Market Anarchy

As the neo-cons try to out neo-con each other and boast who is the biggest war monger. 

he complete lack of any thoughtfulness should be worrying to those few Republicans left who care about such things. “The world is more dangerous,” says Romney. “It is not safer.” Yes, after a decade of constant warfare, after invading and occupying two Muslim countries and striking from Somalia to Pakistan, we are definitely much less safe – but whose fault is that? Romney would escalate the very policies responsible for increasing the danger to all Americans.

On the question of regime change in Syria, Romney and Santorum are in total agreement, declaring we ought to arm the rebels, along with Turkey and the Saudis. Why this wouldn’t turn into another Libya, neither bothered to say, although I wouldn’t want to be the one who started the Santorum-is-a-secret-Muslim meme, now would I?

The foreign policy portion of this debate underscored the fundamental unseriousness of the leading Republican candidates. Their fundamental dishonesty – are we really going to abjure any cuts in the military even if it means bankruptcy? – imbues these debates with an air of childishness: one feels as if one has been teleported back in time, to one’s high school election for class president. As the only adult onstage, Ron Paul shone in comparison.

The problem is that we’ve become a nation of babies: total narcissists who believe the world not only revolves around us, but that the laws of economics and of common sense itself are subject to our whims. In such a world, one can indeed have an empire and a welfare state and never have to worry when the bills come due – because, after all, babies don’t pay bills, do they?

This was Paul’s lament Wednesday night, when he said, in a tired voice: well I’ve tried the moral argument, and all the other arguments, and I haven’t gotten anywhere, so maybe the economic argument will work. I’m paraphrasing Paul, but in essence he said: “We’re broke, and we can’t afford all these wars.”

I’m afraid not even the economic argument will work on these “free market” Republicans. The reason it won’t work is because the Republican party is committed to permanent warfare as a matter of high principle, one that trumps economics, and everything else, including the laws of morality. Paul invokes the spirit of Robert A. Taft, but that strain of Republicanism is long since dissipated into political insignificance – although the Paul campaign may be a harbinger of its revival, Paul’s showing in the primaries hasn’t yet demonstrated that.

Polls show a good part of Paul’s support – which we can translate, for our purposes, into support for anti-interventionism – comes from independents, young people, and swing voters leaning Democrat. In short, it comes from precisely those voters who will be deciding the next election – not from Republican base voters, whose foreign policy views are frozen in time and impervious to rational argument.