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Young Americans aren’t angry enough about foreign policy

A high school student named Peter Fulham published an opinion column in USA Today complaining that young Americans are not demonstrably angry enough about the war in Iraq and the aggressive American foreign policy.

Young people are tired of hearing about Iraq, and they gave up getting angry about its steep death toll and mounting costs a long time ago.
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Sad as all this is, it’s tough to blame anybody my age for this indifference. Why should we worry when we have no personal stake in the conflict?

I can’t help but imagine that the tone in high school was different in 1970, as the Vietnam War raged and 18-year-olds were sent into its deadly grinder. There must have been anger and no small amount of fear. The idea of a draft is almost laughable today. So we don’t worry. We live our lives.

With a few notable exceptions, the public has shown a remarkable placidity about the war in Iraq, an indifference that must be attributable in part to the absence of a draft. Students, the usual anti-war activists, have been largely silent. We don’t support the conflict, as polls show. Even so, we have done little to make our government uncomfortable, little to demonstrate our disapproval. Perhaps, as a nation, we have outgrown the antics of the Vietnam anti-war movement.
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American students have an obligation to be outraged about the war in Iraq — not just disapproving of it. We need to make this administration and the remaining pro-war lawmakers start to worry.
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[I]t’s difficult to summon outrage because we have not been asked to sacrifice anything. Is it possible to summon deep-rooted anger for a war for which we were never asked to sacrifice anything?

First of all, the idea of military slavery is not almost laughable today. As long as there is the distinct possibility that a maniac like John McCain or a psychopath like Hillary Clinton could be the most powerful person in the world, or that someone equally bad could take power in the near future, there is always the improbable but significant possibility that military slavery will return to America.

I make my prediction here and now that during my lifetime, there will be substantial talk and considerable fear of military conscription of United States citizens. I will not go so far as to predict it will happen (yet), but I think there will be a much greater danger of it. You can chastise me for making such a non-qualitative and therefore rather subjective prediction, but, fine, I still think we’ll hear talk about it sooner rather than later, from elected criminals. Furthermore, I predict that those politicians will be on record as opposing the draft before they made the suggestion that we reinstate it. (I’m aware of Sen. Charles Schumer’s suggestion that we enslave young adults in the Army in order to dissuade the neocons from continuing their aggressive foreign policy or expanding their wars of aggression.)

Outside of military slavery, how else do the absurd domestic and foreign policies of the Republocrats impact us directly? Why does this kid think “we have no personal stake in the conflict” and “we have not been asked to sacrifice anything”?

Perhaps he hasn’t heard of the Patriot Act, President Bush’s wiretapping executive order, his martial law executive order, the increasing militarization of police departments across the United States, the record incarceration rate of American citizens, the violent America-hatred the Republocrats have inspired abroad, the inefficiency and harassment we are subjected to by the TSA, the national ID card (Real ID) that will be forced upon us in a few years, the incredibly bloated budget the Republocrats justify by citing and distracting us with the War on Terrorism, or the fact that we have devolved so far as to debate whether the Supreme Court should hear a case on whether the Second Amendment applies to individuals. I seriously doubt this green and idealistic kid is aware of the Austrian theory of the business cycle, libertarians’ searing criticisms of the very existence of the Federal Reserve, or the arguments by a presidential candidate in favor of returning the dollar to a gold standard and abolishing the Fed. All these State-caused factors reduce our quality of life in important social, cultural, and economic ways.

All of these are direct or indirect results of the Imperial Federal Government’s aggressive foreign policy, its War on Terrorism, and its homeland security obsession.

The out-of control spending, inflation, and the State’s efforts to fix the economic problems it caused are the worst, and these are all facilitated by the existence of a war because domestic spending and intervention always increase in wartime, as the professional criminal class (and most of the public) are more prone to support governmental expenditures and interventions if “national security” (!) is at stake. The economic consequences of the last several decades and the Bush regime in particular should not be overlooked, especially by young people who are going to be left with these burdens by the Worst Generation. As Lew Rockwell said, “Crush an economy and you crush civilization.”

However, Peter Fulham makes some good points and I’m glad I read his column. Young people don’t do enough to show their anger, loudly and publicly, about the Imperial Federal Government’s foreign policy, specifically its wars of aggression and further incitement of terrorism. And our professional criminal class isn’t scared enough of the ire they raise among young voters, or old ones, for that matter. The government doesn’t fear the people; the people fear the government, and that is why there is tyranny.

I wonder if part of the insufficient-anger problem can be explained by a lack of strong, well-defined moral-political principles among young Americans. Now, it could be that I’m biased and I think anyone who doesn’t espouse moral principles based on self-ownership and private property rights doesn’t have really strong political principles. However, as I’ve written before and will write many times again, most liberals and conservatives seem to arrive at their political beliefs by envisioning how they want the world to be or what they want fixed, and then supporting political candidates who promise to use the coercive power of the State to achieve those ends. This is not morally principled. This is saying the ends justify the means, and the ends are good so the means must be.

Libertarians, on the other hand, have a very strong conviction that the State is evil always and everywhere, and its very existence should be fiercely opposed, and so we oppose its military adventures as a corollary to that. Our principle is that people have the innate right to do what they want with their lives, liberty, and property, and that this right applies equally to everyone at all times; and the form this takes regarding politics is that taxation and other activities of monopolistic states are evil and immoral.

Perhaps a lack of such clear, absolute, logical, and well-defined morals makes young Americans oppose Bush’s foreign wars specifically and not American foreign policy in general. How many young people spoke out in anger against Bill Clinton’s intervention in Bosnia and bombings of Iraq? How much principled opposition was there among youths to Madeleine Albright’s monstrous assertion that, even though the embargo on Iraq weakened Saddam Hussein very little and caused the starvation of millions of Iraqis, “the price is worth it”? How many young liberals who oppose the Imperial Federal Government’s pro-Israel policies would oppose a more pro-Palestine foreign policy equally as vehemently? How many young liberals who opposed the Bush regime’s invasion of Iraq would, equally as strongly, oppose an Obama administration’s intervention in Sudan’s civil war? How many young liberals who didn’t like the first president Bush’s “Blackhawk Down” fiasco in Somalia also think the United States should end all other murderous, militant intervention in Somalia?

My answer to all of these is that young “anti-war” Americans don’t take a very principled stand on American foreign policy; they just oppose certain activities by certain people, viz., Republicans. This isn’t to take away from the principled liberals and conservatives who have well-defined and well-understood reasons that this or that policy is harmful, or from those who have come to espouse a principled foreign policy based on their bad experience with the Bush regime.

I wonder what your take is on this, as a libertarian or non-libertarian reader. Am I way off base accusing a lot of young liberals of not having as strong and well-defined moral-political principles as libertarians? Am I misled about their level of opposition to those other foreign-policy fiascoes of the Clinton and pre-Clinton years (I really don’t think so)?

Lastly, Mr. Fulham didn’t mention any politicians by name, so I can’t chide him too much for failing to mention Ron Paul and his multitude of principled, enthusiastic, and self-organized supporters, but I will remind people of the popularity Dr. Paul enjoyed among young Americans, on the internet, on college campuses, at rallies, and even (to some, lamentably small, extent) at the ballot box.