It's an interesting discussion of how support for Israel is becoming generally more widespread on the right side of the political spectrum. Bernstein also addresses Ron Paul's Israel problem. See: "Ron Paul Tells Newsmax: I Support Israel." And Jonathan Tobin, "No Need for the RJC to Invite Paul to Forum":
People like Ron Paul have taken the valuable libertarian creed of opposition to intrusive government and support for individual freedom and twisted it into a belief system that doesn’t view U.S. security abroad or the life of a besieged democratic Jewish state as something Americans should care about. Far from respecting Israel’s sovereignty, Paul is willing to watch with complacence as its very existence is called into question without the U.S. feeling obligated to lift a finger. His “respect” for Israel is little different from the sentiments voiced by an earlier generation of isolationists — the “America First” group — whose admiration of Nazi Germany and indifference to the fate of the Jews restrained the country’s initial response to both Hitler and the Holocaust.And that is why I wrote two posts hammering Doug Mataconis at Outside the Beltway. We went around on Twitter for a while and he was unable to defend his opposition to Israel. Faced with the fact that "Palestinians" repeatedly call for Israel's destruction, Mataconis was relegated to calling me names like "nutjob" and "Pamela Geller loon."
See: "Newt Gingrich Attacked By Weasels," and "Newt's Backtracking on Palestinians as 'Invented People'?"
Oh no, an American politician who actually puts America first? We can't have that. The Feds are cutting heating assistance to AMERICAN citizens, but we are still sending more money than what is being cut to support a foreign nation. No to entangling alliances and no to ALL foreign aid, including that to Israel.
ReplyDeleteChris, why should the Feds be doing what should be a LOCAL, or even private-charitable, task?
ReplyDeleteConsider that proactively interdicting tyranny on a highly-interconnected planet might just be putting America first ... by preventing it from ever getting strong enough to start a World War on our shores.
The problem with the Paulistinian position is that it ignores the technical and social realities of 21st-century civilization ... and treats dictator and democrat with equal deference, in a perverse moral equivalence.
That's how the last World War got started.
You want to minimize the need for foreign aid? Support the establishment of rights-respecting governance as the replacement for tyranny, in a timely and decisive manner, when and where it appears.
Rich Casebolt,
ReplyDeleteThe US is not under threat by Palestinians who want their land back from an occupier. The US never had a problem with terrorism UNTIL it took sides in that dispute.
You want security? Stay out of other people's fights.
Keep your head in the Mississippi sand, Reb ... what part of "dar-al-Islam" don't you understand?
ReplyDeleteThe Palestinians are just convenient cannon fodder for the totalitarian expansionists of the Middle East ... and would you care to name for me such an expansionist in history that ever stopped expanding ON THEIR OWN, without being confronted?
It's pay a little now, or pay a LOT later.
Rich Casebolt,
ReplyDeleteThat's North Carolina, thank you.
The Palestinians do not have the resources to invade and conquer us. And again, we had no problems with Muslims in general until we took the side of Israel. If DC hadn't been messing with them, they wouldn't have messed with us on 9/11. Even the government-appointed 9/11 Commission admitted that.
The biggest threat from Islam is that your fellow Neocons are importing Muslim immigrants who, once they attain critical mass here, will indeed constitute a Trojan horse. Samuel Huntington makes the paleo case in The Clash of Civilizations.
Good fences make good neighbors. But to keep them out of our backyards, we need to stay out of theirs.