarian agenda as IAC,
emperors-clothes or other leftists organizations. He often writes
great articles promoting the antiwar movement and I believe that Antiwar.com
is the best purveyor of that message, but I always shudder when he
strays from the message. The antiwar message is too important for
him to continue to let this divisiveness creep in. He should consider
taking his own good advice on staying unified behind the real cause.
~ D/H Ginter
Justin Raimondo replies:
You say you "shudder" when I stray from "the message" - but exactly what message are you referring to? What is "the real cause"? The abstract idea of peace, and a noninterventionist foreign policy, cannot exist in a vacuum. The idea that, say, the defense of Slobodan Milosevic is the same as protesting US intervention in the Balkans, or that every fashionable leftist hobbyhorse has to be dragged into the antiwar movement, is pernicious and must be opposed. And to say that I have been "just as guilty" of splitting anti-interventionists is absurd: Antiwar.com did not ban itself from the platform of the International Action Center's rallies during the Kosovo war. Antiwar.com did not hold up Slobodan Milosevic and his rotten regime as benevolent and worth defending in themselves. Antiwar.com did not seek to exploit the antiwar movement in order to build its own organization at everyone else's expense. We pursued a single-issue approach, and I advocated this strategy in my column. I'll take you what makes ME shudder: the idea of a new Balkan war (or a war anywhere) with the likes of the IAC splitting and diverting the antiwar movement away from its goal of uniting all who can be united against US military intervention.
Weather Report
The
only political web site I have been reading for more than a year is
Antiwar. Most of the articles are, in my opinion, the truth seeking
and constructive in their nature, really antiwar oriented. Unfortunately,
there have been some I find extremely biased and warlike rather than
antiwar, nationalistic rather than cosmopolitan, such as "Milosevic's Martyrdom"
by Justin Raimondo, July 6, 2001.
Nobody should expect an intellectual to show so much hatred towards
one nation and narrow-mindedness (by identifying a nation with one
leader) and frivolity (by using gossip to support the own "ideas")
as Mr. Raimondo expresses in this article.
~ S. Janicijevic