I’m a libertarian, not a conservative. We all know what that means. However, there is a point where, in my judgment, conservatives are right: Obama and the high liberals want a sharp reduction of American influence in the world. (Gallup reports that if the vote for the American presidency were held globally Obama would get 80%. That is predictable: it reveals the correct perception by others that Obama is the one to lead the United States into global decline.) In this call for American disengagement, high liberals are joined by my fellow libertarians. But, as I argued before in this blog, this is a grave mistake. If the world must have a hegemon, by all means, the United States, with all its imperfections, is the best the world will get. When I say best, I mean the United States is the one hegemon that is likely to preserve and defend liberal values more than any alternative. Put differently: there are libertarian reasons to support a prominent role of the United States in world affairs. Not reasons of strategy or power, a la Kissinger, but moral reasons. Liberty is a rare and delicate commodity. It takes very little to destroy it.  The libertarian mainstream isolationist doctrine is naïve and self-defeating. Of course, we must put pressure from within to get our government to do the right thing. I support civilian trials for terrorists, and have raised serious doubts about targeted killings. My views on coercive interrogations and surveillance are in line with libertarian mainstream thought. But the notion that the United States is a force for evil in the world must be rejected. I cringe when I see my libertarian friends post about the (objectionable) power of the President to detain terrorists indefinitely, while saying nothing about the outrageous violations of human rights in other nations. I sense a lack of proportion, as if the United States anti-terrorist policy (objectionable as it is) was the main threat to liberty with which a liberty-lover should be concerned. It is not. (This does not prejudge the important issue, which libertarians rightly underscore, of the justified demands that our government may press on the citizenry to sustain its global position.)