Let's put together a parable that will serve as a metaphor.
You move into a town in a remote area of the country where natural resources have
been discovered. Once sleepy, the town is beginning to boom, and this is good
news to you because you're a wholesaler of building materials – products you
buy from far away manufacturers and sell to local subcontractors.
But you are also a chemical engineer, and you have a good
background in manufacturing. You determine that the natural environment where
the town is situated can use the mix of cement you invented sometime ago, and
be most effective in certain kinds of buildings. You buy the necessary machines
and start manufacturing the cement mix which you sell locally. It amounts to a
small percentage of your overall business.
Unknown to you, a carpetbagger has been in town for
sometime, and he has been waiting for an opportunity like the one he sees in
your advent. He gets a diabolical idea that involves your business but does not
tell you about it right away. Instead, he starts throwing parties in which he
invites the elected officials and bureaucrats of the town hall. He works on
them in subtle and overt ways with the ultimate goal of making them amend the
building code. What he has in mind is getting them to mandate the use of your
cement mix in every new building.
When he feels they are ready to do just that, he makes use
of the legally available methods to gather information on you and your
business. Now knowing your strengths and weaknesses, he approaches you with an
offer you cannot refuse by putting a generous amount of money on the table for
half your business. You take the offer and take him as equal partner. He now
puts the pressure on the town bureaucrats and the elected officials to amend
the building code. All of a sudden, the business begins to experience a high
level of growth.
At first, you do not realize why demand has so increased for
your cement mix. After a while, you discover that the subcontractors have been
using it where it is not needed. Not only was this a needlessly added expense,
it was dangerous because the cement will perform poorly in some places where it
is now used. You quietly investigate and succeed at piecing together what
really happened. You determine that this has been a devilishly planned scheme, and
expertly executed plan by your partner.
You try to have the town hall rescind the amendment that
makes the use of your cement mandatory, but find no one willing to listen to
you. As you come close to the point when you're about to give up, a building
under construction collapses, and you know why it happened. Luckily, no one got
hurt this time, but something worse can happen in the future, and you are
determined to prevent it from happening. You talk to your lawyer who writes a
letter to your partner and to the people at the town hall … putting everyone on
notice that they will be responsible for the damages that will result; damages
that may include the loss of life.
You break the partnership, the carpetbagger leaves town and
things get back to normal. You go on like that for a few years then one day,
someone comes knocking at your door. He says he is a subcontractor and he just
moved in. Instead of doing only construction work, he wants to enter into
partnership with someone like you who has a wholesale business where
manufacturing is also done. And he makes an offer you find difficult to refuse.
But something tells you that you have gone through a similar
experience before. So you ask him if he knew the partner you had years ago. He
says yes, that was his uncle. You jump to your feet and tell the nephew that
you will not do business with him no matter what he offers you.
Now, what is this parable about? It is about Bret Stephens that
may be viewed as a nephew of the previous charlatans who sold to America the
foreign policy bill of goods that broke its back. He is now telling the
Americans he has a brand new bill of goods to sell to them. He is doing it in
an article that came under the title: “Relearning Republican Foreign Policy”
and the subtitle: “America
needs to be a policeman, not a priest.” It was published on November 4, 2014 in
the Wall Street Journal.