| | I'd like to respond briefly to Jeff, Jason, and Phillip about the issue of the legitimacy of a country wielding military force in the name of "defense".
First, concerning Jeff's comment. In principle, there is no difference between the legitimate use of defensive force by a government against domestic criminals and against foreign criminals. If a suspicious looking character is walking along a street at night, peering at parked cars and darkened houses, but without committing trespass or other rights violations, the police and court system should not collar this character, throw him in prison, murder him, or those connected with him, even in the name of maintaining public order.
Even if it could be proven that so doing might establish greater public order in the long term (it can't be so proven), the state should not violate the rights of those who have not committed a crime against that state's citizen-subjects. For to do so would assault the regime of natural rights that government exists to defend (AND demolish public order in the process).
Similarly, if a suspicious foreign dictator appears to be collecting big weapons, oppressing his subjects, and even threatening or invading neighboring states, but if that dictator does not threaten or pose any realistic threat to the citizens of a particular government, then that government ought to remain neutral with respect to the suspicious dictator. Why? Because government only exists to uphold and defend the individual, natural rights of its own citizens, within its own borders. That's what they're paying it to do. If citizens of this peaceful government want to send money, or otherwise aid the beleagured subjects of the dictator, they ought to be free to do so--voluntarily.
As to the long-term prospects for "democracy", such propects have nothing to do with the prospects for individual liberty. Democracy exists for one very narrow purpose: to enable citizens to peacefully select the office holders in a government bound and narrowly restricted to defending their individual rights. Once government escapes the bounds of its own legitimacy, democracy is not a public virtue; it becomes a public vice.
To Jason: "There are some poeple who maintain that a government that can not exist without violating individual rights does not deserve to exist. Is that your position, Mark?"
Yes it is. It was also the position of Thomas Jefferson and virtually all of the American Founders, as expressed in the first paragraph of the Declaration of Independence. In fact, the Founding Fathers wrote voluminously about the rights of citizens to overthrow governments that violated their individual, natural rights. Why did they reach such dangerous, subversive conclusions? Because they thought that individual rights are real, and ought to be respected and defended.
It isn't true that government cannot defend it's citizens from foreign invasion without violating individual rights. The most obvious solution: refrain from invading other, non-threatening countries, thereby sparing the lives of hapless civilians, the lives of soldiers from both nations, and ending the enormous destruction of wealth on both sides. A less obvious solution: refrain from invading and bullying other states, which clearly inspires fear and hatred of Americans abroad, and makes targets of innocent Americans everywhere.
To Philip: Why is it in the interest of the citizens of the US to engage in perpetual war for "Peace", against "enemies" that do not threaten to invade the United States? Such non-defensive military adventures cost innocent people their lives, their loved one's, and cause horrendous wealth destruction, at home and abroad. What's the point? American Grandeur and Geopolitical Balance? Why is that--whatever it is--a value?
I suggest you consider the great harmony of interests that flows from the division of labor and free trade, including the power of ideas to tranform culture. We can trade with the Chinese, benefiting Americans and Chinese.
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