I am and have been a student of foreign policy over the course of my life.  Each generation has had its own view of, take on, and distillation of this subject.  It has seen each generation leave its own stamp on the subject, sometime for the better, and sometimes not.  Almost every derivation of the subject has seen some version of implementation, all with vary degrees of success.

I will say that American policy is at its best when it is based upon our guiding principles.  And by that I do not mean the 'foreign policy that yields lower prices for Americans' formula.  This formula leads Americans to believe they are the center of the world, and what is good for us, is also good for the rest of the world, which is patently false.  I mean a foreign policy that is based upon the ideas and ideals upon which our nation was founded.  Anything less than that is not leading with the values that drive American exceptionalism.

A foreign policy driven by the views that wrote "We hold these truths to be self-evident..." is what we need.  We need to make clear that we as a nation are for human rights the world over.  We need to make clear that we support all efforts for people suffering under tyranny to breathe free. We need to make clear our desire that all people have a chance to seek to redress their grievances fairly before their government, without fear for life and limb reprisals from said government.  We need to establish firmly a foreign policy based solely on our desire to see despotic regimes to fade into history, and be cast upon the ask heap of failed government systems.  


Our policy should be for freedom everywhere.  We should be for freedom of speech everywhere. We should be for freedom of assembly everywhere.  We should be for freedom of worship (or not) everywhere.  We should be for participatory democratic forms the world over.  We should insist that all governments be composed entirely of the will of the people across the globe, and that those governments be subject to that will at regular intervals.


This is likely to be a hazardous policy fraught with bumpy transitions and unforeseen challenges. However, in doing so we redeem the values that generation before us fought to establish.  Only in doing so do we uphold the values that we claim to cling to.  Only in doing so do we redeem the primal purpose for our founding.  Only in doing so do we show ourselves to be a firmly committed country to the cause of liberty of all.  Anything less is a waste of effort.  Anything less is not worth being spoken, much less written down, enacted into law, and enforced.

Many people have been jumping and down of late about Fox News.  They argue vehemently about bias, half-truths, and distortions.  On some level, they do have a point.  And there was a time in my life when this sort of thing would have gotten me worked up.  For good or for ill, that time in my life has passed.  I suppose its what happens when you live enough life to have seen these cycles run their course numerous times.

The truth, as I see it, boils down like this...  There is not a single media outlet that does not exercise some degree of editorial discretion.  And there is not one that doesn't allow the outside views of the editors, producers, and ownership from finding its way into print copy, or onto air transmission.  The news media is not innocent on this issue, and never has been.  And rarely back in the day, when Walter Cronkite signed off with, "And that's that way it was..." was it ever totally true.

Bias is just a simple fact of the 24hour news cycle that's been created, and every owner of these outlets from Ted Turner, to Les Monves, to Rupert Murdoch, and beyond are all guilty of engaging in it.  Its a fact of life in our post-modern world, and we should get used to it.  We should become more informed, and more saavy consumers of news from the outlets we chose to consume news from.  We should spend time weighing the opinions we hear against those from other sources.  Anything less is just wanton stupidity.

We live in a free society that allows anyone to say just about anything.  Its the beauty of the republic we reside in.  Its the wonder of our democracy.  Its the freedom that multitudes of people fight and die to get here to partake in every day.  The United States does not have an official state news media like say Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, or North Korea.  We don't have to accept the version of events, or the spin on the truth being presented to us.  Its our virtuous right, its our glorious priviledge, its downright American in every sense of the word.