No one is "pontificating" about "getting involved". The dramatic recitations of poetry about "then they came for..." is not relevant to US foreign policy, which should be based on what is required to defend the country. Not every thug dictator is "coming for us". Getting in wars and not "appeasing" are two different things.

Re: “When every dollar in the economy is borrowed (fiat currency from a private bank) there is no way to pay back the debt without collapsing the economy.” Actually there is one way: begin issuing currency without issuing more debt. See ”Keep the Deficit, Ditch the Debt.” http://www.fixourmoney.com

Thank you for a very detailed and well thought out exposition.

Bad philosophical premises have been spread by intellectuals for over a century and have become entrenched throughout the culture. You don't have to take a contemporary technical philosophy course to be exposed to and influenced by prevailing beliefs. They are transmitted in all realms of thought.

Everyone has some philosophy, explicitly or implicitly, because as human beings who think in concepts we cannot live without having a broad view of the word and our relation to it. Those who don't critically examine and formulate their own beliefs and contrast them to other possibilities accept them by default, absorbing whatever is around them. Religion is a primitive form of philosophy. People act for all kinds of motives, consistently or not, with all kinds and degrees of knowledge, true or not. Underlying all of it is their general sense of life and the philosophical premises they have adopted or absorbed.

See Ayn Rand's "Philosophy and Sense of Life" in The Romantic Manifesto, the whole collection of essays in Philosophy: Who Needs It?, and the lead essay in For the New Intellectual.

Progressivism and Pragmatism did not start in education in the 1960s. They began under European influence in the19th century and spread, at first among a small group of intellectuals and then from them to the general population over time, in more or less technical forms of influence. The beginning of Pragmatism in Cambridge over a hundred years ago spread in and from Harvard, where it was academically centered, to all the professions, permeating everything from there.

Read Louis Menands's best seller The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in America to see how widespread it has become -- in the courts, politics, science, education, social science and everywhere else. Menand is sympathetic to Pragmatism, and those reading this book who don't already know what is wrong with Pragmatism will find themselves intellectually at home with it, without realizing from where and how they got their premises, precisely because it is so ingrained in the culture now. Those who do understand will be appalled at how deep it has penetrated everywhere.

To understand Pragmatism, what its roots were, what is wrong with it, and the contrast with Ayn Rand's philosophy, listen to Leonard Peikoff's lectures on the history of philosophy. Pragmatism is covered in lectures 7&8 of part 2.

https://estore.aynrand.org/p/95/found...
https://estore.aynrand.org/p/96/moder...

This is the kind of systematic knowledge that should be taught in every school and sought be every intellectually serious adult who never learned it.

"There is no divine duty imposed on the country or on politicians to stick with the Constitutional principles."
Thanks for all of this comment, not just the quote part.

I haven't seen yet, but I will check it out. But his statements mirror my exact perception on it, and goes back to your philosophy point. I just have a hard time not believing in the "conspiracy" that this has been in an engineering state for a long time and has been steadily crafted, for it to be so smoothly done. It also exposes bot political sides as being in the same group, as they both do the same thing, just under different wrappers, and yet the majority of people I talk to will insist "their side is right", never seeing how it is the same thing...

I am not sure you can hang the hat on just philosophy, in that Philosophy is not a taught science in any school I have seen, except maybe in a Liberal Arts program in some colleges, somewhere. I have never seen it as a class in High Schools I have supported. The closest thing is "Social Studies" or "Current Events" and they always gravitate to the "why it is right" side of the story (everything you protest for is right, because everything that exists is evil). So, I am not sure how you would get anyone to identify a "bad philosophy" today, when they don't know a good one from a bad one from a useful one from a unusable one.

I found Churchill's personal insights into the war interesting as well as his perspective as a British citizen who became Prime Minister during the War. One of the things he pointed out was that nations are foolish to either ignore or attempt to appease dictators. It only emboldens them. We've seen other cases of this in the past 60 years from Mao and Pol Pot to Saddam Hussein, Iran, and most recently Kim Jong Un. It's all nice to pontificate that one shouldn't get involved, pretending that they can remain neutral and unaffected, but it is a sentiment directly contradicted by history - especially in today's global world. It doesn't give license for every intervention, but the hard line of zero intervention to me could only come from someone truly naive. This poem speaks to it pretty accurately:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Martin Niemöller - German pastor who spent seven years in concentration camps

The US should not have sacrificed for WWI and should not have been so careless about being drawn into WWII, especially in being so unprepared. The terrible US sacrifices beginning with North Africa and in the Pacific were avoidable and they were inexcusable, but they were the consequences of FDR's policies. Developing the nuclear bomb for defense as needed was far more rational and did not require the rest.

This isn't about complications of competing petty dictators and doesn't require 3 volumes of details to understand, however interesting the history may be for some purposes. Once the Allies were in WWI, Germany should have been held to its defeat without the pandering that let and helped it take off again, and Lenin not helped after his coup. Once WWII was under way because that was not done, Russia and Germany should have been allowed and encouraged to mutually destroy each other, followed by suppression of whatever was left of the "winner".

To understand the cause read "The Roots of War" and Leonard Peikoff's The Ominous Parallels about the cultural roots of Germany's war. They are far more informative and useful than details of European war history.

The next step after "bad philosophy is at the core" is identifying and understanding what the bad philosophy is and what must replace it. It's not about how people feel about what seems 'reasonable versus someone else's opinion. It is not subjective.

Pragmatist John Dewey's Progressive Education, the Fabian Socialists, and many more were explicitly pushing exploitation of education to further the socialist goals a century ago. The rise of the New Left in the 1960s was only the cashing in.

I don't know why the sound is not synchronized with his actions. I remember him saying this on TV when he did it live. The cynical power grabbing of these statists is becoming increasingly open. They are so accustomed to it that they think nothing of saying things like this in pubic now, and few spoke out against it or care. The whole country should have reacted in horror and revolted against the Obama administration over this mentality. Instead he was re-elected against a Mr. "Me Too but Slower Nice Guy".

Thanks for the video, I appreciate it.

If you want to read a very good synopsis of the history between WWI and WWII, read Churchill's six-volume history of the matter. He goes into great detail about the problems between 1918 and 1939, the abandonment of treaties, the catering to dictators, and the various political movements and counter-movements in that 20-year period. He had divorced himself from all three major political parties in opposition to their movements and was largely vindicated in his viewpoints. Churchill also spoke about the things that Roosevelt did to facilitate trade agreements even prior to lend-lease as well as diplomatic efforts - especially to prevent France's Navy from falling into the hands of the Germans and tilting the war into Germany's favor.

As to whether or not the US should have been involved in either WW I or WW II, that is a matter of perspective and there is certainly arguments to both sides with substantial merit. One can say with utmost certainty, however, that the world would look very different and certainly less free had the United States not intervened in both WW I and WW II. In WW I it was the opening of a new front against the Germans that finally broke that war from the bloody trench fighting which claimed millions. In WW II, without the aid of US destroyers, aircraft, and the lend-lease system, Britain would have eventually been starved out or forced to cede the continent of Africa (including India), pulling back their substantial Navy to defend the convoys. And without Britain to harass the Germans, the Russians would have had a much harder time of things. The world we know would be very, very different.

It's hard for most people to learn ideas that are so radically different from what they were taught and then accepted.

Unfortunately, government and Obama administration Rahm Emanuel's "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste; and what I mean by that is an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yeA_... is not science fiction -- it's "we need wider powers" in Atlas Shrugged.

That is very true. Hard to teach to those who do not want to learn though....

Bad philosophy is definetly at the core, along with no accepted set of moral guidelines and standards eveyone will adhere to. What one person finds reasonable and fair another finds tyranny. I also believe that this has been something that the education system was specifically geared to introduce starting in the late 60's, more and more civics/history/social classes became "feel good" training, and now everyone is on their on agenda.

That is true, that is even a common theme in Sc-Fi books today, an emergency justifies total control.

"would have no legal authority. "
I am less concerned with how statist our contingency plan for DC getting nuked is and more concerned with the prosaic statism in everyday decisions now. I understand the notion that "you never want to let a serious crisis go to waste", but I see this as a subset of not the central cause.

I guess if I gave it more though, I ought to be more concerned about the statist contingency planning.

I think I'm coming to ewv's thinking: bad philosophy is at the core.

I think that the unreason in the halls of Congress and other routine government is far more serious than a small group of racist thugs bused in to take to the street. The thugs are easily rounded up and everyone realizes that their antics are not to be tolerated (unless they are leftists protecting themselves from freedom of speech). The behavior in the halls of Congress and the rest of it are still regarded as acceptable in principle if not always entirely popular.

But unlike like the sanctimonious political speeches today "hoping" that the thugs in Charlotte will "come together" and move forward together in "love", we cannot "hope" that "someday people realize a reasoned approach is the only way to survive". It requires specific principles and concepts of reason be spread as the right philosophical ideas.

A "shadow government" of unelected bureacrats taking over would have no authority to replace elected officials at all. But we don't know what they have in mind for a "backup plan" because they aren't telling us that either. Perhaps they are so accustomed to an unelected government of bureaucrats already making decisions and telling us what to do with no Constitutional authority that cutting them loose entirely in a "crisis" makes no difference to them. More power is what emergencies are for.

I do agree there, and I would hope someday for people to realize a reasoned approach is the only way we will all survive... Todays antics alone just showed reason is not widespread, emotional fear and outrage and self centered desire is...

Yes, they did abandon it, although the Constitution I do not think really codified that, beyond the 2nd amendment, and look how often that gets twisted by both sides of the argument...

I don't know if that qualifies as "a shadow government" especially when it appears to be all unelected civil servants. I also do not know what "thousands of career civil servants could do if everything else was toast, since they should, and would have no legal authority. Seems closer toe ewv's "statist" government, than ever. The "shadow government" I refer to are the unelected, but rich and powerful, patrons who own all the politicians, contribute to PACs and campaigns and end up selling the country what government and policies we will have, good or not. Notice how specific topics get huge amounts of PAC money each season? Soros comes to mind as one....

", the Founders wanted that, but they soon learned"
It seems to me about everything we say the Founders wanted XYZ and put it the Constitution, but it turned out to be impractical in the modern world so we just abandoned it. I know a citizen militia can't provide missile defense. I don't think we should go overboard. But that should be the goal and "concept car" we model things off.

As you say about the Civil War, a citizen militia could not have forced an restive region that felt oppressed by the central gov't from breaking free. I actually think that is by design. They were the restive region wanting to break free.