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Why no one invades Switzerland
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<blockquote data-quote="henschman" data-source="post: 1194799" data-attributes="member: 4235"><p>I don't think it's right to analogize the foreign policy of nations to encounters that happen between individuals, like the gas station robbery. Individuals are free human beings with the right to make their own decisions for their own lives. When an individual decides to engage in risky behavior like coming to the aid of a victim of an armed robbery, the only life he is risking is his own. As an individual, he is the master of his own will and has every right to decide for himself how to act in such a situation. However, nations are not individuals, with one unified will... nations are nothing more than collections of individuals, all of whom have the right to do as they please with their own lives and property. Remember that the very essence of government is force -- everything they do, they accomplish through force. The proper analogy would be if you see the said robbery going down, and you promptly come to the rescue -- by putting a gun to your buddy's head and saying, "you better go in there and do something, or I'll kill you." </p><p></p><p>When you talk of a nation "deciding" to help another nation, what you really mean is that whatever group is in power decided to force everyone in the country to subsidize cause of the group in power -- whether everyone else supports it or not. It's like when socialists talk about how "our society has decided that we should help the less fortunate," which is a really euphamistic way of saying that we who are in power have decided that we are going to force everybody in the country to support our noble and humanitarian cause, and if anybody resists, we will use the full power of the state to force compliance. An interventionist foreign policy is the same thing, except it redistributes lives as well as wealth... lives and wealth that nobody has any right to re-distribute.</p><p></p><p>The government should never be the institution by which groups force individuals to support various pet causes against their will... the government should simply be the institution that protects the individual's right to do as he pleases with his life and property to the maximum extent that everyone can do so equally. If we are to maintain our precious liberty, the government MUST be kept within this limited role. Otherwise, nobody's life or liberty is safe -- they can be taken away in support of whatever cause the group currently in power supports (and you never know what that will be). If our experimentation with this form of government tells us anything, it is that there will NEVER be any shortage of causes or of people willing to force them on others, if this is allowed. </p><p></p><p>In a free country, individuals are free to voluntarily help other people, including foreigners involved in a war. If you would like to help someone who is in need, the proper response is to go help them yourself, or to use your rights of free speech and free association to organize people to help support your cause VOLUNTARILY. This would be your original gas station example -- an individual freely deciding to help others... or maybe you ask your buddy to go in there with you. When it comes to foreign wars, Americans have done this quite a bit throughout our nation's history. Have you heard of the Lafayette Escadrille? They were American pilots who went overseas and volunteered to fight in the French Air Service in WWI, before the US got involved. Americans volunteered for many of the Allied nations in WWI. Ernest Hemmingway did this. Many Americans fought in the Spanish Civil War during the 1930s, as well as in the Sino-Japanese war.</p><p></p><p>Bottom line -- if you don't like something that's happening overseas, pick up a rifle, get your do-gooder ass over there, and quit trying to force other people to do your dirty work! And I mean that in the nicest way! <img src="/images/smilies/wink.png" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-shortname=";)" /></p><p></p><p>BTW, as good lookin as some of those Swiss babes are, I'll take a good ol Oklahoma gal any day.</p><p></p><p>Sorry about the long post. I hope somebody actually reads it! <img src="/images/smilies/wink.png" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=";)" title="Wink ;)" data-shortname=";)" /></p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="henschman, post: 1194799, member: 4235"] I don't think it's right to analogize the foreign policy of nations to encounters that happen between individuals, like the gas station robbery. Individuals are free human beings with the right to make their own decisions for their own lives. When an individual decides to engage in risky behavior like coming to the aid of a victim of an armed robbery, the only life he is risking is his own. As an individual, he is the master of his own will and has every right to decide for himself how to act in such a situation. However, nations are not individuals, with one unified will... nations are nothing more than collections of individuals, all of whom have the right to do as they please with their own lives and property. Remember that the very essence of government is force -- everything they do, they accomplish through force. The proper analogy would be if you see the said robbery going down, and you promptly come to the rescue -- by putting a gun to your buddy's head and saying, "you better go in there and do something, or I'll kill you." When you talk of a nation "deciding" to help another nation, what you really mean is that whatever group is in power decided to force everyone in the country to subsidize cause of the group in power -- whether everyone else supports it or not. It's like when socialists talk about how "our society has decided that we should help the less fortunate," which is a really euphamistic way of saying that we who are in power have decided that we are going to force everybody in the country to support our noble and humanitarian cause, and if anybody resists, we will use the full power of the state to force compliance. An interventionist foreign policy is the same thing, except it redistributes lives as well as wealth... lives and wealth that nobody has any right to re-distribute. The government should never be the institution by which groups force individuals to support various pet causes against their will... the government should simply be the institution that protects the individual's right to do as he pleases with his life and property to the maximum extent that everyone can do so equally. If we are to maintain our precious liberty, the government MUST be kept within this limited role. Otherwise, nobody's life or liberty is safe -- they can be taken away in support of whatever cause the group currently in power supports (and you never know what that will be). If our experimentation with this form of government tells us anything, it is that there will NEVER be any shortage of causes or of people willing to force them on others, if this is allowed. In a free country, individuals are free to voluntarily help other people, including foreigners involved in a war. If you would like to help someone who is in need, the proper response is to go help them yourself, or to use your rights of free speech and free association to organize people to help support your cause VOLUNTARILY. This would be your original gas station example -- an individual freely deciding to help others... or maybe you ask your buddy to go in there with you. When it comes to foreign wars, Americans have done this quite a bit throughout our nation's history. Have you heard of the Lafayette Escadrille? They were American pilots who went overseas and volunteered to fight in the French Air Service in WWI, before the US got involved. Americans volunteered for many of the Allied nations in WWI. Ernest Hemmingway did this. Many Americans fought in the Spanish Civil War during the 1930s, as well as in the Sino-Japanese war. Bottom line -- if you don't like something that's happening overseas, pick up a rifle, get your do-gooder ass over there, and quit trying to force other people to do your dirty work! And I mean that in the nicest way! ;) BTW, as good lookin as some of those Swiss babes are, I'll take a good ol Oklahoma gal any day. Sorry about the long post. I hope somebody actually reads it! ;) [/QUOTE]
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