The American Spectator

Are historians and Ron Paul backers Tom Woods and Kevin Gutzman now well out front in betraying the Faith of Ron Paul by showing their true leftist…ahhhh…. Neo-Conservative colors?

Mr. Neo…sorry…Gutzman and his fellow leftist Mr. Woods recently appeared on The Mike Church Show to go after me for revealing that the Ron Paul version of the Founding Fathers, the Monroe Doctrine and non-interventionism was considerably less than correct. Doing this all the while defending the idea that the United States has some sort of God-given right to interfere in any country outside its borders — as long as that country is in the correct hemisphere.

Shamed by the revelation that after holding up Secretary of State John Adams and President James Monroe as paragons of “non-interventionism” — a pillar of the Paul Doctrine — Gutzman and Woods have now been forced to admit that interfering in a land outside US borders is OK as long as, well, Gutzman and Woods approve.

In short, Gutzman says it was wrong for the US to intervene in Iraq — but it’s plenty OK in Latin America. Yet somehow the US presence in the Middle East causes  “blowback” — but blowback from US intervention in Latin America is, well, just no big deal.

To be clear, we have maintained here that Ron Paul’s foreign policy has thoroughly well-documented leftist roots. Mr. Woods in particular likes to trumpet the leftist American Anti-Imperialist League (from 1898!) as some sort of conservative touchstone. In fact the League was rife with leftists like eugenics supporter, “peace activist” and academic David Starr Jordan. We have no issue with the fact that Gutzman, Tom Woods and Dan Larison make the Paul case on foreign policy — the issue is well worth discussing. (Although Mr. Larison’s response that I am a “buffoon” seems only to underline his leftist tendency for the ad hominem.) All we’re doing in this space is calling out Paul supporters on what is a considerable amount of intellectual shimmying. It is simply not fact that the Monroe Doctrine was somehow not interventionist. And Gutzman illustrates this yet again.

In the world according to Gutzman interventionism, he assured Mike Church, is only when the US goes to  “Iraq, which is, of course, what, 8,000 miles from here and not in our hemisphere.” (My emphasis.)

Meaning that as far as Gutzman and Woods and company are concerned, every single US intervention in Latin America, Central America or Mexico — as stipulated in the Monroe Doctrine — is just no big deal. Gutzman doesn’t care about “blowback” — as long as it isn’t coming from, say, the Middle East. But if we’re talking intervention in…say…Panama or the Dominican Republic or Haiti or Cuba or Mexico or Guatamala, Nicaragua or Venezuela or Chile or…well you get the point, no problem. Suddenly the sacredness of US borders melts away, the whole subject of blowback (known better in this area as “Yanqui Go Home”) is just one no big deal. Vice President Richard Nixon getting stoned (no not that kind of stoned) in Caracas in 1958 was a vivid example of Monroe Doctrine interventionist “blowback.”  But all of this is no big deal to Gutzman and his Paul friends.

Why?

Because to really apply the Ron Paul Doctrine retroactively in history means confessing that all of the historical “truths” underlying the Paul foreign policy are a rather troublesome batch of falsehoods.

Mr. Gutzman took to the Mike Church airwaves and has proved this yet again.

In the world of Kevin Gutzman, it’s NeoCon to be in Iraq. But the US, per James Monroe, says we have a God-given right to interfere anywhere we want in this hemisphere - and Gutzman clearly approves. As a matter of fact, this is doubtless the rationale Gutzman has to use to justify the fact that Texas — home of Ron Paul — was once part of Mexico until flooded by Americans streaming outside US borders.

And in doing so, surely unintentionally (or maybe not?) Gutzman, Woods and Paul supply the intellectual grounding for Hispanic leftists who believe California, Texas, Arizona and New Mexico should be removed from the US and made into the “Republica del Norte” or the Republic of the North. After all, if the US should not be intervening outside its borders, those four American states are essentially ill-gotten gains under the Paul Doctrine. Even Congressman Abraham Lincoln opposed what these people would surely call James Polk’s NeoCon war with Mexico.

So, interestingly enough, if Kevin Gutzman and Tom Woods and Daniel Larison are correct — citizen Ron Paul of Texas is running for president of the wrong country.

Oops.