A friend is upset with the current hawkish direction of the YAL. She emails from a position of influence in Maryland:
Has the Young Americans for Liberty gone neocon?
The YAL was formed from the youth movement of the Ron Paul presidential campaigns to promote to the next generation the Ron Paul philosophy of government non-intervention at home and overseas. It appears lately the organization has drifted far from that message, partnering up with the globalist Koch organizations and even going so far as inviting arch neocon John Bolton to speak at their yearly conference next month in Dallas. To add insult to injury, YAL's Facebook account has taken to posting increasingly warmongering articles toward China, with the hashtag #FreeHongKong. In fact in the below clip the organization praises Trump's recent executive order applying more sanctions on China over Hong Kong, adding the ominous comment, "Let's hope this is the
first of many steps that help secure freedom for the people of Hong Kong." (emphasis added).
What might those "steps" be? Sanctions are acts of war. So endorsing Trump's sanctions is already a major violation of the non-intervention principle. Ron Paul has been steadfastly opposed to all sanctions. But YAL makes it clear that it wants even more steps to be taken. "Many" more.
Young Americans for Liberty are not only inviting John Bolton to speak at their events, they are embracing his hawkish foreign policy of "confronting China." That is something Ron Paul would never endorse. Though YAL is not a Ron Paul organization, many still make the connection due to the organization's origins. With its embrace of John Bolton and the China hawks, libertarians should begin sounding alarm bells about YAL.
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RW
It is a debate between John Bolton and John Mearsheimer, not a one-off lecture by Bolton, so some good may come out of it.
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