Mark Steyn Strikes Again

In today's column in the Telegraph Mark Steyn concisely explains just what is wrong with liberal transnationalism -- it is just another form of isolationism.

He writes:

Taking your ball and going home is a seductive argument in a paradoxical superpower whose inclinations on the Right have a strong isolationist streak and on the Left a strong transnational streak - which is isolationism with a sappy face and biennial black-tie banquets in EU capitals. Transnationalism means poseur solutions - the Kyotification of foreign policy.

This, I suspect, is the reason so many Americans were so contented with Bill Clinton's do- nothing foreign policy and are so alarmed by Bush's determination to use his and the nation's power to make the world a better, safer place. Clinton, like Euro-thusiasts, always preferred the pose to the possibility, the talk to the walk. And for affluent Americans, it always seems safer to endlessly discuss problems rather than to actually confront them. Liberal transnationalism is, indeed, a form of isolationism that hides behind the mask of international dialogue and shifts responsibility for addressing international problems to ineffective NGOs. The illusion of involvement is preserved, but the practical effect is evasion of responsibility. But then, evasion of responsibility is what Boomers have always been all about.