A few days ago I was debating a progressive. One of the criticisms he used is that Trump had limited the access Congressional leaders had to the Presidential Daily Brief.
I didn’t say there why I considered the PDB wrong, but I’d like to say it here.
The Presidential Daily Briefing is drawn mainly from classified intelligence. It presupposes that the United States must actively intervene in the internal affairs of other nations.
There is absolutely nothing in the Constitution that gives the Federal government any authority whatsoever in the internal affairs of other nations.
In fact, the Federal government and American citizens would fight it if the same thing was done to us.
Now the assumption that protecting the United States requires intervening in other nations, that is flawed. It could go back to 1953, it could go back to the beginning of the Cold War and the end of World War I, it could go back to the Treaty of Versailles.
It is unAmerican to intervene in other nations. Yet that shaped American foreign policy and insured disaster after disaster. What’s more, even the modern liberals and progressives accept ongoing and expanding intervention as normal.
If Americans want freedom from other nations intervening in the United States, we have to extend the same courtesy. Parity works.