When he was president, Bill Clinton famously said, ““There’s nothing patriotic about hating your government or pretending you can hate your government but love your country.”
Clinton would have a hard time convincing the Chinese people of that.
Yesterday, the New York Times published an absolutely fascinating article detailing the mindset that Chinese citizens have toward the United States and to the U.S. government.
Notice something important about that sentence: It refers to both the United States and the U.S. government, implying that they are two separate and distinct entities.
That befuddles many Americans. To them, the United States and the U.S. government are one and the same thing. You especially see this mindset manifested at big sporting events, where the crowd is exhorted to stand and honor their country by thanking the troops for “defending our freedom.”
The troops, of course, along with the CIA, compose the most powerful branch of the U.S. government — the national-security branch, the branch that imposes its will on people around the world through violence and the threat of violence. In the minds of many Americans, supporting the troops equals loving your country.
Now, consider the New York Times article, which is entitled “Chinese Embrace America’s Culture but Not Its Policies.”
Right off the bat, do you see a problem with that title? The title implies that the Times has the same mindset of ordinary Americans, one that conflates America and the federal government, as if the country and the government are one entity.
For a libertarian — and for that matter, to the Chinese people — the title of the article should instead be “Chinese Embrace America’s Culture But Not the U.S. Government’s Policies.”
The article focuses on the admiration that the Chinese people have for our country and the disdain they also have for the policies of the U.S. government.
That’s precisely the mindset of American libertarians. We love our country but hate the U.S. government’s imperialist, interventionist policies.
That’s what American statists just can’t get because in their minds, the government and the country are one and the same thing.
They also can’t understand how it is that people around the world love America and they love Americans but simply despise, even hate, the U.S. government for the imperialism, militarism, and interventionism that the national-security branch of the government has inflicted on the people of the world.
Consider what 26-year-old Chinese citizen Zhao Yixiang, who sells American skateboards in Beijing, says:
America is a country full of free speech. You can say what you want, choose your own lifestyle. I admire that a lot. But on territorial and military issues, we’re pretty far apart.
The Times writes:
In some ways, American cultural influence reaches into China deeper than ever. Despite censorship, restrictions on cultural imports and heavy Internet barriers, American television, films, music and technology are widely and avidly consumed…. Yet studies and surveys show that many Chinese citizens, including the young, remain wary of the United States and hostile to Washington’s foreign intentions….
Here is what libertarians want to accomplish:
- Liberate the American people in the private sector to freely interact with the people of the world. The U.S. government would be prohibited from imposing sanctions, embargoes, trade restrictions, and travel controls, which, by their very nature, threaten American citizens with fines and imprisonment for violating.
- Dismantle (i.e., don’t reform) the U.S. government’s Cold War-era national-security establishment, including the standing army, military-industrial complex, Pentagon, CIA, and NSA and put an end to all foreign military bases, foreign interventionism, foreign aid, regime-change operations, and foreign aid.
Now, you know what statists say in response to that, right? They say, “Why, Jacob, if we stop the U.S. government from bombing foreign countries and assassinating foreign citizens, that will convert America into an isolationist nation.”
But that’s palpable nonsense given #1 above. With the American private sector free to travel, trade, and tour with everyone in the world, that’s about as far from isolationist as a nation can get. Instead, it refortifies the positive feelings that people around the world, including the Chinese, have for our country.
At the same time, with #2, we would be reining in the federal government and returning to a constitutional republic consisting of limited governmental powers by dismantling the Cold War-era national security branch of the federal government. No more anti-American hatred, anger, rage, and terrorism that the U.S. government has engendered with its interventions, bombings, assassinations, torture, support of dictatorships, coups, and the like.
Americans have three choices.
One, they can just let things keep going as their going. That means unleashing the U.S. government to continue wreaking ever-more death and destruction around the world and provoking ever-growing crises, while, at the same time, isolating the American people from the world with sanctions, embargoes, and trade restrictions, not to mention ever-increasing infringements on liberty and privacy in the attempt to “keep us safe” from the enemies the U.S. government is producing. It also means national bankruptcy through out-of-control federal spending and debt.
Two, we can tinker with the system, modify sanctions and embargoes here and there, cancel a jet-plane project for the Pentagon, and conduct periodic studies into CIA torture and NSA surveillance.
Three, we can think at a much higher level and change the very nature of our government, much as our American ancestors revolutionized the nature of government with the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. That would mean a dismantling, not a reform, of the Cold War-era national security establishment and an unleashing of the American private sector.
What better way to lead America and the world than by example? I say: Let’s rise to the occasion and make America a nation based on freedom, free markets, and limited government. That would bring us a free, peaceful, harmonious, and secure society. Let’s go with Option Three.