The government does not define America. Foreign policy does not define America.
Got that?
I do not like the government. It does not have my consent. I also happen to think a random group of monkeys could do a better job than the various 545 power-hungry idiots who have occupied the land known as Washington DC at any point during my lifetime.
Foreign policy does not exist in a vacuum. Foreign policy is not pure. Foreign policy is open for as much debate and discussion as anything else the government does. I mean, you do know that, the same idiots who destroyed our country domestically, also make our foreign policy decisions, right?
Think about it.
I'll let Robert Higgs take it from here.
Don’t Accuse Me of Blaming America When I Blame the Government
In my view, replying to policy critics by accusing them of “blaming America” is worse than linguistically crude and ideologically twisted; it is stupid.
First, and most important, let us recognize that the U.S. government is not America. Notwithstanding the ease with which politicians and their speechwriters toss around the idea that “American needs X” or “America should do Y,” the word America has so many distinct referents that it is extremely ambiguous. In currently common usage, America may refer to, among other things, the geographic area within U.S. borders; the population residing in this area; the traditions, customs, social practices, and norms that these persons regard as uniquely their own; the ideals that they have long expressed as their foremost aspirations; or a specific group of persons representing the United States in international organizations or competitions (e.g., “America won more medals than any other country in the Olympic games).
Only in discussions of international relations do we automatically understand America to be the same thing as the U.S. government. Thus, when we say that “America entered World War I in 1917,” it is understood that the statement means “U.S. government officials, specifically members of Congress and the president, declared the U.S. government to be at war against the German Empire and its allies in 1917.” And when we say that “America ratified the United Nations Charter in 1945, we mean that “a majority of the members of the U.S. Senate voted in favor of this treaty.”
Notice, however, that if one were to presume that the foregoing use of “America” – that is, the international-relations usage that takes America to be identical to all or part of the U.S. government – were the one being employed, it would make no sense to say that critics of U.S. policy are “blaming America,” because that statement would amount to saying that critics of U.S. government policies are blaming the U.S. government, which is obvious and redundant.
However, it is equally senseless for defenders of U.S. policy to suppose that the policy’s critics are blaming America in any of the senses specified in the third paragraph before this one. Critics are not blaming the geographic area, the resident population, the people’s traditions and customs, or their foremost ideals.
Critics who are said to be “blaming America” are in fact simply blaming the U.S. government, and defenders of the government’s policy who wield this polemical sword are implying either that the government and the people are one and the same or that the government indeed bears responsibility for adopting and implementing the policy in question, but should not be faulted for doing so. Either way, the defenders are standing on quicksand.
The government – the collection of politicians, soldiers, hired bureaucrats, and assorted flunkies who devise and carry out U.S. policies – makes mistakes. Of course, many of the actions and policies that sooner or later are generally regarded as mistakes were not mistakes at all, but merely actions and policies that, contrary to official declarations, did not serve the general public’s interests, although they served well enough the interests of key government officials and their major supporters. But set aside that class of actions. The government makes mistakes even in its attempts to attain objectives it truly seeks to attain. It cannot help but make such mistakes because its decision-makers have limited information, often poor judgment, biases of various sorts in the evaluation of information they do possess, and other shortcomings too numerous to recite.
So, why should anyone suppose that the government simply cannot be mistaken, and hence legitimately criticized for its mistakes?
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