by PAUL COLLITS – THE one key and unasked question following Donald Trump’s intervention in Venezuelan domestic affairs has to be – when is he coming for Albo?
And how do we make the case and put it to the Pentagon? Nothing would please many of us more than the sight of PM Anthony Albanese rotting in an American prison.
- He is moving our country in dangerous and possibly fatal directions.
- He surrounds himself with madmen and, mostly, mad women.
- He is actively attempting to bankrupt the nation.
Until this week, most people wouldn’t have been able even to name the Venezuelan leader, let alone describe his crimes. The phrase “narco-terrorism” wasn’t rolling off too many tongues.
Views will vary on the significance, morality and wisdom of Trump’s brash new approach to foreign policy. Venezuelans across the globe are partying like its 1999.
CELEBRATION
All power to them. Getting rid of an otherwise unflushable dictator is cause for mighty celebration.
And yet it is a tad difficult to see how this latest putsch serves “America first”, notwithstanding US political commentator Matt Walsh’s claim: “I totally support turning other countries in our hemisphere into subordinate vassals of the US.
“That’s the very definition of an America First foreign policy.”
He also adds: “This is a war for oil!
“First of all, the ‘war’ lasted like 90 minutes. Second, going to war to secure vital resources for your own people is totally legitimate. Why should we allow some third world communist shithole to control trillions-of-dollars of oil?”
Matt Walsh is perhaps veering towards the reverse of Trump Derangement Syndrome. The Donald can do no wrong!
This course of thinking would be unwise. And it’s far from clear that the MAGA voting class is remotely interested in making Venezuela great again.
Former Fairfax owner Conrad Black is also in the “you beaut” camp, though with more analytics and a focus on strategic outcomes rather than due process.
Another US political commentator, Victor Davis Hanson, also remains on Team Trump post the Caracas raid.
A Berlin Wall moment, to be celebrated. But VDH has concerns about what comes next – and acknowledges the complexities and dangers of mission creep.
A war on drugs plus a war on terror? Perhaps asking for trouble. An outstanding summary, right here. To be engaged by grown-ups.
George Christensen makes the case against. In not one, but two articles, and impressively, in a measured fashion.
Conservatism, properly understood, is not an ideology of permanent war or global crusades. It is a philosophy of restraint, humility, limits and order.
POWER
It begins with a sober view of human nature and a deep suspicion of concentrated power.
War represents the greatest possible concentration of power in the hands of the State. It centralises authority, suppresses liberty, corrodes moral restraint and leaves nations poorer in spirit as well as in treasure.
A conservative case against military interventionism is therefore not a novel concept. It is the original position.
Of course, Trump is no conservative, and never has been. Which isn’t the only point at issue here.
The American Left, as would be expected, is blah-blah-blahing away. We can safely dismiss them. Hypocrites at best.
It’s a bit rich for the COVID generation of politicians to be bleating about the abandonment of due process in the democratic polity.
Elites make up their own rules. We all witnessed this, and suffered muchly from it, during the plandemic.
That doesn’t make them or it right, of course. That is George Christensen’s point.
The rules should come from we-the-people, massaged gently over time through a regime of prudence and restraint if the idea of the social contract and the ongoing case (now wafer thin) for paying taxes is to have any ongoing meaning.
But what if the rules – all of them – have been thrown out? What to do?
One view – and who is to say it’s wrong? – is that in the era of active terrorism, open borders, rampant international criminality, globalist governance, post-accountability, post-international law, and post-everything else decent in policy making, we should welcome someone who “puts a bit of stick about”.
Or, put another way, if our side plays by extinct) rules (of the game), we will never make our way back to decency in government and decent government.
Or put a third way, you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs. Or put a fourth way, all bets are now off in the age of evil, post-modernist governance.
This view makes even more sense when we remember that bad actors and demonic ideologies dominate just about every major institution in society, and when these actors are making decisions every day which affect our lives.
DIRTY
The alternate view is that even if the other side plays dirty, why should we?
We, and in this case the Americans, should respect their own constitutional traditions, and the principles of international law and order. Not to mention consistency.
Trump may be an oligarch, but he is our oligarch.
Albo may or may not be a drug criminal. But he is a socialist dictator with scant regard for the human rights of his citizens.
He is moving our country in dangerous and possibly fatal directions. He surrounds himself with madmen and, mostly, mad women.
He is actively attempting to bankrupt the nation.
He is providing ever new avenues for digital tyranny. He is Hamas’s man down under.
He is most of the way down the road to destroying our energy strength, our farmlands and our industrial base. What is left of it.
Simply, many want him gone. And what with a rigged electoral system – where a schmuck like Albo can get in on a landslide with a third of the primary vote – what other way is there of removing him? PC
.PC
