McCain knocks Trump’s isolationism, warns against ‘old ties of blood, and race, and sectarianism’

In a speech on Friday at the Munch Security Conference, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) delivered an impassioned defense of the West and warned against an “increasing turn away from universal values and toward old ties of blood, and race, and sectarianism.”

Speaking at the conference—an annual event on international security that was founded in 1963—McCain said while in the past the question of whether the West “will survive” would have invited “accusations of hyperbole and alarmism.”

“Not this year,” Mccain said. “If ever there were a time to treat this question with a deadly seriousness, it is now.”

McCain said the founders of the conference would be alarmed “by the hardening resentment we see toward immigrants, and refugees, and minority groups, especially Muslims,” and “by the growing inability, and even unwillingness, to separate truth from lie.”

“They would be alarmed that more and more of our fellow citizens seem to be flirting with authoritarianism and romanticizing it as our moral equivalent,” McCain added.

Despite the growing call for a more isolationist approach to international politics championed by President Donald Trump throughout the 2016 campaign presidential campaign, McCain insisted global leaders “should not count America out.”

“I know there is profound concern across Europe and the world that America is laying down the mantle of global leadership,” the Arizona senator said. “I can only speak for myself, but I do not believe that is the message you will hear from all of the American leaders who cared enough to travel here to Munich this weekend.”