… is from pages 259-260 of the 1983 collection of some of the writings of the late G. Warren Nutter, entitled Political Economy and Freedom; specifically, it’s from Nutter’s previously unpublished 1973 essay “Moralism, Morality, and Trade”:
No policy can be constructed on the all-embracing principle that everything depends on everything else. Those cause-and-effect relations that are immediate and direct must be distinguished from those that are remote, indirect, and generally unpredictable. In that sense, a [national] security-oriented policy should be conceived as one designed to cope with clear and present external forces directly threatening preservation of our form of government and way of life.
To go beyond this specific purpose is to take upon ourselves a moral duty beyond our borders, whether to right wrongs as we perceive them, to spread freedom and democracy as we conceive them, or to liberate others from oppressions forces as we see them. It is to presume that we have a right or obligation to intervene directly in the internal affairs of other nations, provided only that our cause is just. If that presumption were warranted, other nations would have a similar right or obligation, and the only point of contention would be justness of cause, an issue not easily settled by consensus.
DBx: Pictured above is G. Warren Nutter (1923-1979).
