This is in the nature of a footnote just to make sure that nobody thinks that I intend to in any way denigrate the sacrifices being made by our military and their families. If anything, the lesson I take from the mortality statistics I cite is that we should be as appreciative of the decision to volunteer at all -- more dangerous day in and day out than most of us realize -- as we are of the service given in time of war.

Mr. Cohen writes, "We call ourselves democrats and speak of establishing an universal democracy"; if this is true, then are we not also calling ourselves revolutionists, who would foment permanent revolution towards a universal democracy? Such an idea strikes me as monstrous; it redolent of the Jacobins.

David: I seriously doubt anyone took it that way. It encapsulates my unease with the "Judd Doctrine" -- or at least, the bit about fixed, fallen human nature -- quite well. I take issue with only two points: First, the idea that "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's" absolves governments on this earth from divine law, or in the alternative, moral judgments of an active sort. Render unto Caesar is meant to delineate those duties
owed to the State and God; it is not meant to write off whole peoples to enslavement and torture. The meek may not need the Marine Expeditionary Force to bless them, but Christ never commanded men to allow others to suffer in Caesar's name. (Admittedly, (1) I am now re-arguing theology from the third to the fourteenth centuries with you; for that I apologize; and (2) I'm Catholic, with a slightly more than bare (but only that) grasp of Catholic theology; please take my comments with the appropriate lump of NaCl.)



Second, yes, conservatism is the belief that someone, somewhere, is screwing up the same way everyone has screwed up before, and if he's not, he's about to invent a new way to do it, which will then be repeated again and again, and so on. But being American also means some
, albeit guarded, optimism in the future. I think that's where OJ is coming from. After all, isn't America by definition something revolutionary, i.e., new, and optimistic?



Paul: With due respect, it is nothing of the sort -- or more accurately, it is, but only if American revolution must necessarily lead to tyranny and bloodshed. Our Founders considered themselves (or some of them did, at any rate) revolutionists, with admittedly mixed results. Are we so gone from their inheritance that we cannot stand in their shoes, even for a moment?



One more point: If the effect of shoving democracy down the throats of others -- even if it means building the messy enterprise from the ground up -- is to save our lives, and the American Project, is that not worth the cost?

Chris: Our Founders did not imagine themselves to be setting up a Universal Democracy, but rather as throwing off the yoke of tyranny from across an ocean. Nor were they particularly optimistic about democracy itself, and thus insisted on all sorts of checks on the action of democracy.



Moreover, if the American Revolution was indeed a revolution as we think of them today -- that is, as we think of them after a century of Bolshevik and Cultural Revolutions, bloodbaths and gulags -- then I think I am still very safe in my profound suspicion of them, despite the (almost unique) success of the American one.

On your finally point, Chris, I answer Yes. American Empire is worth the cost if it saves Americans from mass murder at the hands of lunatics. Whether this enterprise will preserve what you have called the "American Project" is a more difficult question.

No cheese-eating, surrendering Frog is going

to outdo me when it comes to simplisme.



Let's say, for argument, that we are indeed

our brother's keeper. Well, name me anything

my brothers need, and whatever it is, I don't

have enough to go around. So I cannot be

keeper of all my brothers.



Therefore, I get to pick and choose. This is

the distinction I make between a moral

obligation (to protect your own wife from a

rapist) and a moral opportunity (to protect some

women halfway around the world from Qusay

Saddam).



So we end up back in 1968 -- if it feels good,

do it.



This satisfies Orrin -- the world remains ever

unperfected, satisfying his pessimism.



And it satisfies me -- things end up a little better

than when we started.



If it bothers the theologians, handwringers

and busybodies, that's lagniappe.

Mr. Cella: I think that your point is my point. The French Revolution is a perfect example of the limits of human reason and the law of unintended consequences. Even if democracy were an unalloyed good, on which more below, the consequences of marching through the world imposing it would be unforeseeable.



Chris: My point about Caeser and the meek was not that governments have no obligation to act morally, but rather that changing immoral regimes -- which shows too much concern with this world and not enough for the next -- is not, as I understand it, a Christian duty. I speak subject to correction, of course. Among others, Thomas Acquinas argued that there is a moral duty to fight injustice, although his idea of a just government might differ from ours.



The tension between being conservative, and therefore a pessimist, but being American and therefore an optimist, is a marvelous point, and one that deserves a more in depth treatment. Conservatism is not native to this continent, which is why many of us call ourselves Classical Liberals.



Our Founding Fathers were revolutionaries, but not nihilists. It was our great luck to have a revolution of the bourgeoisie, the only one I can think of. (The Glorious Revolution might also have been bourgeoisie, though that whole royalty thing would argue to the contrary.) This is no doubt because we are, and long have been, a bourgeois nation.



Mr. Cella: The problem is that, although we speak of democracy constantly, we have no working definition. Recently on NPR, an anti-warrior said that the right to protest is democracy. Maybe we need to keep working on that.



Chris: I'll accept that we should impose democracy on others in order to protect ourselves from terror, if you'll accept that, if refraining from imposing democracy will save American lives, then we should refrain.



Harry: I like the distinction between a moral obligation and a moral opportunity. I don't believe, however, that having a moral opportunity, in and of itself, justifies military action. At best, it removes a possible objection.



If I had to pick a life's theme, stopping 1968 from ever coming again would be right at the top of the list. Making things better sounds unobjectionable. My only problem is I don't know how you can tell which actions actually will make things better. The future is unknowable. That's what makes it the future.

Am I the cheese-eating Frog? If so: I'm a gumbo-eating Frog-America, thank you kindly. Mais, je suis simple, moi
.



Cheese. Pfft.



Anyway, Paul: Valid points, and I should have clarified:



(1) The Founders to whom I was referring (hence, the parenthetical) frequently ended up dead in French prisons, or in fights out in border areas. To a much
lesser extent I was referring to elements of the Federalist Papers, interspersed amid the (generally valid) gloom and doom; and the heady optimism which to some extent became part of the warp and whoof of our national life. I'm about as pessimistic as they come; but I, like most Americans (especially outside of all but one state in the Northeast), am a raging enthusiast of America. And it's not like this feeling is something that only started in January 2001, either.



(2) I do believe that the American Revolution was indeed a true revolution -- show me the state, aside from perhaps the Swiss cantons, with anything remotely like what we did two hundred years ago, and I will retract that.



(3) The difference to which I was alluding between revolutions is this: It is one thing to help people reach for freedom with revolution; it is another to force them to try to reach Heaven in one bound. Every revolution you cite is one where they were marching at gun-point for the Eschaton or Bust; ours was the only one that said, "We're doing this so that we can figure out what we want to do." Therein, I would argue, lies the difference.



(4) I'd argue that part of why the Founders -- the ones to whom I was not referring, but admittedly the best-known ones -- were pessimists is that what they were trying was so very rare in those days, and had come to naught so quickly. I certainly know why they created dual sovereignty, for example; but I also know why they tried the experiment in the first place.



(5) Last, but not least, I respect you too much to think you've actually bought into the "Empire" argument. If this be Empire, then every act of foreign policy with self-interest behind it, by every nation everywhere, is Empire.

David: I appreciate the Caesar clarification. And insofar as I have a rebuttal, it is this: Our notion of government is predicated on the belief that it springs from the will of the people; the people are the sovereign, directly and indirectly. (Please, I know about the arguments about restricting popular will; it's too late tonight to get into those. Consider them acknowledged.) Christianity -- pace
Aquinas -- demands moral actions of its believers. Governments in the international arena are by definition amoral actors; but those that live by the consent of the governed, and reflect the will of the governed, reflect back their decisions on the governed. In other words, as a (Catholic) Christian, I find OJ's argument compelling, at least in part, because it offers the opportunity to give the shirt on my back to the ones who need it. (I'm also aware of arguments about my giving my shirt, not someone else's, and how government conflates the two; please consider those arguments acknowledged.)



To be honest with you, I'm not sure I'm intellectually coherent enough to make this point sufficiently, but what I was driving for was this: There is something tempting in Orrin's argument, and if even he is making it -- we're talking about a man with a profound isolationist streak -- there's more than an emotional tug to it.



I'll concede that not forcing democracy down people's throats will save lives when I see evidence of the same; but to my eye, the only enemies we have (except the French) live in decidedly "undemocratic" nations; our former enemies upon whom we forced democracy are no longer threats.

Chris -- I will try to be brief, and then I will go to bed.



Jefferson believed that all government's, regardless of their form, derived their just powers from the consent of the governed. Remember, when he wrote the Declaration, it wasn't even clear that there would be one national government, let alone that it would be a democratic republic.



The point really isn't about offering others the shirt off your back. It's about bombing them, and taking the chance they'll bomb you, until they capitulate on the matter of shirts. Then there's the effect on all the neighbors, who aren't sure they like your shirt and who are nervous that ultimately you'll bomb them.



OJ's point, as I understand it, is that war should not be the last resort but rather right up at the top, if it can be done cheaply. Believe me, as an American I fully understand the temptation of his scenario. I think our way is better, I think all other countries would benefit from being more like us, I think we would benefit from their being more like us, I think we could kick everyone else around the block singly or together. OJ is showing us all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, and saying all these can be ours if we just embrace war. I am sorely tempted. But I think we must pass.

Chris: My definition of revolution here is something like this: the violent overturning of a society with an eye on replacing it with another. Perhaps you'd advance another definition.



You make a fair point about some of our Founders. Some were agitators and radicals, but the great ones were thinkers and, importantly, creators. They sought not to destroy but to preserve by reformation, and to construct. A revolutionist, in my mind, is one whose life is dedicated to destruction, with the New World to come always relegated to the level of pure abstraction.



Finally, I have, to a degree, "bought in" to the Empire argument, but with the very important distinction that I do not regard "empire" as a curse word. But maybe the word is simply to freight with baggage to be useful.

David: Yeah, a good definition of democracy would be very salutary, wouldn't it? Tocqueville delineated a provocative definition indeed, consisting of two elements: popular sovereignty and "equality of conditions." Some people seem to use it as a synonym for "self-government." I must confess that this latter trend irks me.

David: You make good points but like I pointed out in the comments to the Judd Doctrine, I doubt the Project itself is practicable.



In any case even if the American Project doesn't get off the ground, the USA could do a lot more behind the scenes to put pressure on despots to treat their people better and try to safeguard if not democracy then at least liberty.



By that I mean freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, freedom of association etc.



As an example has Bush said or done anything at all about Mugabe?



An America nudge in the ribs might work wonders with his behaviour.

David:



I think you've, at least to some degree, erected a straw man here. My argument is not that we should try to make nations that are different than us more like us but that we have both the capacity and the moral obligation to radically alter those nations that are least like us. States like Canada, Mexico, France, Brazil, etc., may well be on the wrong path, but the governments there do not use terror as a means of conttolling their populations. They are characterized by the rule of law and by varying degrees of representative government and human freedom. This is starkly different than places like N. Korea, Iraq, Cuba, etc., which deny their peoples the rights to life, liberty, and property with which they are endowed by the Creator.



To borrow from Harry's analogy--one may not have a moral obligation to tell a stranger that she could do better than her current husband, but we do have a moral obligation to intervene if we become aware that he's beating or raping or has in fact murdered her.

OJ:



You say straw man, I say logical conclusion. Of the three claims I impute to you, don't you think that 1 and 2 (all nations should aspire to American values, we have an obligation to help them towards that goal) are true for all nations? I understand that you're arguing for war only in the extreme cases, but as I don't buy precept 2, I don't even get to 3.



"[W]e do have a moral obligation to intervene if we become aware that he's beating or raping or has in fact murdered her." Why do we have this obligation? It comes from our membership in a consensual community with values that the majority agrees to impose upon all members. This is my fundamental problem with international law. There is no consensual international community and we cannot pick and choose among attributes of such a community in our dealings with other nations.

I agree with David about the uselessness

of international law. On the other hand,

arguing that not being sure of outcomes

means not going ahead prevents you from

doing anything.



Orrin is wrong about progress. There's

been lots, more in the US than other

places, but there is hardly a corner of the

world where people eat as little as they

did in 1800, where they are as diseased

as they were in 1900, etc.



If you are going to argue that they are

not as contented as they were (as Orrin

does), well, I don't know how to measure

that.



We didn't arrive at this happy state of

affairs by turning off the streetlamps.

David:



I don't think they should become us--in fact I don't think we should remain us. But I think there are certain societies so different than us, so oppressive, that if we can easily relieve the suffering of their people we probably should. I don't think they need to become permissive social welfare states, but they do need to grant their citizens lives free of terror.



Harry:



There is no century in human history when mens' hands were so soaked with each others' blood--from war, genocide, abortion, etc.--as your happy progressive rationalist twentieth century.

The absolute body count was highest just lately.



Proportionally, there have been plenty of

worse centuries, starting probably with the

7th B.C. The slaughter in Germany and Bohemia

in 1618-48 was considerably worse than in

1933-45, and, of course, was done in the name

of a merciful Saviour of all mankind.