Imperialism for Girls

Leftists don’t know what to do.

They correctly were against American occupation of Afghanistan, but now that the Biden administration has followed through on plans to withdraw American troops, they worry about the impact on “human rights.”

This puts them in a difficult position with their base.

On the one hand, modern wokes think men and women are the same and therefore women and girls don’t need protection from evil paternalistic males.

On the other hand, wokes worry that retrenchment of the American empire will mean more women and girls are going to be abused by evil paternalistic males (the same women and girls that were bombed by Americans in the name of a “war on terror”).

By pushing the second position, wokes are implicitly admitting that modern Western society isn’t the paternalistic hellhole they claim it to be, that men and women are different, and men protecting women isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it is a necessary part of human life.

In other words, they can’t be that woke.

The left is destroying their own narrative. But that also calls into question how committed they really were to ending American imperialism.

Imperialism is great if it does what they want. Neoconservatives think the same thing.

But does the United States need to be the world’s human rights watch? That’s a rhetorical question.

The more money the United States government spends on foreign adventurism, the more it has to print. That’s a tax. And the more we fight for “freedom” abroad, the more we lose it at home. That’s a fact.

It wasn’t until the 1860s that Americans started thinking about being the “good guys” of the globe. It’s no coincidence that the Republicans were in power, the same Republicans who want boots on the ground in almost every country around the globe.

Regardless, imperialism is a bad idea. It was in 1898 when the United States became Spain and it is in 2021 when wokes want the American imperialism for girls.

I discuss the issue in Episode 499 of The Brion McClanahan Show.