The Same Government Makes Domestic and Foreign Policy

By Dr. Jeff Mirus ( bio - articles - email ) | May 27, 2014

It’s an odd thing. In the United States, as a broad rule, liberals are certain that US social programs are good and that US military actions are evil. By the same broad rule, conservatives are typically certain that US social programs are evil and US military actions are good. These perspectives very often divide Catholics of the liberal and conservative persuasions as well.

This peculiarity reminds me of the comment by Professor Digory Kirke, who owned the house which contained the magic wardrobe in C. S. Lewis’ Chronicles of Narnia. The four Pevensie children—the main characters in the series—had come to stay with him (he was their uncle) and during the visit the two younger siblings, Lucy and Edmund, inadvertently slipped into Narnia through the wardrobe.

Lucy told her older brother and sister, Peter and Susan, the truth about the experience, but Edmund—for selfish reasons of his own—denied it. Because Lucy’s story seemed fantastic, Peter and Susan chose to believe Edmund. Lucy was devastated, and this led to what we might call a certain dislocation from reality within the family. So eventually Peter and Susan put the matter before Professor Kirke.

Kirke’s solution was simple. He wondered why they decided to trust Edmund. Which of the two, he asked, had they found honest in the past? The answer was Lucy, and so they suddenly wondered whether she might have been telling the truth after all. The scene continues:

“Nothing is more probable,” said the Professor, taking off his spectacles and beginning to polish them, while he muttered to himself, “I wonder what they do teach them at these schools.”

By the same sort of logic—again as a general rule—I would say that we cannot have it both ways in our reflexive evaluations of government policy. The same government, run by the same people, possessing the same moral values, makes decisions in both domestic and foreign policy. If we have good reason to distrust the domestic social policies of the United States government, applied to problems of our own which we surely understand a good deal better than foreign problems, then why would we instinctively judge otherwise in matters of foreign and military policy?

The logic cuts both ways, but for the bulk of CatholicCulture.org’s audience, which tends toward conservatism, I would put the matter this way. If we sometimes or frequently or usually find our domestic policies confused, based on false values, and/or pressed forward for ignoble political and personal motives, then it would seem logical to assume that the same factors color decisions affecting those beyond our shores, including our military operations. Surely, nothing is more probable.

Each case, of course, ought to be evaluated as much as possible on its merits. But it is exactly such predispositions which make this impossible. When we reflexively baptize American military policy, we both mute the witness of true patriotism and unnecessarily divide the Body of Christ throughout the world.