Source:
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/december2006/191206Original.htm

The Original Foreign Policy

Ron Paul
Prison Planet
Tuesday, December 19, 2006

It is our true policy to steer clear of entangling alliances with any
portion of the foreign world.

~ George Washington

Last week I wrote about the critical need for Congress to reassert its
authority over foreign policy, and for the American people to recognize
that the Constitution makes no distinction between domestic and foreign
matters. Policy is policy, and it must be made by the legislature and
not the executive.

But what policy is best? How should we deal with the rest of the world
in a way that best advances proper national interests, while not
threatening our freedoms at home?

I believe our founding fathers had it right when they argued for peace
and commerce between nations, and against entangling political and
military alliances. In other words, noninterventionism.

Noninterventionism is not isolationism. Nonintervention simply means
America does not interfere militarily, financially, or covertly in the
internal affairs of other nations. It does not mean that we isolate
ourselves; on the contrary, our founders advocated open trade, travel,
communication, and diplomacy with other nations.

Thomas Jefferson summed up the noninterventionist foreign policy
position perfectly in his 1801 inaugural address: “Peace, commerce, and
honest friendship with all nations – entangling alliances with none.”
Washington similarly urged that we must, “Act for ourselves and not for
others,” by forming an “American character wholly free of foreign
attachments.”

Yet how many times have we all heard these wise words without taking
them to heart? How many claim to admire Jefferson and Washington, but
conveniently ignore both when it comes to American foreign policy? Since
so many apparently now believe Washington and Jefferson were wrong on
the critical matter of foreign policy, they should at least have the
intellectual honesty to admit it.

Of course we frequently hear the offensive cliché that, “times have
changed,” and thus we cannot follow quaint admonitions from the 1700s.
The obvious question, then, is what other principles from our founding
era should we discard for convenience? Should we give up the First
amendment because times have changed and free speech causes too much
offense in our modern society? Should we give up the Second amendment,
and trust that today’s government is benign and not to be feared by its
citizens? How about the rest of the Bill of Rights?

It’s hypocritical and childish to dismiss certain founding principles
simply because a convenient rationale is needed to justify
interventionist policies today. The principles enshrined in the
Constitution do not change. If anything, today’s more complex world
cries out for the moral clarity provided by a noninterventionist foreign
policy.

It is time for Americans to rethink the interventionist foreign policy
that is accepted without question in Washington. It is time to
understand the obvious harm that results from our being dragged time and
time again into intractable and endless Middle East conflicts, whether
in Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, or Palestine. It is definitely time to
ask ourselves whether further American lives and tax dollars should be
lost trying to remake the Middle East in our image.