Americans living today have lived their entire lives under governmental systems and policies that have come with perpetual war, interventionism, embargoes, sanctions, coups, state-sponsored assassinations, extrajudicial murders, foreign aid to brutal regimes, torture, invasions, occupations, tariffs, trade wars, immigration controls, an immigration police state, wars of aggression, out of control federal spending and debt, and massive infringements on civil liberties. From the first grade on up, Americans have been inculcated with the notion that all this is “freedom.” As adults and oftentimes to the day they die, they enthusiastically stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance, sing the Star Spangled Banner, and thank the troops, the CIA, and the NSA for protecting their “freedom.”
Given such, I believe it’s important to periodically set forth the libertarian ideal with respect to all this statism. In that way, at least people who are coming to the realization that all this statism is horribly wrong and extremely destructive will know that there is an alternative paradigm, one that is based on genuine freedom.
The following is the ideal for people who wish to see our nation move in a different, better direction:
1. Dismantle the national-security state — i.e., the Pentagon, the vast military-industrial complex, the CIA, and the NSA — and restore our nation’s founding governmental system of a limited-government republic with just a relatively small, basic military force.
2. No more foreign interventions, foreign wars, wars of aggression, coups, invasions, or occupations. As John Quincy Adams put it in his Fourth of July, 1821, address to Congress, no more going abroad “in search of monsters to destroy.” If private Americans wish to travel to foreign lands to oppose tyranny and oppression, they should be free to do so, but just leave the U.S. government out of it.
3. Lift all sanctions, embargoes, and tariffs, and end all trade wars.
4. Liberate the American people to travel anywhere they want and trade with whomever they want.
5. End all state-sponsored assassinations and killings, torture, and indefinite detention.
6. Close and permanently abandon all U.S. military bases and installations in foreign countries, including the Pentagon’s and CIA’s prison and torture camp at Guantanamo Bay.
7. Open U.S. borders to the free flow of goods, services, and people, as I detail in my new book The Case for Open Borders: A Primer. End the police state that has long existed in the borderlands and that is now expanding nationwide.
8. End the drug war by legalizing all drugs.
9. End all foreign aid, including to the Israeli government and the Ukrainian government. Leave American citizens free to contribute their own money to foreign regimes and foreign groups.
10. Enforce through impeachment the constitutional requirement of a congressional declaration of war.
For those who say that this is all Utopian, I respond: Balderdash! Utopian means impossible to achieve. Most, but certainly not all (e.g., the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Sherman Antitrust Act of 1890, and the Spanish-American War of 1898), of these principles and policies were embraced by our American ancestors in the 30-year period from 1880-1910. Our job is to meet the standard they set and build on it.
Adopting these libertarian foreign-policy principles would move America in a different, better direction — in the direction of liberty, peace, prosperity, and harmony with the people of the world.
Reprinted with permission from Future of Freedom Foundation.
