Comment by biomcgary | Hacker News Reader

Comment by biomcgary | Hacker News Reader

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George Washington's farewell address (1796) - on Europe: The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.

Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.

Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?

To say the same thing as everyone else, but in a different way: let's say Washington turned out to be some form of benevolent vampire, and was able to live through all of America's lifetime from 1776 to today; do you think he would be commenting on his social media platform of choice quoting his younger self, or do you think his position on this matter would have changed?

Washington's opinion might well have changed and, as noted in other comments, an armada of nuclear ICBMs does negate the distance that he referenced.

Regardless of the hypothetical, isn't it clear that Trump IS meddling and not following Washington's injunction? (Also applies to Israel/Gaza.)

In family and community (and internet) dynamics, meddling in other people's quarrels often leads to blowback. (Yes, I'm aware of the irony of making this comment on HN.) Is it really any different on the global stage?

My genuine question: What are the best criteria for deciding when getting involved is better than remaining on the sidelines? Do those criteria apply at both hyper-local and global scales, or this there a phase transition in applicability?

Quoting founding fathers on contemporary issues always makes me chuckle.

> If healthcare was a human right, then why didn't 18th century slave-owners put it in the Constitution?

I wouldn't really view "avoiding foreign entanglements" as meaning "let's insult our guest unless they slobber at my feet like a groveling and servile mendicant."

That said, I think Washington's advice should be considered as defined by a pre-globalization economy, and travel times substantially greater by orders of magnitude when compared to ICBMs. Imperfect analogy, but in some ways Europe was further away from the US then than the Moon is today.

He did not live through two world wars and the invention of ICBMs. His views might have shifted a bit.

Keeping Russia in check through a European alliance, and China in check through the Japanese alliance, is central to protecting US economic interests.

This is choosing to be involved, for your own best interest, exactly as Washington described.

Also, in 1796, the USA was distant to Russia and China.

This is no longer the case; all possess through the nuclear weapon the power to strike upon each other devastating blows.

Given the existence of nuclear weapons, the goal is now is to avoid major war completely, between any nuclear power.

A major nuclear exchange will lead to devastating environmental consequences, no matter whom is involved.

Finally when Washington wrote that, no one imagined the possibility of any one power conquering the whole of Europe, or of China rising to great power. The USA cannot withstand Russia, Europe, and China, combined.

It's preposterous to frame the whole thing about being isolationism or not. As if it's just a matter of "walking away" from Ukraine and letting them sort it out.

In fact the US under Trump doesn't intend on doing that. It's not content to let Ukraine fight it out with Europes support. It's actively trying to force Ukraine down a path of American & Russian choosing, and trying to take Ukraine's resources in the process.

Trump is trying to carve up Ukraine along with Russia. That's not isolationism.

This is not isolationism and walking away from Europe to leave it to its own devices, even if that's how some on the American right are trying to receive it. It's actually imperialism. And imperialism in coordination with another imperialist power.

Are you in favour of that?

> Trump is trying to carve up Ukraine along with Russia. That's not isolationism

Yeah, calling what Trump is doing wrt Ukraine “isolationism” is like calling the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact “isolationism”.

100% exact analogy.

In any case, it's not possible to post-facto have some sort of isolation here. Any withdrawal of American power is just its replacement by some other. Which America in turn will be enraged by, and the next round of the cycle will be explicit imposition of American power in some fashion by military means.

Because that's the only thing that will keep $$ flowing.

Why do right wing American isolationists somehow imagine they're running some sort of charity for the world that somehow Europe and others are "ungrateful" for? American military intervention exists for nakedly avaricious reasons. It is for maintaining the supremacy of American capitalism, and enriching American businessmen and to some degree some of the American people.

> Why do right wing American isolationists somehow imagine they're running some sort of charity for the world that somehow Europe and others are "ungrateful" for?

They imagine this because American interventionists routinely tell them that this is so, and American interventionists say this because it's the only politically viable justification. If you convinced everyone who believes in the fundamental goodness of US military intervention that it's really about Lockheed's profit margins, isolationism would have a bipartisan supermajority.

The world is much smaller than it was 200+ years ago.

I would argue that it was much bigger at that time. How many days of sailing would it take to cross the ocean? How undeveloped was the entirety of what we now have as the US?

Edit: I'm a fool and read the parent completely incorrectly. Ignore this comment.

That is the parent's meaning.

Thanks, I read it wrongly.

If the world is smaller today then it means it was bigger at that time. What are you confused about?

Thanks for pointing this out, I misread the parent comment.

Doesn't his quote hold true? The reason the US is involved everywhere is because it supports our business interests.

The thing about the founders is that there are so many with such varied views that you can usually find a quote in support of anything you want.

You really have to put that speech in the context of the late 18th Century.

Did you post it because you agree with it or just for fun? It's a 250 year old statement in a world that didn't look anything like ours does today. In 1796 the United States was not a global power with nuclear weapons whose entire strength is derived from the global order of trade that we imposed after World War 2.

All of this realignment away from our allies is actually throwing away our greatest strength. I understand why people voted for Trump or a figure like him on the domestic front - people want to bring back manufacturing and lower-middle class jobs? Great, let's work with our allies to do it. To throw away the world order that we won instead of iterating on it is a travesty and a fucking joke.

Europe in the late 1700s is VERY different than Europe today. I don’t mean in technology or culture. I mean in foreign policy.

These are formally imperialist nations.

So, supporting far right in all EU countries and being friends with Putin is what Washington is saying what US should do?

Ah yes, the 1770s. Basically no difference between now and then. Every idea from the 1770s is perfectly relevant to the modern world /s

Basic principles that change with the time aren't basic principles at all. Is the First Amendment guaranteeing freedom of speech irrelevant now because we aren't communicating via handwritten letters and bulletin boards anymore?

The modern conception of the First Amendment is pretty recent. It didn’t even apply to state governments until the 1920s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gitlow_v._New_York

Their “basic principles” included counting some humans as 3/5 of one.

John Adams himself signed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alien_and_Sedition_Acts into law, too.

Enough with the founding fathers. They are ancient relics. They may as well have lived on another planet.

The stand they took and what they created is what has led to where we are today. To disregard their advice is at the very least disrespectful.

Regardless of where a set of ideas come from, if you disagree with them, argue against them head on and not with redirections to other topics.

to disregard the context in which the founding fathers' ideologies developed is to ignore the utter hypocrisy of their views.

these were wealthy men who owned other human beings for personal economic benefit.

whatever high-seeming notions may have underpinned their political project, their goal was to build a new nation in which they could continue to accumulate dynastic wealth free from monarchial control, at the cost of the very freedoms they claimed to stand for.

the hypocrisy is inextricable from the legacy.

Is there a particular text that you can reference showing their goal was dynastic wealth?

I can take good ideas and leave bad ideas, the generations following the founders eventually did that by ending slavery.

Would you also disregard ancient philosophy, or religion? Modern psychology seems to rigorously prove out profound ideas the ancients had about the human mind, yet these ideas were written down thousands of years ago. Why would it be that people from hundreds of years ago would be so divorced from our reality?

Yes, but if we study them more we may manage to decrease some of that distance

It's always noble quotes from them, too, like they're saints. Untouchable.

And never the parts about keeping slavery or exterminating indigenous people or conquering Canada, etc being legitimate causes.

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