Bruce Ambrose

When I was a youthful libertarian in my Ron Paul days I got taken in by the "antiwar" crowd. It seemed to make a lot of sense. If you leave others alone, they'll leave you alone. Non-interventionism seemed to make sense. I was naive. And deeply wrong. That schoolyard philosophy doesn't even work on the playground. It ignores the entire human history of conflict. It also ignores American history when we have been attacked without warning and without provocation in dozens of situations. I can give dozens of examples but I've been doing that for years and people rarely change their minds so I won't waste my time here. I steeped myself in all the libertarian literature and revisionist history from all the leading libertarian authors and economists and believed it. But there was a moment during my readings that started tipping me away from this view, and it was when I started reading some of the revisionist literature on Winston Churchill. Ralph Raico's "Rethinking Churchill." I was eager to listen to some critiques because I thought I was opening my mind to new ideas you didn't hear in mainstream academia. But it turns out there's a reason they don't teach it in academia, and that's because it's hogwash. I remember specifically riding the bus in NYC in 2012 and reading Raico's description of Churchill as monstrous and a murderer of the Boers, which I was trying to keep an open mind about to expand my understanding of history. But it was the moment that Raico described a young Winston playing with toy soldiers that was meant to be evidence of the famous Brit's bloodlust that turned me off. Who hadn't played with toy soldiers as a young man and dreamed of glory in battle? That's a perfectly normal and healthy instinct for a young man. It impacted me. This was character assassination in purpose of blind ideology, not historical analysis. I started to wonder what wagons exactly I had hitched myself to. Then in subsequent years I spoke out a little when the Ron Paul institute would blame Ukraine and the West for Putin's wars of expansion, and the violent antibiotic reaction to even the faintest criticism at the time started making me question deeper the true motivations of the antiwar crowd. This wasn't some principled non-interventionism, or else it would be equally applied to Putin's wars of expansion. No, this was anti-Americanism. It was only wrong when America did it. And then I saw a libertarian antiwar rally in DC with Russian flags flying in the background, and after having debated commies on Russia Today and investigated them for several years I had finally figured out what was going on. The antiwar movement is an anti America movement. And this is why it fits so neatly in with the Pro Palestine leftist activists, and why you'll see so many libertarian "leaders" chumming up to leftists like Kasparian or Uygur or others. They all have the same opinions about the most important issue: America (and Israel) are the great evils of the world (aMeRiCa iS tHe BiGgEsT tErRoRiSts). It's a grift, and when it's not some low IQ podcaster in thrall to foreign interests, it's just someone who wants cache in the cult of Rothbard. It's trite, boring, and relies on sophistry that appeals to the type of people who think Candace Owens is a brilliant crime sleuth. I'm not prowar or anti war. I'm pro winning wars. Wars are inevitable. It's better to win wars than lose wars, and the United States is powerful because it's won wars. Maybe we could have fewer wars, but also maybe we can't... or maybe we should have MORE wars if that means the American people would be safer, freer, and our rights more protected. That's what matters to me. America First means that our Constitution, our way of life and liberty, and our prosperity comes first. If that can be done without war, then good. If it can't, then so be it.