The man who today is attempting to convince the United States to go war based on the principle of moralistic intervention, was in November 1971 telling a hilarious William F. Buckley (sample line: "He is, as you will note, from Boston") that moralistic intervention is the root of America's foreign policy rot:
Well I don't think that the United States—and I think this is the biggest problem aboiut Vietnam—can necessarily apply moral, uh, moralisms to its commitments around the world, and I think this is one of the great fallacies of our foreign policy at the present moment. Interventionism, as well as globalism, both stem from the same kind of moralism. And in a certain sense I think that moralism can be very defeating for the United States and its undertakings. It gets us into a sort of messianic enterprise, whereby we have this impression that somehow we can go out and touch these other countries and change them, and I think this is what in a sense led us into Vietnam.
Watch the whole clip, which will make native Californians wonder what language is being spoken, below:
Link via the Twitter feed of Chris Fountain.
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