By Warner Todd Huston ——Bio and Archives--September 30, 2011
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It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.To warn Americans against “permanent alliances” really should go without saying. Decades later, a fast friend of the United States basically said the same thing when he said there are “no eternal allies” and “no perpetual enemies” for any nation. Washington went on to say, though, that sometimes we must form alliances. “Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture,” he wrote, “we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.” Obviously he understood that always staying neutral — as Paulites and liberals maintain — is not possible. It should also be realized that this was Washington’s (and Hamilton’s) vision. The farewell address was not an explication of standard practice even when it was written, but Washington’s ideals. Many founders disagreed with this vision. So to act like an isolationist policy was a singular founding principle is a horrible misread of history. In To the Farewell Address, the seminal book about the address and the era in which it was given, Felix Gilbert warned us all not to accept the flawed assumptions of just what was going on with Washington’s farewell address. In the conclusion to his essay, Gilbert wrote:
Because the Farewell Address comprises various aspects of American political thinking, it reaches beyond any period limited in time and reveals the basic issue of the American attitude toward foreign policy: the tension between Idealism and Realism. Settled by men who looked for gain and by men who sought freedom, born into independence in a century of enlightened thinking and of power politics, America has wavered in her foreign policy between Idealism and Realism, and her great historical moments have occurred when both were combined.In other words, today’s neo-isolationist view of America’s “real” foreign policy ideals is woefully incorrect. The U.S. was never isolationist as a first principle. Ron Paul is wrong and so are the liberals that have a sudden and uncharacteristic respect for a founding father. Finally a note… I posted this on BigPeace.com already, but an interesting phenomenon occurred. Instead of discussing the piece as written, a ton of Ron Paul nuts, and other deluded types, decided that this piece was my excuse to justify military interventionism. Ridiculously they claimed I was somehow excusing WWI, or our current Middle East policies. Their comments just prove that too many people do not read for content any more but only want to use an article as an excuse to provoke argument over their own half-baked ideas. The fact is, this article is discussing only one thing and that is the purpose of Washington’s farewell address when it was delivered in 1796 and what it means to American first principles. I have no interest in using this piece to excuse or justify anything that happened after Washington left the scene. This article is not meant to ascertain what amount of foreign policy is optimal, only that isolationism is not an American first principle. If WWI was wrong or our Middle East policy is misguided, those are discussions for other articles, not this one. Finally, one idiot spammed the BP.com piece with comment after comment saying I was “using the wrong quote” for the beginning of this piece. He said that Thomas Jefferson said “entangling alliances” and that my attribution of it to Washington is wrong. This is another guy that can’t read for content. I know it’s wrong and that is my point for saying Washington didn’t say it! But it isn’t me that is pushing the phrase on Washington, it is the many others I mentioned at the top and that is why I am correcting the record.
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Warner Todd Huston’s thoughtful commentary, sometimes irreverent often historically based, is featured on many websites such as Breitbart.com, among many, many others. He has also written for several history magazines, has appeared on numerous TV and radio shows.
He is also the owner and operator of Publius’ Forum.