A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils June 16, 2007
Posted by reformedville in : Government , trackbackToday how much harm are we doing to our own nation and our own people due to alliances we have made with foreign nations? How often have we falsely made the interest of one nation or one group of nations our own, to the disadvantage of our nation? This week I was reading the accounts of the G8 Summit and our current volatile situation with the Russian Federation. In reading the accounts of an interview with Putin he is speaking to the false need for our nuclear weapons shield in Eastern to protect against Iran, because Iran does not have missiles which can reach the United States.
The first question that comes to mind, is it to protect Israel? Putin and the Russian Federation feel the same about this deployment of missile shield as we did in Cuba in the Cuban Missile crisis, and said if we do in fact deploy they can not be responsible for their actions. They are hoping we will come to our senses and realize that Iran is no threat to the United States. One can not help but see that the current influence the State of Israel has over the United States government is not in the interest of the United States and her people as a nation. It is an alliance that has alienated from the world and all but destroyed our trade relations with
Russia. (Excerpts of the interview) But Sir George and the Nonconservative Cowboys keep running roughshod through the world threatening nations and in an effort to bring democracy and peace, may well be bring on nuclear war.
Whether it be the alliance with Israel or the eschatology of George Bush and many of the dispensational evangelicals, I am not sure,;but whatever the reason we need to stop now and quite our interventionism policy and start to take a neutral stand in world affairs, placing our national interests first; not those of special corporations or special states, but American interest. We would do well to heed the excepted portions below of George Washington’s farewell address
“A passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils . Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of
Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.
Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.
Harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations, are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest. But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand; neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce, but forcing nothing; establishing (with powers so disposed, in order to give trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them) conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary, and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate; constantly keeping in view that it is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors, and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect or calculate upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion, which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard. ” (Entire speech linked here)
We have failed to follow the advice of our forefathers in foreign affairs and have both entangled ourselves in debt with other nations and forged alliances which are contradictory to the interest of our nation, we have toppled foreign governments and now are risking war again for another’s interests, all on borrowed dollars. What type of corrective action do you believe the people of the United States need to take to stop this policy of our government? Do you believe our foreign policy is influenced by our debt? If we do not correct our foreign interventionism do you believe it will be the demise of our nation?
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