Freedom Isn’t Free, But Supporting Freedom Need Not Be Expensive
I’m afraid it may be Iran-heavy around here for the next couple of days. I don’t apologize for that, but I’ll understand if you head off for more varied climes for a couple few days.
See, freedom is a big deal to me. It is the only thing of value we can pass on to our children and the only value that makes the world a better place. Wherever real, ordered liberty goes, evil shrinks back into the shadows. That makes it worth fighting for, even if that “fighting” is only a few words, fitly spoken.
There are some who have said that promoting freedom around the world isn’t our job. Some of those folks work in the President’s administration. Heck, one of those folks is the President himself. The argument tends to go that if we promote freedom energetically, we will alienate those countries less free than ours.
That’s balderdash. The people we may alienate are not the common folks of the world but the tyrants who hold power they should not hold and keep it by threat and intimidation. I’m of the mind that promoting freedom is always in our nation’s best interests. It makes us friends and shows us who our enemies really are.
I grew up in a time when we propped up every tyrant who would agree to hate us less than he hated the Soviet Union. It was called realpolitik back then, and today we tend to know it better as “realism”. As I grew older and started to get a good look at the world, I saw what horrible damage our selfishness has done. Islamist terrorism is, I believe, a direct result of realpolitik and without it, there is a very good chance that the Islamists would not have been able to gain the foothold they have throughout the Middle East. I have a very hard time believing that we would have had such a difficult time in Iraq if we hadn’t first betrayed the Iraqis twice in the past thirty years for the sake of “stability”. Islamism would have found much less purchase in Saudi Arabia had we not spent so much time and treasure legitimizing the House of Saud.
That’s not to say that we should send our armies to every country that isn’t a perfect democratic republic. However, we should never fail to speak clearly in defense of freedom and do whatever we are able to help those who are trying to overthrow their oppressors. In some cases, that might mean some money slipped in under cover of darkness. In others, help spreading propaganda or a well-placed boycott. In most cases, though, it won’t take much more than a few words once in a while and our refusal to treat tyrants as if they have a valid place among civilized nations. We may have to deal with tyrants, because that is what diplomacy requires. But it doesn’t mean we have to treat them as friends or even honored guests.
At some point, we need to realize that our selfish hoarding of freedom has been costing us dearly. These days, with the twin threats of nuclear North Korea and Iran, the rise of the ChiComs, and a continuing presence of Islamism, we could use all the friends we can get.
Just standing with the oppressed would go a long way toward finding us friends in very unexpected places.
Along similar lines are these posts by Ace, Stephen Green, Jules Crittenden, William Jacobson, and Donald Douglas. They’re all worth your time.
Other Posts of Interest:
Category: Alliances and Allies, No More Tyrants, The World At Large
