From a reader:

Jonah,
I have followed your writings somewhat regularly over the past few years. I have come to believe (erroneously perhaps) that you are fairly supportive of the Prime Directive.
It seems to me that your statement ‘Now, I think the non-interventionists in both parties have been mostly wrong since the ’30s’ runs counter to that. The Prime Directive was not a qualified bit of guidance, it was an absolute. So it doesn’t really matter why someone is a non-interventionist.
Aren’t non-interventionists, by definition, following the Prime Directive? Are you not, in fact, in adherent to it?

Me: I can answer this long or short. I choose short. No, I do not believe the Prime Directive applies to goings-on on planet earth. Moreover, the whole moral of Star Trek was that the Prime Directive was a rule that needed to be broken quite often. If not, then Captain Kirk would be one of the great villains of popular culture.