Ezra Klein promotes the big blue Boy Scout as a foreign policy model:
Yet the internationalist vision was more deeply interwoven into our cultural fabric than we often realize. Superman and Captain America were superheroes of an odd sort: tremendously powerful beings whose primary struggle was often to follow the self-imposed rules and strictures that lent their power a moral legitimacy. Neither allowed themselves to kill, and both sought to work within the law. Given their strength, either could have sought world domination, and even if they didn’t, they could have been viewed with deep suspicion and even hatred by those who were convinced that they one day would seek world domination. It was only by following ostentatiously strict moral codes that they could legitimize their power and thus exist cooperatively with a world that had every right to fear them. Indeed, soon enough, both were forming communities of like-minded super beings (The Justice League for Superman, the Avengers for Captain America) and generally operating much like, well, the nation that birthed them. As Spiderman -- a later hero who, like so many heroes, bought into the idea that rules and restraint separated the good guys from the bad guys -- liked to say, "with great power comes great responsibility."
First, quick anecdote. There was moment in a class I took on intervention where the teacher, utterly ignorant of comicdom said roughly "with great power" and was rather surprised when the the class all had the same way to end the phrase.
He contrasts that model to Jack Bauer who is constantly breaking the rules. However, the other obvious contrast is the Green Lantern doctrine coined by Matthew Yglesias (who has a new book out called Heads in the Sand; I’ve pre-ordered the book and will review it soon). Green Lanterns are sort of a set of Space Cops empowered by a bunch of old blue aliens to police the world. Green Lanterns have the technology to create anything they can imagine are chosen for their honesty, will, and lack of fear. It works has the heroic version of the neo-con ideology, there’s no torture and the Guardians aren’t interested in the galaxy’s resources, they just want to intervene to do good.
Spencer Ackerman then points to an old Weekly Standard piece that effective argues he sees as a brief for the U.S. as Batman although the author in the standard doesn’t use that term. However, Ackerman has his superheroes a bit mixed up I think. Batman’s really a bit of an isolationist. He does globe-trotting and universe-trotting but always comes back to focus on Gotham. In the original run of the Outsiders Batman first quits the Justice League and then quits the coalition of the willing that he formed. And why does he quit the team? Because they want to go off and liberate Soviet-occupied Afghanistan Markovia when he wants to focus on Gotham. Batman kind-of does torture, although he’s even less likely to kill than Superman. So he does play by rules, they’re just rules he’s made up.
All-in-all, I agree with Klein. Superman is the model we want to go with. After all, People for the American Way are a liberal think tank.
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