The Galahad Factor


Is principle more important than results?
I'm not a "perfect" libertarian. I differ from most because I believe that it was necessary to intervene in Iraq, and that is the subject that causes the most criticism.

I don't believe that it is the Great American Destiny™ to show the world the wonders of living with democracy. Nor do I believe that the Iraqis (or Muslims in general) are backwards and must learn from the US. Lately I have realized that it is the free market that embodies humanity's best chances, not the trappings of a constitutional government. Given a sufficient chance, I think that an Iraqi free market has as much to teach us as we have to teach them.

No, our obligation is a moral one. And unlike many of my fellow libertarians, I don't think we can hold our nose and say that it is too messy and too violent.

To understand why, it's necessary to go back in time about a century. Before World War I, Woodrow Wilson ordered American troops into Russia to stop the Bolsheviks. He did this without Congressional authorization and without public knowledge. President Wilson considered himself quite the nation builder. Certainly he wasn't the first American president to think so, although he may have been the worst offender. That makes Obama's recent muscle suit flexing at the Woodrow Wilson Center pretty ironic, but that is another topic.

Fast forward to World War II. The field officers and ground troops who fought Americans before WWI were now on the General Staff of the Soviet Union. They knew from experience that despite American promises, if push came to shove American troops would be used against the USSR as surely as night followed day.

Woodrow Wilson triggered the Cold War.

You know the rest of the story. The US overlooked tyranny in the Middle East to contain the Soviet Union.

And that brings us to today.

If libertarians have an absolute, it's "thou shalt not initiate force." Sadly, in some cases it is even treated almost as holy writ. But what do you do when all your choices are bad ones? When no matter what you do, force will come and people will die? Do you hold your nose and use your hip boots to make your way to the other side? What good does it do not to draw your sword if all around you people are getting their heads hacked off?

Why expect principle to work when the maniacs are playing a different game?

It's not enough to be pure and undefiled. The myth we're living isn't the Christianized Grail romances. It's earlier.

It's the Augean stables.

The only way NOT to get messy is to withdraw from the world into political theory. But for liberty to work, there has to be a free market. That means getting dirty. That means giving people a chance to make their own choices. That means keeping the fanatics at bay long enough so that other people can choose a better way.

The free market is the river that can make the difference.

That's not to say that I agree with how Bush has done this war. I don't, and I could go on for pages listing why.

But if a free market is to flow in the Middle East, Iraq is one of the very few nations it can start in.

Galahad doesn't have a place here.

— NeoWayland

Posted: Sun - August 5, 2007 at 07:14 PM  Tag


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