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TGIF: Does Freedom Require Empire?

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In a startling article, Daniel McCarthy, the admirable editor of The American Conservative magazine (TAC), writes, “Successive British and American empires created and upheld the world order in which liberalism could flourish.” In other words, as he writes in “Why Liberalism Means Empire,” “Liberalism and empire reinforced one another in manifold ways.” Therefore, if we want an enduring liberal democratic society, we must acknowledge the necessity of a U.S.-enforced global empire. I say the article is startling because for years TAC has been the place to find solid critiques of George W. Bush/Barack Obama–style interventionist foreign policy. But this is a call for American global policing, albeit not as Bush or Obama would have it. Where libertarians and classical liberals historically have viewed empire as inimical to domestic freedom and free markets, not to mention the freedom and well-being of those ruled by colonial powers, McCarthy makes ...

Obama Follows Bush’s Iraq Playbook

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U.S. politicians are exploiting the gruesome beheadings of two American journalists to whip up war fever against ISIS, the “criminal gang” masquerading as an organization of devout Sunni Muslims that controls large parts of Syria and Iraq. The American propaganda campaign seems to be working if recent polls are accurate. No decent person is anything but appalled by those executions. But are they grounds for the United States to go to war? No, they are not. Barack Obama says his job is to protect Americans wherever they are, but he doesn’t cite the source of this power. No such power is implied in the president’s oath of office, which obligates him only to “faithfully execute the Office of President” and to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution.” Article II of the Constitution vests the “executive power” in the president, but that just means he has the power to execute laws passed by the ...

Perpetual Fear under Empire

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Lots of Americans are extremely upset about ISIS. They’re not sleeping well, and they’re pacing the floors. They are convinced that ISIS is coming to get them, drag them from their homes, cart them away to some Arabian desert, and behead them. There is something important to keep in mind about all this: This is the way of life under an empire, especially one whose foreign policy is based on hundreds of military bases in foreign countries, meddling in the political and economic affairs of other countries, support of and partnerships with foreign dictatorships, foreign aid, invasions, wars of aggression, occupations, kidnappings, torture, and other such things. Once you realize that chaos, crises, conflicts, tensions, and wars are an inherent part of imperial life, you don’t tend to get so upset over the latest crisis. You instead say to yourself: Well, here we go again—another official enemy who is the gravest threat to “national security” in the history of the national-security ...

National Security, Patriotism, and Treason

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Ever since the post-World War II grafting of the national-security apparatus onto America's governmental structure, the assumption of the Pentagon, the CIA, and the NSA has been that Americans who oppose national-security state policies and practices are “subversives” or even traitors. We experienced this phenomenon throughout the Cold War. U.S. officials were spying on Americans who believed in communism or ...