Only Rand Paul rises with the times

Today we no longer ask ourselves where are we going — we begin to ask ourselves what we have we become. The president leads America’s demand for action in justifiable vengeance. But if there is no other motive and no clearer objective beyond Stonewall Jackson’s immortal “prophetic rage,” “Kill them, Sir. Kill every man!” the prospects of longer term success are slight. America shares in and cheers the president’s anger and two men are particularly grateful: Russian President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping.

How do we extricate ourselves from the snares of time and generations of dangerous and naive policy? The president, with all the good will in the world, cannot. It was a series of unfortunate events that led to this particular moment, and it will change the direction of the presidential race in 2016. By then Putin, vastly popular in Russia and even with some American Christians, will surely have moved on to a new adventure in his near frontier, provoked as John J. Mearsheimer says this month in Foreign Affairs by America’s “liberal delusions” and the expansion of NATO. And China will by then have completed its new runway(s) in the South China Sea, primed to extend its dominion to the edge of the Philippines.

{mosads}Defending these so many things that Secretary of State John Kerry, that Slender Man of western enlightenment, calls “the many different things that one doesn’t think of normally in context of war” will require military conscription. It was always there under the table and the discussion has now begun.

“Three West Pointers, [including Stanley A. McChrystal] all retired after distinguished military careers, are now bringing sustained, critical attention to the once-sacrosanct volunteer force,” Ken Allard has written recently in The Washington Times” “While our expeditionary forces — Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines — would remain volunteer and professional, the reserves — particularly the National Guard — might be rebuilt through some form of conscription.”

A lengthy three-front war against Russia, China and vast and rising swarms of radicalized Islamic young will indeed require conscription. But does anyone today besides the aged war nostalgicos think that America would go easily to war and submit meekly to a draft as American factory floor workers and field hands did in the two world wars? To do so ignores the war in Vietnam and the Sixties, as the lesson of that period was that the educated and individualized young Americans raised in the sun of California would not go quietly into the night and fog. 

Have they not been tuning in to the life of Jax, biker love child of Emma Goldman and our present-day Hamlet, who calls through the wind on his sweet hog when challenged by the local sheriff, “We are all free men protected by the Constitution!”? Did they not notice the Gadsden flag hanging in the clubhouse of the Sons of Anarchy?

The only politician today who vaguely speaks to this world is Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, who suggested last week that an old agreement from a decade ago was inadequate to the challenge presented today and Congress must send a new approval to the president.

How will he feel about Obama’s “pivot to Asia”? The young today tend to like him and he fits the gist of their generational thunder gods with Julian Assange and Edward Snowden. How would they feel about a war in Asia signed into treaty in 1952? Or being drafted to defending Scotland, Catalonia and Venice by a treaty written in 1949?

Quigley is a prize-winning writer who has worked more than 35 years as a book and magazine editor, political commentator and reviewer. For 20 years he has been an amateur farmer, raising Tunis sheep and organic vegetables. He lives in New Hampshire with his wife and four children. Contact him at quigley1985@gmail.com.