Isolationism, always new always fresh!

America is taking a short break from remaking the world.  This may have something to do with the last few attempts not being too successful.  Actually, they were failures, but is that any reason to stop trying?  It never has been and never will be over at Planet New York Times.

Back in October, Andrew Bacevich, West Point Grad, Professor of International Relations and History at Boston University wrote a long piece on the Times' love of adventuring.  It was exhaustive in displaying how the “Paper of Record” supports intervention and condemn Isolationism whenever it rears its ugly head.

Professor Bacevich exhaustively chronicles how Timesguys and Timesbabes are always fighting the eternal recurrence of “The New Isolationism” (TNI). The opponents of TNI are so numerous that if they could be mustered together, they could constitute and invasion force and head off to the next country we need to save.

The lads and lasses who hate isolationism so much never get around to explaining why the whole internationalism stuff is so great.  It's just that America hunkered down here is horrible in their view.

And this is of course the problem.  There really are not many isloationists.  It's that the op-edsters in the times get to define the terms.  I wish the Professor had come to grips with this as he wrote a great Neutralist column.  Neutralism is not turning our back on the world, though it is turning our back on running the world.

My favorite part of the article, his quote of James Traub from the 1991 NYT,

An op-ed by up-and-coming journalist James Traub appearing in the Times in December 1991, just months after a half-million U.S. troops had liberated Kuwait, was typical.  Assessing the contemporary political scene, Traub detected “a new wave of isolationism gathering force.”  Traub was undoubtedly establishing his bona fides.  (Soon after, he landed a job working for the paper.)

This time, according to Traub, the problem was the Democrats.  No longer “the party of Wilson or of John F. Kennedy,” Democrats, he lamented, “aspire[d] to be the party of middle-class frustrations -- and if that entails turning your back on the world, so be it.”

Anyone who wants to be part of Wilsonianism is either not bright, not sane or a charlatan.

Good work, Professor.  You don't have far to go to come out into the sunlight of Neutralism

Professor Bacevich' article has been posted a few places.  I read it at the Unz Review .