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Well, hello, my name is Dr. Caleb Fisher. At the time of this recording, I'm the department chair and the homeschool of government. And this video is about foreign policy, obviously, the future in light of the past. And what we're going to be doing is talking about the American foreign policy approach for a couple of reasons. One, it's obviously a lot of us are Americans, but that, that's not every one of the students here. But that being said, America has, has definitely played, probably been the major player in foreign policy and international politics for quite some time. And even the fact that there's the United Nations has a lot to do with American presidents calling for it and pushing for it. So, we're going to, we're going to look at a lot of what America has done. And certainly today, America has been accused of being the kind of global bullying, pushing people around other nations around and so forth. And we're going to look at that from a biblical perspective.

As Christians, we don't have to be America haters, nor do we have to just look at everything America has done through rose colored glasses and say, well, America's perfect. That's not what a true allegiance as a citizen is. If you're truly a good citizen, you're going to critique your government and your nation where appropriate. So, let's talk about some ideas from scripture that are relevant to the foreign policy scene. One is this notion of ethno-linguistic geopolitical associations. This is from the passage in Genesis from the Tower of Babel. When after, after God basically gave everybody different languages, they went off to their own ethnicity, their own languages. And they, in their own geography, dig their own new locations and they form their own political structure. Now is that normative for the rest of mankind? Maybe, maybe not. But the reason I mentioned is because there's something to be said for natural associations. We have a lot of nation-building today on the part of the United Nations and mirror United States and even in the past were other nations have come together, and you know, okay, this territory is a new nation. And it's been very arbitrary because it's gone against the grain of that ethnolinguistic geopolitical structures. And then you have, have wars and so forth that have gone on for centuries because group two groups of people forced to live in the same nation, they'll never get along but for salvation and a miracle. In fact, Samuel Huntington in his book, The Clash of Civilizations, he talks about that once the Cold War ended, these old ethnic rivalries once against sprung up. So we have to be careful in any foreign policy decision. Are we, are we trying to force something into a nation? It just doesn't fit other concepts or just the biblical idea of covenant. And with that comes the notion of accountability and sharing of power, making sure that no entity has all the power. The reason we get that idea from scriptures because God Himself covenant did with each one of us.

You see that in the Old Testament, you see it as an option to us. In the New Testament through Christ. The fact that God would hold himself accountable to people, to mere humans and lists, benefits and promises, and not force people into a covenant with him. Really is very revealing for government and foreign policy. Because if the God of the universe would do that, does any nation have a right to force itself or its ways and other nations or other people, there's any government have the right to do that to its own people? Does any boss have the right to do that? Is any pastor already seen the pattern here? If there's any husband has the right. So, there's this notion of sharing of power and being accountable to one another, of serving one another. And certainly, that should be relevant in a foreign policy setting. Now, obviously, the Bible also talks about sin and the notion of sin, and that there's bad people in the world. And really, it's not so much that there's a certain class of bad people. It's that every person has the potential to be a tyrant. And you may not be a tyrant of a nation, but insofar as we are guilty of not caring for others, and insofar as we want to do things their own way on our own terms, and we manipulate and try to control people to do that. We're guilty of tyranny on one level or another. So that's just the grim reality that scripture paints for us. So, the notion of Utopias and that type of as if mankind get their act together and create this perfect society. Whether it's the United Nations or some other agency, I think is foolhardy. It's not an idea support through scripture. Because man in and of ourselves, we're sinful and we're prone to pride and arrogance and so forth. So, any foreign policy, movement or idea that we based upon a utopian scheme would be short-lived. And often, as we see the case with Stalin and Lenin, Mao Zedong in a not just, not, not only will it not work, but it'll lead to too much bloodshed in tyranny. So, if we look at America, America was found on many biblical principles. This notion of an animal rights. Life, liberty, and property that came from the notion that were made in God's image. And so, there was a lot of biblical principles there. The notion of covenant was also steeped into American government.

We talk about federalism; we're talking about sharing of power. We're talking about covenant. The founding fathers were steeped in federal or covenantal theology. And they use those ideas straight from scripture in the formation of American government. In fact, the Latin word for covenant is fetus FED IS, that’s where we get the idea of federalism. And that idea that actual word fetuses in Scripture numerous times to describe covenantal behavior and structures and processes. So, we see a lot of good things in the founding of America. Obviously, slavery was an issue because the Founding Fathers, a lot of them were opposed to slavery, but they thought, okay, slavery is on its way out in America economically, it's not working. Let's get a new constitution ratified so that we can move forward and then we'll deal with slavery. In fact, they, they thought that in, I think it was 15 or 20 years, that that would be not even an issue. That was obviously not the case. The cotton gin and the growth of the cotton industry in the south changed everything and we had to deal with the sins of slavery later on. So, these wonderful concepts, use of a constitution, separation of power, rule by consent. All these ideas based upon the notion that because man is sinful, no one person can be trusted with all power. And then the question is, what did America practice that? Well in foreign policy?

We certainly have other nations that were guilty of many atrocities. But let's look at America because allegedly, we were trying to be a Christian nation. And for the early stages of American foreign policy, you know, George Washington and his farewell address said, Let's be isolationists. Let's stay away from European affairs. That's not get involved because everything they do; they get umbrella and wars and so forth. We want nothing to do with that. Let's just get rid of, let’s just not be involved with that. And in Jefferson echoed that same refrain. That's b, isolation does not get involved in their petty political wars and squabbles. That would make sense in many cases because we don't need to just be involved in power plays and find for power. But we see that, on the other hand, America wasn't interested in expansion. The whole notion of Manifest destiny that God had granted America the right to expand is fraught with peril. We broke promises with the Indians, and certainly our influence in Latin America via the Monroe Doctrine.

In other parts of the world, Cuba fills the Philippines. Point paints a picture of, yes, we may not have been the worst tyranny out there, but not that we did everything right either. It's okay to critique that. If you look at World War 1, we were isolationist going into World War 1. And you can see George Washington's warnings about entangling alliances, certainly being true and that war, if you look at the, the vast involved complex arrangement of treaties among the nations of Europe. One, One Nation had a fight with another one. Every other nation got pulled into it. So here we were trying to devise an intricate series of treaties and alliances to keep nations from going to war with one another. And yet it actually worked against them. Eventually America got pulled into that. And then in World War 2, going into World War Two, yet again, we're isolations. We wanted nothing to do that war, but of course, Pearl Harbor lead us into another involvement. And I, and I think more so than World War one, even World War II was a much clear delineation that the Axis of Evil was indeed evil. Germany and Italy and Japan. They obviously, the goal of world domination was very real in, in the post-World War II era obviously is the Cold War, and that's another clear example of communism. You can sing the praises of the ideal of communism, but we will talk about that. But the notion of worldwide domination and the waist down was foreseen his will upon the people of the Soviet Union and murdering millions even more than the Holocaust. It had to be stopped.

The question in that, again, did America do everything right? No, because America was run by fallen people, are involvement in nations in an attempt to stop the spread of communism was certainly imperfect. Even the Vietnam conflict, we, we supported a ruler, no-go DM, who was corrupt, guilty of nepotism, attempted to force Catholicism on, on the Vietnamese. And his poor leadership create a vacuum and a resistance that led to the spread of communism in Vietnam. If we had just chosen a better leader to support, might, we've avoided that whole conflict. But nevertheless, we tried to fight the spread of communism wherever we could during the Cold War. And I think a good analysis of why we won, why the United States won the Cold War was because though the Soviet Union was certainly committed to defense spending, as we're WE, their economic system didn't work, had denied the dignity of the human being. It did not lead to incentives and collapse. So, they could not support the great military span that they were trying to do and the expansion they're trying to accomplish. So, we could say that America, an involvement in the Cold War led us to be kind of the premier nation in terms of freedom. And we recall the land of opportunity for a reason and people would come to America. And they would learn English and they would often forsake their native names. They choose American names and they, they, they just wanted to be involved in and part of our culture as quickly as possible. In the post-Cold War era, we don't see that Dewey, we see cultures now. Bless app to just embrace everything American. America has been accused of sending crass materialism throughout the world and destroying indigenous cultures.

Due to Hollywood and, and mass commercialism and so forth. When you go to another country, don't want to see a McDonald's in a Starbucks. You want to see that unique culture, but the catalytic model, and we've been accused of involving ourselves in the affairs of nations. We have no business being there. And part of that again, was because in many cases we were trying to fight the spread of communism. And we chose poorly, we chose corrupt rulers. But we made a decision, a calculation that, well this rule or may not be perfect, but he's better than a communist nation. Now, is that correct? Is that right? In every case, I'm not sure I know, but I think I would be hesitant to jump to conclusions about what America may or may not have done correctly. And I think in all of this as I wrap this up, I just want you to be sober minded. In your view of a foreign policy, ideas have consequences that impact human life. And you can't get romantic about your nation to the point that you forget to care for people and treat them with dignity afforded them. You can't care so much about your nation that you forget to hold your leaders accountable. And you can't be passive if you really care about your nation, you have to be involved in the political processes. In World War One, the leading up to that war. People had an almost romantic notion of war, fighting alongside their brothers for the glory of their nation. And that was one of the most discouraging, mind-numbing wars of all kinds of all time because new technologies are being introduced. It seems so arbitrary and chaotic. And soldier after soldier be sent over the line get mowed down by machine gun, Artillery that hadn't had not experienced before. It was so meaningless in many cases. And we have to be sober money to the effects of sin in this world and not be naive to the need for a Savior. So, I look at America, I would say, let's not look at the mistakes of America and overlook the very many good things that America has done in terms of biblical principles, in terms of advancing freedom throughout the world. I'd also say be careful that in the name of advancing freedom, you can't force democracy on people. Because that's not democratic. And the notion of nation-building in a way that goes against that ethnolinguistic, geopolitical natural structure may be fraught with peril. So, thank you for your time. And Godspeed, as you study in this course.

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