The Three Paths Forward

First, I’m not on air today. My apologies. I am flying back from a business meeting and football game in Las Vegas. I’ll be back tomorrow.

Second, I hope you might consider listening to my show from yesterday, which is available here. In particular, please consider listening to the second hour. If you click the “Podcast” link at top here, you can get the show in your preferred podcast app.

I want to focus on part of what I said in the second hour.

My friend Drew pointed out we, on the right, have three paths forward now. The first is the one a lot of you say you don’t want, being the world’s policeman.

I agree.

I have long thought it was foolish for the United States to go around the world insisting everyone is capable of wants to have our liberal democracy. A lot of nations do not and we do not need to go around the world propping up democracies and installing them elsewhere. That is what I take to be the world’s policeman.

I also do not think the United States can afford to be isolationist. If we pack up, come home, and get off the world’s stage, deciding we are too small to do too much in the world, the power vacuum we leave behind will be filled with countries who do not share our values, views, or principles. We will be harmed. Market forces will turn against us, some by force. The dollar as reserve currency will crater. Our costs to do business on the world stage will go up and our quality of life will decline.

I think we have to go with a third option, but it is an option some on the left and right equate with being the world’s policeman. I disagree. I think it is being realistic that there is evil and there are bad guys. We have a responsibility to the western world order, free people, and our own national interests to help our allies, fund our friends where we can, and fight as necessary to preserve a world order with the United States leading it.

That means we do need to provide weaponry to Ukraine and money to Israel. It means we need to be the arsenal of democracy. It does not mean we go randomly around the world to support democracy. It does mean we go around the world deliberately to stop the advancing Axis of Evil between Iran, Russia, and China.

It means we get our hands dirty by building alliances with unsavory regimes that prefer us to them. It means we send brave men into the shadows to slit the throats of monsters while we sleep safely at home. It means securing our border so the monsters cannot come here. And it means providing the tools and assistance for our friends and allies to slay the monsters abroad so our sons and daughters do not have to.

Before our eyes, a new power dynamic is taking shape. It is an Axis of Evil led by the Russians, Chinese, and Iranians. Iran sends oil to China, which returns cash. That cash is then used by Iran to purchase components from China to provide weapons to Russia and terrorists. Russia then uses those weapons in Ukraine and Africa to destabilize parts of the planet. In Africa, Islamic radicals then creep back in, diverting Western resources from Ukraine and the South China Sea to help China and Russia.

This Axis of Evil collaborates with the narco-cartels of Mexico and the Mexican government, which is a shadow partner to the Axis of Evil. It collaborates with the North Koreans, Cubans, Venezuelans, and others. It threatens our way of life.

We must either take it seriously or it will crush us and bring death again to our homeland.

It is why we must force our military to get its crap in gear for weapons production. It is why we must secure our border. It is why we must not retreat from the world, but engage in smarter ways with the practical reality that there are bad guys, evil, and monsters and if we do not lead the free world against them, they will come for us. It is why we must realign our Naval forces for new types of naval warfare and stop using taxpayer dollars to prop up Boeing, always behind and over budget.

That does not mean we police the world. It means we work with allies and proxies, some who do not share our values, but recognize the benefit of western economies. It is, by the way, one reason we must force our elite to abandon the ridiculous notion that African nations, Christian regimes, and others embrace rainbow flag values. Our cultural elite hold so many countries that are not woke in contempt. Those countries will turn to the Axis of Evil for survival if Western secular elites try to impose their secular religion in a cultural crusade concurrent to fighting distinctly different malignant forces.

We must accommodate dictators, authoritarians, and adherents of values different from our elites’ values if we are to respond effectively to the Axis of Evil.

If we do not respond, the Axis of Evil will not sit by. They will creep from the shadows and it will end badly for us. We cannot rest on laurels, the reputations earned by the dead, or on a past that no longer is. But we cannot give up, decide to stay home, and put up a “no trespassing” sign.

Our nation is divided and tired and the enemy is united against us. They place chess pieces on a board, readying to play, and we dither with a dementia patient in charge who is incapable not just of taking the 3 a.m. phone call, but he cannot even take the 3 p.m. call either.

God help us and maranatha.