Word: interventionist
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Saying he represents "a new perspective in American politics," Libertarian presidential candidate Ed Clark last night stressed the need for massive cuts in taxes, spending and the size of the federal budget, and for the adoption of a non-interventionist foreign policy...
...Foreign policy--here is where you can start to draw blood. Libertarians follow a strict non-interventionist line, but they will allow business to do as it will. If their argument is that America should not force its beliefs on other peoples, ask them why they'd allow corporations to form their own armies (Clark promised they would have that privilege). And if they defend--as in most cases they will--the rights of companies to sell their products without control or review, ask them about the sale of nuclear weapons to foreign lands. "I guess I'd allow them...
This year's platforms offer quite clear alternatives, two distinct views of life and Government. Basically, the Democrats support an activist, interventionist Government, while the Republicans want to reduce the federal presence. Declares the G.O.P.: "Government's power to take and tax, to regulate and require, has already reached extravagant proportions. Divided, leaderless, unseeing, uncomprehending, Democratic politicians plod on with listless offerings of pale imitations of the same policies they have pursued so long, knowing full well their futility...
During the 1970s, political elites converted the rage of the 1960s into settled convictions and organizational forms. Two convictions were of special importance: the United States shall abandon an interventionist role in world affairs and retard the rate of domestic economic growth. Military power should be renounced and industrial expansion denounced. It is not hard to sympathize with such concerns: ravaged villages in Vietnam and foul air over Los Angeles are not pretty sights or monuments to moral progress...
...interventionist argument crumbles at the touch of logic. What if that quick-strike force had been at our disposal last month--would it have helped President Carter find a way to get the embassy hostage out alive? Would it have cowed the religious fanatics who provoked the crisis? Would it have accomplished anything except to make America look foolish for having spent billions...