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I have no idea what you or anybody else means by the term "neocon", and don't care a whit. I am a Conservative dead center in the mold of Ronald Reagan. That same father of the ultrapower United States brought on our present era of prosperity by defeating the Soviet Union - engaging in total and preemptive war against them, and won the world for the United States without firing a shot. You wish to throw all that away - No Thanks. That great Conservative also engaged in a preemptive strike against Grenada consistent with the Monroe Doctrine, assistance to the Afghan rebels that drained the Soviets, assistance to the Contras, and many other military and pseudomilitary activities that gave us the dominance we enjoy today. It made the world so much safer that people like you joined with the leftists to drastically degrade the military in the 90s. Aside: Why didn't you join with your buddies then to protect the borders? That dominance has started many nations down the inevitable road to greater freedom and liberty - the only moral manner in which the greatest Christian nation on earth could properly pursue.

You don't like that RR and I am a Conservative? Tough. We're not the first who believed your isolationist tendencies are the wrong course - and after the foolish experiment with isolationism in the 30s I would think that everyone would have learned. Arguably the most successful foreign policy document ever in the world's history was the Monroe Doctrine, and it is decidedly not isolationist, and espouses activist stances and preemption explicitly. President Bush's "Liberty Doctrine", that you clearly do not understand, updates the Monroe Doctrine for the modern world circumstances. It is the only way that we will be able to keep the jackals from destroying Civilization in the long run.

You want to bank on "border security" and police actions when the bad guys attack us - disappear from the world scene except when we decide to implicitly rubber stamp some stupid UN or other foolish socialist proposal? You want to be a Clintonite and respond to attacks on embassies and even the Trade Center by turning our heads or asking France to arrest the perpetrators? Those are losing propositions in this world - indistinguishable from the position of the Peace Nazis on the whacko far left wing - and you willingly embrace such leftist concepts and call yourself "conservative"? It is also a completely immoral way to behave, for to whom much has been given, much is expected, and we have been given much. You want to be an ostrich and hide your head from the world - go ahead for yourself - but this country does not have such a comfortable option. Whether YOU like it or not, the dictators and madmen and OBL's will continue to spin their webs, and the only - ONLY - way to ultimately keep them from attacking us is to engage them now, while they are weaker and more disorganized than they would be after you allowed them increasingly powerful bases and terrorist nations to operate from, and increasingly powerful technology to use in their attacks.

The NSS I referenced in post#36, and that encouragement of Liberty for the people of the world against oppressive regimes, is the only way I have yet heard that offers any hope of avoiding the type of world that you are espousing: the world of the US as an increasingly isolated "walled" commmunity. Your way is wrong for me and my children, it is wrong for the United States, and it is wrong for the world.

Simmer down. No need to get emotional. Just trying to have a rational debate.

You hit on one of the major problems. For most "mainstream" "movement" conservatives, their historical memory does not extend past Reagan. Reagan was a conservative by the standards of his day, but he was no conservative by the standards of the Constitution. There was not one Democratic spending bill that he should not have vetoed until he ran out of ink. He also appointed pro-choice Sandra Day O'Connor to the Supreme Court. An abomination. No one who doesn't want to get rid of ALL unauthorized, unconstitutional spending is a real conservative by any fixed standard such as the Constitution.

Also, historically the "Old Right" was always isolationist. It was conservatives who opposed our war against Spain, our entry into WWI and our entry into WWII. It was during the Cold War that anticommunism became the sine qua non of official conservatism and it's spokesmen such as Buckley. But libertarians and some of the more hard right conservative groups remained isolationist. (The John Birch Society opposed our entry into Vietnam for example, and you can not possibly say they were soft on Communism.) I do not endorse interventionism during the Cold War, but once the Soviet Union fell why didn't conservatism return to it's isolationist roots?

If you are a conservative "dead center in the mold of RR," I am a conservative dead center in the mold of Patrick Henry.

You want us to be the "encouragement of Liberty for the people of the world against repressive regimes." Talk about echoing the left. What are you now a "citizen of the world?" I am a citizen of the US, not the world, and the Constitution was designed to protect the Liberty of Americans, not the world.

You may believe that the NSS is the best hope for your children, but it is a monumental fools errand. We can no more end evil in the world than we can lasso the moon. It is a strategy for perpetual war and never ending hatred of the US.