Berkeley City Council Doing Its Anti-Democracy Bit

[Radar]

Originally Posted by Urbane Guerrilla

I thought you'd try this one. But you run aground on the question of what the common defense truly is. Who, being an American and having business in foreign parts, would exclude American business interests from inclusion under the common defense rubric regardless of where those American business interests are? American interest has always been more or less global and globalized. In practice there is no definable endpoint to where the common defense of Americans and of American interests lies. This is particularly true in nations where property rights are not secure from official cupidity -- and these nations are numerous. They do not secure property rights well, which leaves it to our government's protective function to cover for our nationals, on the assumption somebody has to or the economy goes to pot and everyone's poor, because no one can do business if his gains are euchred from him. In the fourteenth century, this happened to the Chinese iron smelting industry -- it was wiped out inside of ten years and it never returned. It took the laissez-faire of Europe to make a success, and a general prosperity, of large scale efficient smelters.

Your approach is only workable in the absence of any other nation over the entire Earth -- and for that matter, the complete absence of foreigners, as well. Is this even clinically sane? The vehemence with which you adhere to this suggests intense xenophobia -- your whole "screw the rest of the planet, they don't get to be free or wealthy as far as I'm concerned -- if I'm concerned at all" attitude, that is. One can scour your posts for any interface with other lands, languages, or cultures, and come up with -- zero. Strategically, this is unconscionable, and that calls for reading between your lines, to diagnose what's behind the screen of words. What I'm seeing isn't pretty.

The clauses containing the term common defense do not limit the role and scope of our military -- as the whole, every last syllable, of historical precedent demonstrates. You pointedly avoid acknowledging this reality. What does that say about you? I say you worship the golden calf of bullheadedness. Fortunately, I do not.



A bullheaded eccentric who yells "Treason! Traitor!" at every second opportunity is guilty of ranting each time he does so, and can make no defense -- not even a Constitutional one, particularly if you actually are a strict constructionist, at which point you have to confine your definition of treason to the Constitution's: if I haven't made war upon the United States, I am innocent of treason; if I haven't given aid and comfort to America's enemies, I'm innocent of treason. Since I cannot be sanely imagined to have done either, you do the math. You rant, and your narcissistic personality makes you thoroughly unfit to do politics -- it keeps you from exercising judgement. Really, by your reasoning, every government employee anywhere at any time who ever formed or executed policy from 1776 onwards is "guilty of treason." Hard to credit, putting it mildly.

Common defense doesn't mean defending American "interests". It means defending America. No more, no less. The American military is also not here to defend the economy. The furthest America was to go in defending American interests was to defend our ships from pirates. When you choose to do business in other nations, you are gambling. You are taking the chance that you will be able to do business without having your business stolen from you. If they are stolen from you, the American government isn't here to protect your poor investment choices.

My approach works with a planet full of nations and is not isolationist or xenophobic in the slightest. It welcomes trade and friendship with all nations and keeps us from entering into alliances that require the use of our military. These are the same principles that George Washington, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, etc. shared.

The phrase "common defense" defines and limits the role and scope of our military to being solely for the defense of America...not America's foreign interests, not the American economy, etc. The truly insane are those who think it has any other legitimate use.

I've traveled the world many times over while serving in the Navy and since then. I speak 4 languages. I have a better understanding of global trade and of the opinion others hold of America than you are likely to ever have.