America's military adventurism doesn't have much to do with its gun culture

I highly doubt that there was much support in Texas for Barack Obama's Libyan misadventure

Americas martial culture at work.
(Image credit: REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni)

My friend and George Mason University economist Tyler Cowen — whom David Brooks considers "one of the most influential bloggers on the right" — had a fascinating post last week explaining to his fellow libertarians (like me) that their disdain for America's muscular foreign policy abroad is at odds with their support for strong gun rights at home.

Gun possession breeds a certain kind of kick-ass mentality — "martial culture" — that doesn't stop at the border's edge, but spills "over there." Therefore, if libertarians want to restrain America's adventurism abroad, they will have to stop looking at guns from a narrow rights-based perspective, as is their wont, and start looking at them from the standpoint of the undesirable foreign policy consequences they produce — and so accept some gun regulation.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.