In his book, Making Patriots, Walter Berns of the American Enterprise Institute argues that traditional American individualism, with its emphasis on natural rights to life, liberty, and property, creates a serious dilemma for the state (and hence for neocons): Not enough young people will be willing to sacrifice their lives in the state’s wars. Too concerned with leading independent lives within their own families and communities, America’s youth are not sufficiently keen on dying for “abstract ideas” that are fed to them by propagandists for the state (i.e., Straussians like Berns and his AEI colleagues).
For example, Berns says “we cannot be indifferent to the welfare of others,” no matter where these others may reside in the world. America’s youth must be prepared to sacrifice their lives for these anonymous “others,” all over the globe if necessary. This, of course, is a complete repudiation of the foreign policy ideas of the American founding fathers, which were commercial relations with all nations but entangling alliances with none. The founders would think the neocon agenda of America as the world’s policeman is insane.
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