Ideas for Candidates Beyond Talking Points, by Douglas Macgregor

Douglas Macgregor sounds like he’s running for office. From Macgregor at theamericanconservative.com:

Americans want a nation that leads by example. The candidates for the presidency and Congress should provide it to them.

American political, economic, and military global hegemony—sustained by America’s past economic productivity, the dollar’s reserve status, and the reliance on forward-deployed American military power—is over. In a new world shaped by sweeping technological change in warfare, business and finance, it’s not just the end of the much exaggerated “unipolar moment.” The tectonic plates of the international system are shifting beneath America’s feet, crushing Washington’s reactionary, postwar world order, giving rise to a new international system with new power centers and coalitions.

Washington is horrified. Washington’s impulse to think and behave like an unyielding autocrat is a failure. Attempting to freeze the deteriorating postwar status quo, or beating down resistance to Washington’s will, is a poor way to cultivate liberty and order in the world.

Unfortunately, Washington is currently populated with far too many men and women who cannot reconcile the reality of the new world that is emerging with Washington’s failed vision of hegemony. This delusional state of mind reinforces the idiotic belief that political, economic and military conflict or crisis is inevitably a contest between absolute virtue and absolute evil. 

The biggest problem with this approach is that it discards tangible concrete interests as a guide to action in favor of a false ideology of moral supremacy. The outcome is Washington’s blatant disregard for human life, ethics, and morality combined with a predisposition to smear, demean, and demonize any foreign power or individual that opposes them.

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