A Nation of Non-Interventionists Ruled by Interventionists

Antiwar.com links to Mark Weisbrot's excellent article on the "gap between the average American and the foreign policy elite" — We don't want to rule the world. "The US public largely opposes America's foreign wars and economic meddling," the author begins. "They need a voice in US foreign policy." The first paragraph:

Americans are famous for not paying much attention to the rest of the world, and it is often said that foreign wars are the way that we learn geography. But most often it is not the people who have little direct experience outside their own country that are the problem, but rather the experts.

Mr. Weisbrot explains that the "voting base of cold war liberals... has largely disappeared," but "the foreign policy establishment – including most of the media – has managed to maintain this political tendency as a very influential force." He also explains, "The gap between the public and the foreign policy elite is not due to the ignorance of the masses, as the elite would have it, but primarily to a different set of interests and values."

"For the foreign policy elite," Mr. Weisbrot notes, "the importance of running the world – as much as it is possible – is taken as given." He also places blame on "the powerful and rigid institutional arrangements of our foreign policy establishment, the sloth and weakness among the intelligentsia, as well as the corruption from the interests of military contractors." Refreshingly, he concludes, "It is not that the American people are so backward and ignorant, or bellicose."

It is high time to resurrect the America First Committee, described by Bill Kauffman in Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism with the following words:

In pre-imperial America, conservatives objected to war and empire out of jealous regard for personal liberties, a balanced budget, the free enterprise system, and federalism. These concerns came together under the umbrella of the badly misunderstood America First Committee, the largest popular antiwar organization in U.S. history. The AFC was formed in 1940 to keep the United States out of a second European war that many Americans feared would be a repeat of the first. Numbering eight hundred thousand members who ranged from populist to patrician, from Main Street Republican to prairie socialist, America First embodied and acted upon George Washington's Farewell Address counsel to pursue a foreign policy of neutrality.

Congressman Ron Paul, of course, has been the chief voice of this traditional United States non-interventionism, as evidenced by these writings — The Original American Foreign Policy and A Foreign Policy of Freedom: Peace, Commerce, and Honest Friendship.