By Robert Wenzel
I want to amplify on my initial response in the post, BREAKING: On Going Sabotage at the White House, when the New York Times first published the op-ed from the anonymous"senior administration official."
In that response, my focus was on the remarkable chutzpah of the op-ed writer and his statement that
he (and his group?) was interfering in the foreign policy efforts of President Trump to prevent the president from seeking to lower hostilities between the U.S. and Russia.
He wrote:
On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.For any libertarian seeking peace and civility, this is certainly a horrific claim.
As libertarians, who desire little or no state, efforts against the executive office should only be cheered when efforts are made to move the government in a direction of shrinking government from interventions against the people of the country.
Thus, while little positive can be said of a saboteur, such as the anonymous NYT op-ed writer, who moved the country in the direction of a more hostile world and less peaceful exchange, the same can not be said for the saboteur who moves the country in the direction of more freedom.
Thus, former top Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn should be hailed for removing from the president's desk a letter that if it had been signed by Trump would have formally withdrawn the United States from a trade agreement with South Korea. (See: REPORT: Papers Were Stolen Off of Trump's Desk to Prevent Him From Starting an Even Greater Trade War).
No doubt, the trade agreement in place was to some degree a crony trade agreement, but a crony trade agreement is always better than no trade. Cohn acted heroically.
This brings to mind a senior government official in a different administration who told me how he once sabotaged an attempted blockage of some trade by some clever technical language that he was able to add to an intended major restriction. The language made the blockage effort ineffective. I consider this official heroic in his action.
Thus, from the perspective of the libertarian who sees government as always encroaching on individuals, on free exchange, etc., the perspective with regard to whether the saboteur is doing good or bad must be considered in the context of whether the sabotage is moving a country closer to or away from liberty.
Clearly, the saboteur who penned the New York Times op-ed and claimed he acted against Trump's desires to ease tensions with Russia should be condemned. But not because he acted against Trump but because he acted against Trump to expand his own vicious anti-peace, anti-trade agenda.
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Robert Wenzel is Editor & Publisher of 
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