Why I'm Against Interventionism

In a discussion with a friend on Facebook, I started thinking about why I disagree with interventionism.  This basically encapsulates my views.

There have been slaughters of humanity since humans arrived on the scene.  I have a very negative view of human nature, rather Augustinian in view, in which humans are not good at heart or wanting the best for all by nature, but will do amazingly brutal things to each other in the "State of Nature" as Locke put it, unless restrained by the forces of society.  I'd imagine the first early man to start cave painting the antelopes he saw running around was killed by the first art critic with an antelope bone to the back of the head when the critic didn't like the painting, and so it went.  Here in the West, where 4000 years of slow process into the question of human rights and civil society has made it possible to have advanced culture and relative peace, we've still had our bouts of utter destruction of life and property.  And that's "advanced" by the standard of much of the world where life is cheap and shooting your neighbor in an argument about a property line or a chicken is a noble act.  I hate to seem like someone who doesn't care, I don't like seeing humans brutal to humans, but simply put there is nothing we can do about it.  Humans had been amazing evil to each other before the USA came on the scene, and if humanity is lucky enough to make it 10,000 years from now and the USA is long gone, humans will still be brutal to each other.  The Brits tried to police the world in the 19th to 20th Centuries, and look where they are now -- they have created a huge surveillance state where saying the wrong thing is "crimethink" and they posture over the useless Falkland Islands with 4th rate Argentina. Yes, some military actions are absolutely necessary -- the original action in Afghanistan after 9/11 was.  But what we needed to do rather than nation build was find OBL, kill OBL and his associates, stay just long enough to let the Afghanis decide what madman they wanted running their "nation" (scare quotes intentional) and then leave them to their own devices.

So I disagree politely with those who think that intervention is a necessity:   *interventions* are never necessary.  Some *military actions* are, but internventionism is simply moral do-goodism that saps our resources and is at best a band aid on the gaping wound of dark human nature.  Look at Iraq -- we were still occupying the country, and the Shia who had been empowered by our glorious "intervention" there started funding death squads to go about the country shooting people for listening to music, teaching subjects that were considered "unIslamic" in universities, and those just having some fun and trying to enjoy their lives. By at least come accounts, the political situation is as bad now as it was under Saddam Hussein, but certainly Iraq has not become -- nor ever will become -- a liberal (small "L"), Jeffersonian republic where human rights are respected and the dignity of the person is considered paramount in legislation and law enforcement.

It's a brutal world out there, and the USA will go bankrupt trying to crusade to make it better.  Better we stay in our own backyard and deal with our issues than make the world "safe."  Here are some wise words from a long dead US President, John Quincy Adams, about America's role in the world:

"Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit...."
                                                              -- John Quincy Adams, 1821

Left/Right Wing Politics and Socialism: Non-Equatable.

Stephanie Janiczek over at "Clash Daily" has written a blog in which she says that the National Socialist Movement was actually a "left-wing" movement rather than a right-wing movement to which it has usually been assigned.  I've seen these kind of things before from Righties trying to make Hitler a Leftie, I suppose so Conservative politics can be freed of the stigma of being somehow ideologically connected to Nazism. While Janiczek writes fairly well, she sadly falls into a series of missteps that derails her line of thinking.

The first problem with this piece is that it is written from a mistaken understanding of what socialism is.  Socialism is  an economic policy  in which the State controls various parts of the means and forces of production in order to provide on a (theoretically) equal basis for all persons.  Socialism is not "Leftism" -- it is only due to the fact that Marx and the Commies saw socialism as a step to end-stage Communism that people today associate Socialism purely with Leftist ideology.  Socialism can be used by any kind of a political system or social system  to achieve its ends.  Yes, it is historically connected to the Communists as they were the biggest purveyors of Socialism in the 20th Century, but that doesn't mean the economics of Socialism were only used by the Lefties in Russia and forced down the throats of captive nations.

Janiczek misunderstands the core values of Fascism (Nazism being a particular form of Fascism.)  She writes:

[W]e have him [Hitler]admitting his socialism. He doesn’t call Nazism by anything else other than National Socialism. Professors I know would be flipping their lids at me for daring to say what I am saying, but I knew they were lying when I was studying this. How could Hitler, who controlled Churches, Media, Schools, the Military, Health Care and everything else, be a right-winger? Was it because he was a racist? So, racism apparently makes a Nazi, or member of the National SOCIALIST German WORKER’S Party a right-winger? How convenient.

Well why don't we let the actual founder of Fascism speak to this, Benito Mussolini in his work, The Doctrine of Fascism:

The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions, and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative. Individuals and groups are admissible in so far as they come within the State. Instead of directing the game and guiding the material and moral progress of the community, the liberal State restricts its activities to recording results. The Fascist State is wide awake and has a will of its own. For this reason it can be described as " ethical ".

In Fascism, the State is the literal embodiment of the people.  There are no individuals, no groups, and no associations that do not fall under the umbrella of the State.  Mussolini was never the huge racist that Hitler was, although he did have a very strong ethnocentrism in that he believed that Italian culture and the Italian people were the pinnacle of human achievement.  In that line of thought, he saw Fascism as the ultimate political system of a group of particular people in their nation, united in one purpose:  self-glorification through the State.

Both Mussolini and Hitler shared this world view.  Therefore, the Nazi and Fascist states controlled every aspect of life of their particular group of people with the purpose of self-glorification of those people. Socialism, as a system in which the State controls the important means and forces of production, was the economic system of this self-glorification.  While the Nazis embraced the term "socialist" since they saw Nazism promoting the welfare of the German people, Mussolini was less enthused in calling his system "socialist," as he wrote:

Fascism is therefore opposed to Socialism to which unity within the State (which amalgamates classes into a single economic and ethical reality) is unknown, and which sees in history nothing but the class struggle. Fascism is likewise opposed to trade unionism as a class weapon. But when brought within the orbit of the State, Fascism recognizes the real needs which gave rise to socialism and trade unionism, giving them due weight in the guild or corporative system in which divergent interests are coordinated and harmonized in the unity of the State.

Neither the Italian Fascists nor the German Nazis made any attempt to wipe out the historic class system that existed in their nations -- rather, they turned the class system to the ends of the State.  German and Italian industrialists made huge fortunes in colluding with the political system to gear up for war.  Both German and Italian working class people were told their labor was a great build up to national and ethnic greatness, and to work as hard as possible while praising the State.

Now, Janiczek might say "yes, and this sounds a whole lot like what the Commies wanted!"  There is however, a very key difference, and this is what separates Communism as a left wing socialistic movement from Fascism and Nazism as right wing socialistic movements.

Neither the Fascists nor the Nazis had any desire to empower other states or peoples.  Both in fact saw weaker nations as resources for their own population.  Both Fascism and Nazism were glorifications of a particular people in a particular nation.  Hitler, for example, saw Britain and the USA as equals as they were powerful nations made up of "Aryan" people -- other European nations might be "Aryan" to some degree, but they were not powerful and so were to be subsumed by the expanding Reich.  Mussolini, while not basing his doctrine on race per se, saw the Italian culture as supreme and so justified attacks on other nations as taking over "lesser" groups.

The Commies in principle didn't have this idea at all.  As Leon Trotsky wrote:

The present productive forces have long outgrown their national limits. A socialist society is not feasible within national boundaries. Significant as the economic successes of an isolated workers’ state may be, the programme of “Socialism in one country” is a petty-bourgeois utopia. Only a European and then a world federation of socialist republics can be the real arena for a harmonious socialist society.

This is the key difference:  Communism in ideology is a system of "brotherhood of man," bringing together all dispossessed people around the globe into the glories of socialist republics.  This has always been the Leftist approach since 1789 (and ideologically before).  Right wing social policies see a particular group in a particular nation, and acts with hostility toward other groups.  Thus, Socialist policies in those nations were for those people in those nations (to wit:  Germans and Italians).

Left wing politics in the USA are more accepting of the idea of more open borders, multiculturalism, sharing of wealth among all groups and using the State to ensure this equality.  Right wing politics are more toward closed borders, promoting a singular culture in public, and very accepting of the class system and see mobility as a personal goal rather that a social one.  The most reactionary Right Wingers, such as Pat Buchanan, live in dread fear that multiculturalism will destroy the "European cultural basis" of the United States.  I am not saying that the Right in the USA is "Fascist" any more than I would suggest the Left is "Communist."  My point is that both the Left and the Right in the USA have benign characteristics of the horrific, totalitarian systems that developed when either side went to their most extreme.

Once we get past the simplistic idea that Socialism is a "left wing doctrine only," we can see that the socio-political differences between the Commies and the Nazis/Fascists were quite different.  However, since both were oppressive, totalitarian systems, they boiled down to using the same repressive techniques to maintain social order.  In Western nations, we can have Left/Right discussions and counter-points without resorting to outright murder as our liberal (small "L") systems provide the means of political discourse.

So Janiczek is wrong:  Nazism and Fascism were very Right Wing movements.  Both used Socialism to empower their particular groups of people while seeing other nations at best as equals, and more often as pawns to be used.  Communism, in its internationalist scope was Left Wing, seeing Socialism as the means to the "glorious" (but unattainable) end of Communism.  They were not compatible in any way, nor were they mirrors of each other, except in the totalitarian ends they achieved from their particular political ideologies.

NRA wants 18 Year Olds to Buy Handguns

The NRA filed a petition for Writ of Certiorari with the Supreme Court on July 29 to rule on a lower court decision that the 1968 Gun Control Act's forbidding of anyone under 21 from buying a handgun from licenced dealers stands as Constitutional.   They would like to see it reversed and allow 18 year olds to buy handguns.  Their logic is that a person between 18 and 21 is being denied their "Second Amendment Rights" by this law.  What this shows to me is that the NRA is really nothing more than the shill of the gun industry.

1) Apparently being allowed to buy rifles and shotguns at 18 doesn't compute to "being allowed to exercise Second Amendment Rights."

2) Handguns are the #1 tool used in any form of criminal offending with a weapon, with well over 60% of *any* violent crime involving a weapon being a handgun.

3)  Young people have the highest level of criminal activity of any age group, with the 15-25 age group being the most criminal.  As an example, the homicide offending rate for 18-24 year olds in 2005 was about 27 offenders per 100,000.  Compare that to the next group, 25-34 year olds, which was 12 per 100,000.

4) Why is this?  I believe it's at least partly biological.  The frontal cortex of the brain, where decision making is done based on calculated rewards vs risks, is not completely formed til around age 25.  This is why teens and young adults tend to act more impulsively than say someone around the age of 30.  Socially they have not yet fully matured into the adult roles of family, career, and community that a person around 30 has attained.

Considering that teens and young adults are more impulsive than older folks, that this impulsiveness leads to more deviant and criminal behaviors, and that handguns are used in more crime than any other weapon, I think society is perfectly justified in making teens wait a few more years to buy a handgun.  As rifles and shotguns are used in a very low amount of crime (largely due to their lack of concealability), I believe those are proper firearms for younger people to purchase if they wish, and then if all goes well, to make a transition to a handgun a bit later.

Don't be fooled into thinking NRA is really concerned about "Second Amendment Rights" in this instance in any real sense.  Much like the liquor industry that is salivating in hopes the drinking age might be lowered back to 18, the NRA is just working to get three more years for people buying handguns and giving the industry more money.

http://sblog.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/NRA-petition-13-137.pdf