In response to Jonah Goldberg’s column here.

I mostly like the first section of this. In fact I disagree with what he calls fusionism, the belief that societies must be free to be virtuous because it’s only virtue if it’s freely chosen. I think societies kept benign at gunpoint are still good, and maybe the best that we can expect from some. Which ties into this idea about success and failure in war. In WWII we knew how to win wars. We didn’t know about the Holocaust going on Germany and it’s occupied countries when we went in. We just knew that Hitler was invading countries and England was begging for our help. Later we discovered the atrocities and so history can recored it as a just war, without question, because we did the hard work. We did what it took to win, we sacrificed our men and treasure and only asked for enough ground to burry our dead. Then we left a military presence in those countries to this day. And there has not been a problem in Germany or Japan since. Unlike after WWI when we depended on a treaty to subdue Germany which lead to WWII.

Ever since, we have started wars and then let the politicians lose them for us for political gain. Rather than doing what needed to be done we decided that when it got difficult that we should have conversations and discussions and talk about whether we should even be there in the first place, as if we could rewrite history. Second guessing, third guessing, forth guessing. This is how to lose wars. The Democrats are pros at it. Now we just left Iraq, because that’s the academic ideology, it’s up to Iraq to fix it’s own problems. This is worse than how laissez-faire capitalism is viewed by the Liberals. Just let them do whatever they want. This has lead to less stability in every country in the Middle East under this administration. How hard is it to look back to WWII and see what worked?

This fatalism that is all to common is strange to me.  Success doesn’t just happen.  It’s not written in stone that we had to lose ever war since WWII.  It’s because we gave up when it got difficult. It’s because we set impossible goals, trying to wage a war with no civilian casualties or destruction, and our rules of engagement that tie the hands of our troops. It’s because we left before the job was done. It’s because the Democrats talk too much and think that talking can restore peace to the world.  Democrats have turned reality on it’s head for political gain.  Sure no one wants to fight wars.  But the fact is that on this sinful earth, wars are a reality.  Bad men exist.  Putin’s not living in the past he is living in reality, where aggressive force is how things are done.  They are only prevented by force.  Republicans have understood this just as those who composed the Constitution, and so they are for a strong military.  But now when your presidency is a complete failure, what better move for your party than to destroy the legacy of the last Republican president by turning the foothold we held in Iraq into a loss?  Never mind the fact that we have invested men and treasure there.  Never mind that one of our allies is begging us for help.  Let me be clear this is despicable.

When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall, one by one, and unpitied sacrifice is a contemptible struggle.  -Edmund Burke, Thought on the Cause of the Present Discontents

And this is the fusionism mentioned earlier it applies to individuals and countries.  Did any of us individually get to where we are without other guiding us and disciplining us when we went the wrong way? Did our country get here without the same?  Yet now we only value persons or countries who choose to do good on their own as if it were spontaneous.  This is completely unbiblical.  God puts governments in place to stem evil, because we need it Romans 13.  He puts countries in place to conquer other countries to stem their evil, because they need itAmos.  Even the church given the very Spirit of God still must be trained, we still must be guided.  Why else would we be given the Scripture and the tradition of Apostles and Prophets to guide us.  Why else would we be told to meditate on them and study them diligently?  And then you expect the nations of the world to just spontaneously be virtuous?