There was William Galston at the European Council on Foreign Relations, listening to his fellow elitists and foreign policy honchos caviling about the rise of Donald Trump and bemoaning the fate of the European Union (EU) at the hand’s of Britain’s Euro-skeptics. As the assembled luminaries had a collective sad in their five-star hotel, wondering how the proles could’ve gotten so far out of hand, Galtson – longtime Democratic party hack, former domestic advisor to Bill Clinton, and a senior fellow at the “centrist” Brookings Institution – heard a call to arms. It was almost as if Cecil Rhodes, the British imperialist and original founder and financier of the Council on Foreign Relations, had spoken to him from on high – or, rather, from below – and commanded him to spread the Word far and wide:
“I realized that the stakes in the U.S. presidential election are even higher than I had thought. The fate of the entire postwar order hangs in the balance, and with it the prospects for democracy world-wide. Without vigorous American leadership, the prospects are not bright.”
Oh, yes, those shortsighted Little People are “turning inward,” and “this is understandable,” but, hey, “liberal internationalism is back on its heels” and the dreaded “ethno-nationalist populism” – i.e. resistance to the One World “global governance” schemes of Galston and his comrades – “is on the march.” What’s a globalist to do?
And it’s not just the English-speaking world that’s resisting the globalist agenda. Those Frenchies are getting restive, too, and the rest of Europe is balking at “the obvious candidate for continental leadership” for “historical reasons.” After all, everyone remembers the last time the Germans tried to impose “union” on the Europeans, so there’s that. See how prejudiced the Little People can be? They just don’t have the foresight to worry about the New Hitler – Vladimir Putin, if you even have to ask – who “senses a historic opportunity to exploit Europe’s divisions for his own purposes.” Why, he actually wants to trade with Europe, and that would undermine the war plans of the CFR types, who are fixated on restarting the cold war. Of course, they don’t actually say that in so many words, but the intent is clear enough. They put it like this:
“If Europe doesn’t hold together when facing a rearmed and resurgent Russia, the gains for democracy and free markets since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Soviet Union may well be rolled back.”
You know, “democracy” – like in Ukraine, where EU–inspired mobs overthrew the elected President and the coup leaders immediately launched a vicious war against their own people in east Ukraine, killing many thousands and unleashing neo-Nazi regiments like the Azov Battalion on those who dared to resist. That’s “democracy” for you! And alarm bells should go off whenever you hear a top advisor to Bill Clinton, Al Gore, and Walter Mondale hail “free markets.” It’s a signal for the looting to begin.
As usual, everything depends on the United States – as inheritor of Rhodes’ beloved British empire – but, alas, the “ethno-nationalist” contagion has spread across the Atlantic, and it may be that the Yanks are not coming:
“Now is the worst possible time for the US to pull back and, as Donald Trump would have it, to reframe America’s relations with Europe as a transaction to be terminated if the sums don’t come up right. Franklin Roosevelt understood that a democratic Europe was a vital national interest of the US So did Ronald Reagan and every other postwar president. US diplomacy in 2017 and beyond must reflect this core reality.”
In the transaction preferred by Galston and his ilk, America always comes out the loser. That’s because we have a Mission, and it doesn’t matter how much it costs: we must bear the weight of Empire on our shoulders without complaint and without regard for the welfare of our own citizens. After all, anything less would be selfish: no, we mustn’t succumb to the requirements of common sense and fiscal sanity. It’s our sacred duty to police the world, so people like Galston can sit around in the Hague and determine the fate of entire peoples.
Forget Asia: we can’t “pivot” eastward while the Poles are pining for American aid and arms and the Romanians are unhappy with their lot. If we pay too much attention to where more than a third of the world’s population resides, as opposed to focusing on Estonia (population under two million) we’ll miss out on a real opportunity to start World War III with Russia. And let’s stop with the “complaints about insufficient European military and diplomatic burden-sharing” since these “have proved ineffectual in the past.” Just like that good-for-nothing uncle who keeps coming to you for “loans” that are never repaid, you just have to buck up and keep handing out the cash – because your own ineffectuality is your best friend.
As for those trade agreements which are mislabeled “free trade” but are really just protectionist trade blocs meant to “integrate” us into supranational entities – it’s really a shame the two presidential candidates have bowed to pressure from the Little People and come out against them. But it’s not too late to shore up the failing EU by signing the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP).
Galston and the globalists are frightened to death: their plans for a world-spanning Empire on which the sun never sets seem to be sinking beneath the same waves that have overwhelmed all the empires of the past. But they aren’t giving up their grand plans just yet: far from it. As Galston puts it:
“None of this can succeed unless the American people are persuaded that outward-facing military, diplomatic and economic arrangements are consistent with their own well-being. Increased defense spending, which enhances job-creation as well as national security, may well be needed. New measures to cushion vulnerable Americans against the wage and employment shocks created by trade are essential.”
All this “America first” nonsense has to be dispensed with, and fast: Americans must be weaned away from their selfish parochial concerns and made to see that we’re all citizens of the Global Village. And if all this “outward-facing” policy means pouring our wealth into renovating some ramshackle Ukrainian hamlet until it meets the standards of a typical American slum, well then let’s create jobs on the home front by arming to the teeth – after all, we’ll be needing a lot more bombs if we’re going to be fighting the Russians. Just keep those government printing presses rolling!
And here’s the punch line you’ve been waiting for, where the Galstonian agenda is revealed for all to see:
“Given current circumstances, robust internationalism is inconsistent with the fiscal austerity imposed by budget sequestration, let alone Paul Ryan-style proposals for retrenchment in the social programs that working Americans rely on for what is left of their security. Whatever its proponents may say, a smaller government at home means retreat abroad. This is the road to disaster, and we must not take it.”
Galston has understood what the National Review crowd and the Ted Cruz conservatives refuse to acknowledge. As that Old Right prophet and polemicist Garet Garrett put it:
“Between government in the republican meaning, that is, Constitutional, representative, limited government, on the one hand, and Empire on the other hand, there is mortal enmity. Either one must forbid the other or one will destroy the other. That we know. Yet never has the choice been put to a vote of the people.”
More than fifty years after those word were written, the people are rising up against the globalist agenda – against Galston and his fellow World Planners – and demanding that the issue be put to a vote of the people. The Republican party, long a fortress of internationalism, has been breached and taken by self-avowed America First nationalists, and our British cousins have thrown off the shackles of a supranational super-State -in-the-making, reasserting their sovereignty and inspiring rebels on the continent to follow their example.
The revolt against globalism is going global – and that’s a good thing for libertarians and for all opponents of Empire. Whatever the contradictions and ideological idiosyncrasies of the various anti-globalist forces now on the move, their victory is a precondition for the recovery of liberty in America. Because Galston is perfectly correct to say that “a smaller government at home means retreat abroad.” He understands what the leadership of the post-World War II conservative movement has spent decades evading – and, more importantly, now the rank-and-file are beginning to understand how they’ve been lied to all these years, and why the promises of their leaders have all come to naught.
This is a great step forward for libertarians: the consciousness of the masses is being raised to new heights. Our task now is to engage them, educate them, and recruit them as soldiers in the fight to take our country back from Señor Galston and the regnant elites he represents.
SCHEDULING NOTE: Yes, I’m baaaack! After a “vacation” that consisted of editing the late great Murray Rothbard’s unpublished book on libertarian strategy, I’m returning to my regular schedule of three columns per week. So stay tuned to this page, because there’s a lot more to come.
NOTES IN THE MARGIN
You can check out my Twitter feed by going here. But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.
I’ve written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement, with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey, a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon (ISI Books, 2008).
You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here.
