Over 75 years ago and in the wake of the last World War, President Truman addressed a joint session of Congress in a bid to get funding to keep Greece and Turkey out of the sphere of Russian influence. In doing so, a few of enduring American ideals were revealed. Enduring enough that collectively they became known as the Truman Doctrine:
“One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion.”
“We shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes. This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States.
At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.”
“I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.
I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.”
“This is a serious course upon which we embark. I would not recommend it except that the alternative is much more serious. The United States contributed $341,000,000,000 toward winning World War II. This is an investment in world freedom and world peace.”
“It is only common sense that we should safeguard this investment and make sure that it was not in vain.
The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive.
The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms.
If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world — and we shall surely endanger the welfare of our own nation.”
The moral, logical and strategic foundation for that obligation was never seriously questioned or challenged, but instead it was repeated:
“Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.”
John F. Kennedy
And doubled down upon:
“We know only too well that war comes not when the forces of freedom are strong, but when they are weak. It is then that tyrants are tempted.”
Ronald Reagan
While it is very true that there were many debates on the scope and nature of that obligation, what it’s priorities ought to be and whether we were investing sufficiently in the military, but over the course of time, no one ever seriously challenged our obligation to protect free people’s from tyrants, both current and would be. We do it in Taiwan, in South Korea, in Israel. Isolationism and “not our problem” was tried before the Truman Doctrine and failed. Twice, and at great cost.
The world is shrinking. The vast oceans that were once seen as insulating us entirely from the various conflagrations abroad are now practically irrelevant in economic and military terms. Russia, Iran, China, North Korea, whether inspired by avarice, revolutionary Islam, preservation, or malice, these tyrannies all see that reducing the influence of our way of life around the globe as a net gain to their own internal and external ambitions. Nothing is more valuable to them than undermining the perceptions of the credibility and usefulness of democracy or of free market economics.
Winning the Cold War, breaking the Soviet Union into pieces and now turning those pieces westward one by one is in our national interests. Most former Soviet satellites and many Soviet bloc countries have done so already. Others look to continue the trend. With doing nothing more than what we’ve done since WWII, we can expect more to come. Eventually, if we stay the course, it will be Mother Russia herself who joins with its Western European neighbors and away from its current Eastern tyrannical partners.
However, it appears that some folks have decided to take three-quarters of a century worth of sacrifice, in blood and treasure, and chuck it.
While willing to cast aside more than three-quarters of a century worth of your investments, in the process they have no hesitation in investing in themselves and no hint of shame that a foreign adversary finds their message to be of considerable value to themselves.
Discuss.
No politics please on this board. If you want to save a lot of money, discuss politics around the Thanksgiving dinner table. Then you can cut half the people off of your list.
I apologize unreservedly to you and anyone else who finds themselves somewhere between hesitant and hostile to the prospect of discussing America.
“How to Kill a Blog,” by Derek. Now #1 on the NYT best seller list.
Thanks! We’ll see you next week!!
Maybe so, maybe no. But I won’t be reading your crap ever again.
Excellent choice!
Nice piece Derek and something, I’m sure, we all think about. BUT, I really enjoy this blog and read it so I don’t have to think about it.
Perhaps it’s the time and place of your comment(s) that evoke one’s hesitancy and hostility and not the subject matter.
As was the genesis of this space in the old place and now, and has been repeated until blue in the face:
1) stopping by here is voluntary. Reading this is not compulsory.
2) it serves as a reminder NOT to bring politics into other posts.
If it pisses you off, don’t read it.
I don’t go into Indian restaurants and tell them how much I hate Indian food. I just don’t walk in the door.
I skip 3am Tuesday Church services rather than walk in and complain that I disapprove.
And with that basic understanding of going my way while others go theirs, I am able to coexist in peace and without needless and pointless whining.
I would never call you a conversational narcissist. No, not me. But I can see how some might.
You are right. I seek praise. Keep the love coming.
It’s difficult for me to discern whether you seek the praise more than you seek the bait or whether you seek the bait more than the praise.
If you think praise is part of it, well, I’m still waiting for any. And its complete absence is fine with me as is the hostility. It should be obvious that first and foremost, I don’t gaf what anyone thinks about me. People who spend energy there are wasting it.
If I was dedicated to mere “baiting” the subjects chosen would be quite different than they are. Baiting is quite easy if that was the goal. I have purposefully avoided baiting as its lazy and uninteresting.
While the practical purpose of this space is to be a collection area for any political views people feel the need to share, the subjects chosen are chosen in the hopes that an intelligent discussion could be had and that we might learn something we did not know before the day started. That could be some fact about the subject matter. I might also gain a better understanding of any opposing views and why they are held.
I have found that there is very little learned when you are only willing to expose yourself to views you already hold. An endless feedback loop that merely shoves one’s head more deeply up one’s own ass day after day is not going to make you more wise. It will do the opposite.
Someone I forgot once said: “an unexamined life is not worth living.” I agree. As such, I am always looking to gain knowledge about what this brief and inconsequential existence is all about, the place in which it is occurring, and about those who are contemporaneously having the same experience or who wrote something down while they were. It provides endless fascination to me and always has.
On the other hand, some people like Wheel of Fortune.
The current administration has shown no hesitancy in lying about, harassing, charging, and in fact jailing their political enemies with baseless crimes. Therefore, I have no way to discern whether this story has any merit.
The admissions of the various hosts don’t get you there?
Their admissions all all based on information from the same source.
Not really. They all cashed the checks. They know they got the money. A lot of money. That’s not disputed. They also now know there is no Belgian billionaire. They also know now where the money came from.
They aren’t saying: sure I got 400k a month but it wasn’t from those Russians.
They are saying we got the money, we didn’t know is was i from Russians.
Which in my mind would beg the question:
What the fuck am I saying that is worth 100k a week to Russia?
And: should I keep saying it?
And: should I have never said it in the first place?
Instead the reps of the “party of personal responsibility” says:
WE’RE VICTIMS!!!
And not much more.
As I type this the reading of the names of those that died in the attack of the twin towers are being read. Damn Derek, not even a mention. Yes, today is the anniversary of 911.
On a sport’s blog?!?! 😂
I was very mindful of the date and the significance.
I did mention the folks who took the plane down over Shanksville in a very recent post.
If there is a debate to be had about that subject on such a day, I don’t know what it would be. If I am supposed to believe that some addendum of mine to mark the occasion would have been valued, I am doubtful of that as any appreciation is pretty sparse around here.
If I were to formulate a thought it would begin similarly to the letter Lincoln wrote to Ms. Bixby and note how inadequate I feel mark the occasion with my own words and I wouldn’t go further and conclude those thoughts as President Lincoln’s letter did because I am just not nearly as skilled.
Any thought of today you just deep-dive into bullshit.
You might want to read the letter. And then read what I said and then revisit that conclusion.
Just dropped by to leave a Public Service Announcement
If you see your neighbors eating your pets
Please call the ASPCA @ 1 (888) 666-2279
Sounds like you may be unburdened by what has been.
Me and Taylor and Willie https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K8BtFh9BHPE
We probably have to let them eat our pets, so we can fund a proxy war that didn’t happen with the last guy.
I would imagine that WWII plays out a little different if Oswald Mosley is Prime Minister of GB.
Ask Sony what he thinks of that bullshit.
The Message Board Genius is strong in Derek…Thankfully not in football so much; just in this political/security area where his Blue MAGA (see The Young Turks if the term is unfamiliar) stripe is blindingly bright and his depth is decidedly at the PowerPoint level…
Geez. This is like a comment section from the Athletic. They have an article up about Tyreek Hill calling for the cop that pulled him over to get fired. It is pure insult theater.
Can assume that most think he should have simply followed ze orderz?
Personally, I think we need to find a happy medium between treating LE like shit and LE treating citizens like rented mules. The gulf of disrespect has got to end.
I’m thinking one solution for officers is that when someone who is getting a simple ticket wants to make the experience unpleasant do this:
“I’m going to go sit in my cruiser while you calm down. Don’t leave. That would be escape and you are going to jail when we get you. Flash your lights when you are ready to be polite and follow instructions. I’ll be waiting. Thank you.”
Hell, add dollars to the minutes it takes on the ticket.
That way they neither have to eat shit or assert their authority by putting hands on folks.
I just watched the bodycam video. I don’t have a problem with the way he was treated. Anyone who is that disrespectful and uncooperative deserves to be treated exactly the same way.
Not sure how relevant “deserve” is. What I think is important to public safety is mutual respect between law enforcement and the citizenry. You lose that using some subjective notion of “deserve” and you’re losing ground.
We have to get away from accepting the idea that police can act like they are patrolling Fallujah. At the same time I agree with the idea that they shouldn’t have to put up with this bs:
https://youtu.be/rIvX_r_J51o?si=ptOzG4THukYkQrgh
Where can we land that would disincentivize acting a fool and not require police to get physical with folks in very unserious contexts?
The place you’re referring to, at least in my experience, is only arrived at when you are taught to act that way by your parents over the course of your upbringing.
We need to teach kids not to beat the fuck out of people who piss you off when they don’t follow the rules and instructions or yield to your authority, just in case they grow up to be police officers. I’d bet spankings would go a long way to teaching those valuable deescalation tactics.
I was spanked as a child and I’ve never been disrespectful to a police officer in my life. That includes the one who openly admitted he was currently conducting an illegal search of my car. I addressed him as ‘sir,’ obeyed his instructions and I thanked him when we were done. I was 17 at the time.
We just do not have the resources to practice what Truman and Kennedy espouse regarding foreign policy and global initiatives. Moreover, our federal and state governments are so riddled in deficit spending we are largely saturated in debt and to be the voice that says “here is the problem” requires lengthy documents/research/discussions that won’t get any traction these days.
Get back to me when the federal government downsizes to the state of affairs back when Kennedy was president, then we can probably “turn the battleship”.
I will say, when you’re 4 deep in the checkout at the grocery and you’re the only one that uses your own money for the food in your cart, there might be something out of whack.
Remind me what the marginal tax rates were on the highest earners between Truman and JFK?
The idea that we’d allow the largesse of a few risk our long term national security and call it “necessity” is a bridge too far for me.
I definitely think the dissatisfied and disaffected have a point when it looks around and says: hey, we’re getting fucked!
I disagree vehemently on who it is who is doing the fucking.
I’m sure you already knew the answer before you asked the question. The top income tax rate reached above 90% from 1944 through 1963, peaking in 1944, when top taxpayers paid an income tax rate of 94% on their taxable income. The country not only survived by thrived, it was the period of our largest growth.
And we were hunting commies abroad?!?! Lol!!
Its an amazing disconnect from reality ain’t it? We can no longer afford to do what we used to afford to do when we were obviously just a bunch of failing Marxist redistributionists!
The right wing media re-programming machine has been both intense, long lasting and successful. All prior knowledge and history has been lost and replaced with nonsense that serves about 1 to 2% of the population.
Have been having a strenuous back and forth with son over the proposed unrecognized capital gains tax. He sees it as apocalyptic, I caution him to wait until he hits the benchmark ($100 million net worth) before becoming an expat. I’m lazy, I’ll probably just stay here and pay the tax if that day ever comes. 🙂
The government explains the realities of life to a complaining taxpayer, in a dramatic recreation @ 1:36:
https://youtu.be/h2s2M-M4lds?si=pj-tIMiHhq_xwbqp
I’m being sarcastic of course, but the whole: “this is mine! I earned it! They can’t take what’s all mine!”
If your people have been around these parts for a while go and dig up your great-great-great granddaddy and let him tell you what he was left with in 1865. Nothing. Not a damn thing. There is no yours or mine except under favorable circumstances. That concept only exists as long as your government protects your interests. And that costs money. And if your government loses, your shit becomes worthless. Do we need good stewards? Absolutely. Do we want policies that allow us to achieve great wealth? No doubt. But this bs that you’re an independent creature living on an island being victimized and exploited by your government and fellow countrymen is just fucking stupid.
A lot of people also said that about the federal income tax when enacted under Wilson. No matter your political persuasion you should oppose any income tax impact of unrealized gains because the politicians use tax policy like someone who puts a frog in a pot on a stove. It’s terrible policy and has failed miserably everywhere it has been tried.
Classic projection…blaming the other political party for what your (communist) party is doing, “The right wing media re-programming machine has been both intense, long lasting and successful. All prior knowledge and history has been lost and replaced with nonsense that serves about 1 to 2% of the population.” Derek
You old blue dawgs have lost all credibility…you have certainly lost the right to bitch about politics…
you have been brainwashed by Comrade Teddy and CNN since the mid 70’s and are too hard headed to understand how stupid they made you….
“Together, BlackRock and Vanguard own 18% of Fox, 16% of CBS, 13% of Comast — which owns NBC, MSNBC, CNBC, and the Sky media group, 12% of CNN, and 12% of Disney — which owns a number of subsidiaries.
Media behemoths that may present themselves as rivals are, in reality, owned by the same company. ”
https://innotechtoday.com/blackrock-is-the-biggest-company-youve-never-heardof/#:~:text=Together%2C%20BlackRock%20and%20Vanguard%20own,owned%20by%20the%20same%20company.
Fwiw, I don’t watch ANY network news programming. I do come across plenty of videos of maga cultists, often elected officials and media personalties, saying just the weirdest shit. Rubber room in a straight-jacket shit.
You do realize the tax code was littered with breaks and deductions that very, very few individual taxpayers ever paid that rate. The brackets are now flatter (not flat enough), the rates lower and the deductions on personal income taxes now slimmer that broaden the base.
I guess JFK was a supply-side, voo-doo economics believer like that idiot actor Ronald Reagan.
Tax policy is a whole lot more complex than just what the marginal rates are.
We can pick at those nits and I can point out that the effective tax rates were much higher then than now and that JFK simplified taxes to a far greater degree than lowering them OR we could stop arguing over the age of the damn oak tree and look at the forest:
The super rich have bought themselves an exemption from their responsibilities to this society and dumped it all on the middle class while also inserting a hose into our bank accounts and turning the machine to “suck.” Lowered tax rates on the highest earners have equaled higher deficits, temporarily cured in the late 1990’s, but then reversed at least three times since. The response to this is: well fuck it, let russia take poland, we’re broke.
The fuck we’re broke! We’re stupid and we’re being robbed.
And the people robbing us will happily do it until their greed and avarice and resistance to meeting any obligations to a nation that has permitted them the freedom to gain their riches leads to a world that collapses into disarray.
What then? “We’ll just put the poor bastards kids in uniform to go shoot our way out of this, like always. And by the way, make sure to tell them its their duty.”
Its a sad fucking absurdity and that should be our focus. Our tax policies should be designed to meet our obligations at home and abroad and to make us secure and prosperous. If one idea is more efficient than another, sign me up. But don’t tell me the guy building rockets to mars can’t stand a tax increase and therefore, we’re all just fucked and have to hand the keys over to China, Russia, and Iran. Bullshit.
Feel free to write a check to the US Treasury if you think the government needs your money more than you do. They will be more than willing to cash it.
You and I have a fundamental difference in the role of what the federal government vs. state/local government and the private sector (including NFPs) should do. I’m not going to convince you, and you aren’t going to convince me. That’s all I’m going to say about that.
Actually, they’ll send a refund. If you have a tax system that protects us from foreign threats, pays the bills and keeps us promoting liberty and freedom in world and doesn’t wave the white flag of surrender to its enemies, lets hear it. That’s all I am suggesting. The money is there. We don’t of economic necessity have to cede territory to russian aggressors, period. This is not a left/right ideological position. Its a patriotic one. I am all for efficiency in taxes and everything else. Some just want to starve the government of money through tax policy because they can’t win elections on spending policy. I think there is a word for that: evil. And its a national security threat.
No, they actually won’t unless you file for it. You can write a check at anytime to the US Treasury. You can have the Treasury keep your tax overpayment to cover future periods.
I’m for defense spending … that’s actually in the Constitution as a power reserved to the federal government. I support helping our allies defeat our enemies (I can’t tell if Ukraine is friend or foe – I think the people are our friends, but I think their leaders are corruptocrats). I’m for the interstate highway system and other things the federal government does. There’s a LOT of crap spent in every department in Washington, DC that isn’t necessary, wastes money and is downright fraud. Until all of that garbage is gone (not just cut the level of increase – gone), I won’t support a tax increase.
So if the duly elected reps vote to spend money and then spend it and you have the choice of paying that debt off through taxes in order to allow the purchase of military equipment or military salaries or military benefits or military medical care OR just letting the place go belly up, you’re choosing collapse? I know we are privileged enough to not have to make that choice because in spite of our fiscal irresponsibility we’ve always been able to borrow. Having credit is not a natural state. Its earned and it can be lost. Pressuring that credit rating by purposefully depriving it of funds, because you can’t win elections on your spending priorities and ideologies, but you can win on tax cuts which “pay for themselves!” and everyone likes a tax cut, and act as if the house of cards can collapse without any consequences to your country is simply irresponsible. If you can’t win the issue at the ballot box. If the people vote for medicare and vote for social security, to say “we’ll see how long that lasts when we all go broke!” is not exactly an exemplary exercise in self-governance imho.
But did Truman advocate an air attack or a ground attack? He seems more like a RTDB type of guy who’s into man ball. Ike took it to the extreme, strong lines on both side of the ball, and waited for the opponent to make a mistake.
Kennedy, on the other hand, brought the East Coast Offense to the game (later renamed the West Offense by Nixon and Reagan, and the Minister of Air, Don Coryall).
I think you misread Truman. He’s not pounding the ball up the gut trying to win a game of attrition and risking his backs and Oline to squeeze out a tight victory. He’s going with the bomb and looking for the white flag to come from the other sideline.
JFK is chatting up the cheerleaders, successfully.
You will love this hot take, and the only logical hot take:
We would have been better off sticking with the Monroe Doctrine, rather than the warhawk Truman Doctrine.
Russia is not our enemy. They are more similar to us in beliefs than 99% of foreign nations. We’d be better off as allies.
Ukraine is an evil country. We shouldn’t pick a side in their war and certainly shouldn’t be propping up this evil country and regime. I’m not apologizing for Russia, but they have a legitimate gripe for what led to the current conflict. Caused mainly by our meddling.
Israel is not the friend we treat them as. We should not be supporting them and propping them up as our 51st state. Not apologizing for Palestine, but IsRaHell does terribly evil stuff.
That’s why we shouldn’t be involved with any of these conflicts. We shouldn’t be the policemen of the world. We don’t have the money and we normally end up supporting bad guys.
We should keep peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations—entangling alliances with none. As our forefathers have said, we should not go abroad searching for monsters to destroy, because no matter where we look we will find monsters, including in our own backyard.
How was any of that logical?
Consider a world where China is what we are now. Feel safe now? The idea that you can retreat into your borders and do uninterrupted business is a concept that is, let’s see, fucking bullshit. Who is going to keep the Straights of Hormuz clear? Iran? Do you want the Iran deciding the price of gas? Who is going to keep Somali pirates from hijacking cargo ships and sending ships around Africa raising the price of everything?
We protect freedom and the free flow of goods and because of that we have power and others do not. You undo that at great risk.
Russia has no free press, no free elections, its leader murders its opposition and it invades its neighbors.
I hope you are well compensated for lying on their behalf.
I was actually thinking about China with your post today. They could adopt free market and open borders and completely surpass us pretty quickly. Immigrants would flood there diluting their largely homogeneous population opening small businesses in huge numbers, as a small business owner I would get in ASAP.
“When they say it’s not about the money” and all that.
Damn Derek I actually agree with you on something.
“Russia is not our enemy. They are more similar to us in beliefs than 99% of foreign nations. We’d be better off as allies.” They might be more similar to you in beliefs.
Mr. Derek,
I do not disagree with anything you have stated in this Playpen.
I am just not sure that this forum is the correct place to have this conversation.
This is a sports blog, mainly GA football and that is the reason we are here.
We can theorize that no one would type some political bs on a game post if this space did not serve as a warning. So far, we haven’t had to find out. I do observe that very few people have had to be directed here. Does that mean its working? It might.
I am not Anonymous. I would never post anything that I would not put my name on.
I need to fix that Anonymous stuff.
WHB209
Sorry about that. I don’t know how that works. Have you looked at your profile or settings?
Rock their world!
GOD BLESS AMERICA!!
Derek, let me add that I enjoy the mental gymnastics of these thoughts you throw out there. I am pretty sure that we don’t share the same views but I like thinking about it/them as I go about my day.
Management: count me in as liking the playpen.