Replies

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.

An isolationist and idealist like yourself could not be elected, and could never govern if they lied their way into office. RR's way is the only possibility to reverse the damage that the socialists and isolationists did to the US during the 30s-60s. Unlike you, and the other idealists I know who could never gain power and therefore will be perpetual gnats instead of persons who will have any effect on policy, Reagan and other conservatives like me have managed to have an effect. Your way failed miserably before RR, and will continue to fail now. I DO remember the ineffectiveness of "conservatives" like yourself, and do not absolve them of their responsibility for getting us the great deal of the Thirties socialist programs by joining forces with the leftists.

Like it or not, the socialists imposed the great "deal" on this country and the associated welfare programs. I would LOVE to get rid of federal government meddling in much of what it has taken upon itself, and so did Reagan, but only so much was able to be done at a time. Weaning American of those "great deals" will take at least the same amount of time, and will take even longer if the gnats like yourself continue to join forces with the socialists in opposition to honest conservatives' efforts to continue to reverse it while maintaining the voting power to make a difference, and educating people as to why it is a better way. You see, I believe in PROMOTING the general welfare, not providing it, in agreement with you - but in a representative government such as ours, it is not possible to force American to do that "cold turkey".

Likewise, I believe the founders were right about PROVIDING for the common defense of this nation, and whether you like it or not, the alternative in the world of TODAY means that such provision must recognize that if we simply ignore what is going on outside our borders, this country will cease to exist. You, like the Peace Nazis, have a fantasy of a world filled with perfect people leading perfect nations, but that is simply foolish, yet at least you concede that a few nasties will try to get past our borders or corrupt trading practices so we need an isolationist wall. A walled "Castle America" is not viable and such a state that you have projected to us in this thread would be destroyed by a terrorist-led dictatorial state within three decades.

It is nice you finally recognize such views as yours make you a member of "libertarians and some of the more hard right conservative groups" instead of being a mainline conservative, such as myself. If those groups had gotten their wish and stayed out of, for example, WWII, Hitler or the Soviet Commies would have become the undisputed atomic powers and within a dozen years after that would have imposed themselves upon the rest of the world, including a USA defenseless against such weaponry. Your vaunted isolationist tendencies would have resulted in failure to PROVIDE FOR THE NATIONAL DEFENSE. Fine - be there with the rest of them - but you end up being extremely counterproductive in advancing to your own views when it comes to legislative effect.

Your joining forces with the Peace Nazis in this case, as well as socialists in the other case, make you no different from the left as far as being an asset to Conservative government, no matter your "good intentions".

"Citizen of the world" - rubbish. "End evil in the world" - balderdash. You claim know the NSS and the Liberty Doctrine, but you utterly fail to comprehend the reasoning behind it, and if you did you would realize that the NSS is based on no such preconceptions, nor is my argument. Just like a Utopian socialist, you can't seem to think past an immediate result. You can't seem to come to grips with the recognition that the promotion of Liberty for others will result in increased security and prosperity for ourselves, and, indeed, increased Liberty for Americans here at home and abroad. You apparently believe that the NSS states that the US will run the world, dictate to it, determine their governments or in some other way create an empire USA. If you were to actually THINK about the NSS and the present world situation rather than some socialist, idealist fantasy of the way the world "should" be, you would realize that it is the only hope of AVOIDING perpetual war, not be a cause of it. Perhaps you ought to review it again, assuming you have actually looked at it, against all discernible evidence.

Patrick Henry would most certainly approve such a strategy in today's world.