Polnut, we have found the kernel.
I suspect that most Paul supporters are willing to go out on that limb. After all, all we have ever known--I'm 44 and all I have ever known, and most Paul supporters on this forum are even more warped than I by virtue of their having even less wisdom--is a world in which the USA must police the world.
We haven't any more the resources, nor the moral authority, to do so. The world has changed since 1945. And not always for the worse! India is certainly better off without the yoke of British oppression. On the other hand, SudAfrika has certainly fallen by almost every objective measure since its abandomment of Apartheid. So there, you have one example in which political correctness led to greater economic mobililty, and one example in which political correctness led to less.
But that's a little afield, I admit. We were discussing foreign policy vis-a-vis last night's debate. I say that we give Peace a chance. In my lifetime, and I assume yours, we've never really done that, have we? In fact, we haven't really done so in our history. I'm willing to give it a go. It's a radically liberal position, I realize, and one that doesn't currently find a home in either of the two major parties. But, since it also divorces government from the mundane duties of providing housing, clothing, shelter, etc., for each citizen, finds slightly greater acceptance in the GOP than in the DNC, which is a clearinghouse for the nanny-state proclivities of the dispossessed and the holier-than-thou moralists.
I have no illusions of grandeur. I've talked to Paul at length, as I have mentioned on this forum before. He and I agree on maybe 65% of the issues. (I'm far to his left, as a practical matter, but on foreign policy we're in about as much agreement as two humans can be.) And all he's suggesting is that we return to our principles in this regard. All we have beget, with our current policy, is a nation in which we no longer trust our neighbors, a nation in which we must take off our shoes before we even board a plane, a nation in which we actually accept torture as a legitimate means of procuring information, and a nation in which, to quote Gingrich from last night, "our children will be in greater danger..."
I might be paraphrasing, but it caught me offguard. If you really believe that, Mister Speaker, then don't you think it might be time to ask ourselves "What for?" I don't see my child's future being brightened by killing five thousand Americans and fifty thousand Iraqis. So if all you have to offer is "greater danger" for him, then oughtn't we rethink our priorities?
I don't know what I'll do it comes down to Gingerich versus Obama, a Republican that I never liked and I don't like now, versus a Democrat that I supported last time based on his apparently false promises of a post-partisan spirit of co-operation but who has been so intransigent and ineffectual domestically, but I'll tell you this, don't count me as automatic just because I wear a blue shield.
I do know that I don't buy into the notion that just because we have the highest aggregate GDP, and the highest per-capita GDP of all the really large nations, that we have the moral obligation to spend our hard-earned produce and the blood of our sons and daughters remaking the world in our image. It's a false god. And I, for one, am glad that at least one candidate in one of the two major parties has the courage and strength of conviction to finally say it.
Steps were/are made so that 9/11 never has a sequel. It does not take an economist to figure out what would happen to the global economy if a major terrorist attack on par with 9/11 were to take place right now. Perhaps there is a smarter, simpler way to prevent the unthinkable, but the Obama and Bush Administrations have done a decent job on this front.
The last time America strongly pursued isolationism, the world ended up with Hitler and Stalin, and Hawaii ended up being bombarded despite our neutrality (so much for being left alone if we just mind our own business). It is something to think about the next time Ron Paul gives one of his diatribes...
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