The Tea Party, Foreign Policy, and the Politics of Real Change

by Justin Raimondo, January 12, 2011

"I’ve spent more than a few columns predicting that the so-called tea partiers – the grassroots populist movement that has our liberal elites in a frothy-mouthed lather – will be logically led to call for major cuts in military spending – and, by the sheer logic of their anti-spending, “anti-government” position, eventually come to challenge our foreign policy of global intervention. The other day, as I listened to a fascinating panel discussion on Warren Olney‘s KCRW radio show To the Point on defense spending and deficit reduction, I had the distinct pleasure of hearing my prediction come true – a lot sooner, I have to admit, than I ever imagined.

The participants were Hendrik Hertzberg of the New Yorker, William Hartung of the New America Foundation, Stephen J. Walt, a professor of foreign affairs at the Kennedy School of Government and author of The Israel Lobby and US Foreign Policy, and Chris Littleton, co-founder of the Ohio Liberty Council and a committed member of the “Tea Party” movement. Go here to listen......

While Professor Walt basically agreed with Littleton’s arguments, he distanced himself by saying that “I wouldn’t go that far” in terms of scaling down America’s overseas commitments. That’s what was most striking about this little session: the libertarian was the most radical, the most willing to challenge the comfortable assumptions of both left and right, and easily the most optimistic....."