History Proves A War Hawk Foreign Policy Leads To Moral Devolution Of Society

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – I view the foreign policy debate not as an emotional thing and as a victory that I’d like to see a party carry.  That’s an historical thing to me.  It is informed by the history.  The history says that these are horrifically dangerous precedents to set.  Free people, if they really cherish their liberties, they don’t have and they don’t want a standing army.  Check out today’s transcript for the rest…

 

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

Mike:  I’ve often marveled at the similarities between the great moral issue of our time, which I think is abortion, and what people viewed as the great moral and social issue of the 1830s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, which ultimately ended in a tragic, horrific war and 800,000 dead, and that was the issue of abolition.  The same arguments that were being made by the abolitionists are similar to the arguments being made by pro-lifers today.  There were also grave amounts of discontentment among those that were allied with political parties.  The Whig Party basically just evaporated.  It ended.  You had all kinds of political parties.  Let’s listen to that George Will sound bite.  Here’s George Will on This Week.  He’s asked this question about what happened at CPAC: Was it indicative of a healthy Republican Party or healthy conservative movement, or was it indicative of the end and the demise of conservatism?  Here’s what will said.

[start audio clip]

Martha Raddatz: George Will, will any stars come out of this for 2016 that we’re all going to be paying attention to for the next four years that we haven’t already started paying attention to?

George Will: First, here’s the New York Times headline on the CPAC conference: “GOP divisions fester at conservative retreat.” Festering an infected wound, it’s awful. I guarantee if there were a liberal conclave comparable to this, and there were vigorous debates going on there, The New York Times headline would be “Healthy diversity flourishes at the liberal conclave.” Republicans have been arguing — social conservatives and libertarian free-market conservatives — since the 1950s when the National Review was founded on the idea of the fusion of the two. It has worked before with Ronald Reagan. It can work again. What I did see at CPAC was the rise of the libertarian strand of Republicanism, which has an affected foreign policy that is a pullback from nation-building and other ambitions abroad that they never countenance from government at home, and a sense of live and let live with subjects such as decriminalization of certain drugs and gay marriage.

[end audio clip]

Mike:  There’s Will saying he saw this libertarian strain.  That strain is there, but the numbers are not there.  The numbers are small.  The numbers of youths, which the party has done almost everything it can humanly do to chase those youths away, are much larger than their more mature counterparts.  The fact that you have this revolt from the youths against the state on the one hand is a healthy thing, I think, and certainly the movement that received its biggest shot in the arm was with the two candidacies of Ron Paul for president in 2008 and 2012.  Certainly that movement is gaining adherents and followers.  I don’t believe that the hawkaholic — I love that term — movement is gaining adherents.  I’m just reading people’s Twitter feeds now.  I don’t listen to any other radio shows any longer, I just don’t do it.  I listen to my radio Margaritaville.  I listen to Pop 76 on Sirius.  I listen to Outlaw Country and Mojo Nixon every now and then, as filthy and vile as he is — he is still funny.  I don’t spend my time listening to other radio shows, so I only know what I read on Facebook posts, Twitter feeds and what people email to me.  I am to understand that there is a crack in the army of the “bomb the Middle East into submission” crowd, and that “walk abruptly and garishly and carry a big army” crowd, that the big government militarized version of conservatism has a tiny fissure in it.  If it begins to crack, all manner of horrific things may flow out of that fissure.

I find that most intriguing.  My point of view is this.  For those of you that say, [mocking] “You just don’t know what you’re talking about.  You just don’t like these other radio guys.  You’re just jealous.  It’s all sour grapes with you,” I have resigned myself, many years ago, to this happy station in life that I have found here with you on Sirius XM Patriot Channel, and the things I can do on my website MikeChurch.com, and the things I am blessed enough that you invite me to come speak at or spend time with you and your group.  I’m happy with that, very happy with it.  I’m also happy with our intellectual pursuit of these issues and ideas and of our history, and the scholarship and work that goes into that.  I think that the rest of it is just going to be viewed as pop entertainment 100 years from now, and many of the things we’re doing will be viewed the way we view the work of Albert Bledsoe today, the work of John Calhoun.  We’re actually serious about the scholarship.  I was told by Professor Marshall DeRosa one day, when I kind of jokingly said I’m not a professor, he went: Mike, don’t ever discount your scholarship just because you didn’t go to a university like we did and have these silly pieces of paper hanging on the wall.  There are many of us that read your scholarship and are very thankful that you put it together.

I view the foreign policy debate not as an emotional thing and as a victory that I’d like to see a party carry.  That’s an historical thing to me.  It is informed by the history.  The history says that these are horrifically dangerous precedents to set.  Free people, if they really cherish their liberties, they don’t have and they don’t want a standing army.  This is the point of “Militias Are Good and They’re Good For You Too.”  This point was made very clear by none other than Patrick Henry himself, none other than George Mason, none other than James Monroe, a two-time president of these United States and the promulgator of the Monroe Doctrine.  This is an historical exercise to me.

I don’t have a horse in this race other than I would like for my children to live in whatever slice of this republic that they ultimately reside in and hoping that things go the republican way as I believe they ultimately must because human scale demands it, that they live in an actual peace-loving republic that actually holds liberty and a spiritual form of civilization as its highest ideal and as its highest order, that they are not a callously-militaristic people just for the sake of being militaristic because you can and because you like being a macho man and like military hardware and think you’re somehow blessed by some God that told you you’re supreme and our army is supreme and it’s supposed to conquer people and supposed to remove bad peoples and influence the affairs of the rest of the known universe.

The study of history says that every people that has pursued that point of view have perished.  That’s right, they’ve perished.  Usually, the worst thing is, before they perish, they descend into abject immorality to the point where the most heinous takings of life are taking place.  That’s the danger that we’re trying to avoid here.  That’s the danger.  Any student of history and of the past that reads this cannot come to another conclusion, I’m sorry, you can’t.  If you do, then you need to go back and read it again because you imparted what you wanted to be your point of view onto what you were reading.

End Mike Church Show Transcript