You know these arguments, yes? Surely you’ve heard them. These forces constrain liberty. Not only do they contrain liberty, to a perverse degree, they are empowered to impose at least a lessening of liberty on the countries of their choosing. This is a simple fact. It does no good to look away and start yammering about the tendency of wars to increase the size of bureaucracy and justify increased intrusiveness of government.

Besides, much of this reaction could simply be evaporated with the simple reminder that, for example, This is Not Russia. The habits of the people matter; the historical expectations matter, however dimly or imperfectly manifest in the imagination of the citizens.

In any case, I cannot see how proponents of libertarianism can be blind to the fact that their philosophical vocabulary is simply insufficient to deal cogently and completely with the situation facing us. So strange! Faced with a novel situation to which the healthy response is unreflective extroverted violence, you look inward and scold and fret. Now I see why my conspicuously libertarian friend occasionally diverts into sentiments clearly evocative of the socialists, crypto-socialists, and suburban revolutionaries. Silly ideologues. Snap out of it!

To the extent that some of the war effort is funded by scaling back other government programs, it could even have a short-term positive impact on individual liberty, though I’m reluctant to advocate anyone go to war for that reason.

Well, our present situation would certainly make that wise council, but in principle I think we are in agreement. In addition, even large interventions have been rolled back in the past, though of course not so much in this century.