Baldly stated, the United States government is the greatest danger to peace and freedom the world has ever known. This is true precisely because it has held aloft the torch of liberty for so long, an example to the world of what a society based on individual freedom can achieve. That is the great paradox of American power. As we abandon our libertarian heritage – even as we retain the forms of a constitutional republic – we destroy what made our power possible.
The process is reversible: we can restore our old republic – but only if we give up the mirage of empire. If we continue to pursue the fatal dream of a beneficent internationalism, America will lose itself, dissolve its unique character – and wreak destruction, not only on its own people but on the peoples of the world. In switching roles with the Soviets, we prefigure their fate: and the resulting implosion is going to shake the world to its foundations in a way that the fall of the Kremlin never did. In programming our own self-destruction, we will likely drag much of the world with us.
Those are the stakes, and they are high – too high for us anti-interventionists to rest for a single moment.
