B'chasdei Hashem, over the past almost 20 years, Beis Mevakesh Lev has produced over 13,300 audio shiurim and over 31,000 written posts, unmatched by any one-person website - all completely free of charge. There are no paywalls or anything else. Now we are turning to you for help so we can continue - any amount will help. Even 99 cents! Thank you to my sweetest and most beloved friends!!!:-)!!
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It is entirely understandable to question our government and its involvement in the affairs of foreign nations.
It is entirely normal to feel disaffected when political leaders tell us one thing during an election season—often to calm anxieties about conflicts abroad—only to reverse course once power is secured.
It is not wrong to want our politicians and institutions to prioritize America and the well-being of its citizens. Wanting restraint, accountability, and clarity of purpose is not radical. It is reasonable.
But let’s be honest: taken to its furthest expression, this posture becomes juvenile. It is simply not possible for a global superpower to insulate itself from the world. Geography, trade, security, technology, and ideology do not grant us that luxury—whether we like it or not.
“America First” does not have to mean neoconservatism or endless foreign entanglements. But it also cannot mean strategic adolescence. We do not get to opt out of a world that is actively hostile to our interests and to those of our allies. Bad actors do not abandon their ambitions because we declare ourselves tired, inward-looking, or ideologically isolationist.
If anything, this impulse mirrors something we often criticize on the left: the desire for the state to absorb anxiety on one’s behalf—to manage uncertainty, neutralize fear, and dull the discomfort of a complicated world. Protect me—from markets, from conflict, from consequences, from having to reckon with reality itself.
The language differs, but the psychology is the same. Both the left and the right can slip into a posture where government is no longer a guarantor of security, but a sedative—expected to buffer citizens from stress, risk, and moral tension. In that frame, politics becomes less about responsibility and more about emotional anesthesia.
Yes, the government’s primary responsibility is to protect its citizens. But that responsibility has limits—and one of those limits is discomfort. Government exists to safeguard people from violence, coercion, and existential threats, not to shield them from the unsettling realities of the world as it actually is.
Protection is about security, not sedation. It is about preserving the conditions for a stable society, not insulating citizens from anxiety, complexity, or moral tension. A government that promises to spare its people from discomfort is no longer governing—it is anesthetizing.
The global arena does not disappear because we find it exhausting, frightening, or politically inconvenient. Hostile actors do not pause their ambitions out of deference to our fatigue. Pretending otherwise does not reduce risk; it compounds it.
Isolation is not strength.
It isn’t prudence. It’s abdication.
Anthony Risco - Substack
