That was a very nice reply, and I think your reasoning is sound.
Those are all dynamics that need to be considered and evaluated.
I live in California, and I recognize a problem here that has spread out across the nation. We’re in a serious situation and it’s getting worse.
In my state, we have no Conservative voices. There are no highly visible vocal Conservatives getting the Conservative message out there. Absent that, the public doesn’t know what we stand for or why.
Who has stood up and explained with good detail why we do what we do around the world?
During the cold war we were everywhere. Today we are withdrawing from the world stage, and that is inviting adventurism from various very bad players.
Our NAVY has pulled back so much that Iran actually sent one of it’s destroyers down to Yemen, to threaten them. In the old days, the U. S. NAVY would have stepped in and told Iran to sail back home.
We have forgotten that the sea lanes were safe because we were out there making them safe, or better yet not having to because our presence did the job without further effort.
China is stepping up. Russia is to a lesser degree. Now even Iran has a high seas presence. India is advancing and even Pakistan is developing an deep water capability.
Voids, vacuums will be filled. If we leave a void by our withdrawal, another entity will fill that void.
I know there are a lot of folks who think it would be great to quit sending our boys overseas. Yes, it would be great. Someone elses boys would be doing what our citizens did, only the ideology behind their movement would not be our ideology.
Congress used to voice opposition to the Left. We used to have a man Ronald Reagan that did it. Who does today?
We have Cruz and a few others, on various topics, but I’ll be honest, taking issues one by one and clearing defining what the Conservative view on global or domestic issues is, we don’t really have a loud voice, and it’s getting quieter all the time.
Pretty soon, nobody will know what Conservatism stands for. What with one Bush or another, McCain, or Romney leading our side during the general elections, nobody has a clue what Conservatism is. It is called a terrorist group by some Republicans, and there are Americans who don’t know any different. That is our fault.
It’s why folks don’t understand foreign policy any better than they do. They don’t understand that this is a small world and getting smaller all the time.
We have to be involved. In California, in the U. S., and globally.
This has to change. We must explain why there was general peace over the last 40 years. There were wars, but not of the 1917 and 1941 variety.
We did a pretty good job. The need for it hasn’t ended.
I appreciate your nice reply.
Re: “During the cold war we were everywhere. Today we are withdrawing from the world stage, and that is inviting adventurism from various very bad players.”
Absolutely true. And, whenever the U.S. has attempted to avoid world stage involvement, it has turned out poorly for us, as well as the rest of the world suffering under oppression by prolonging that suffering, and by contributing to longer casualty lists for us through unpreparedness and having to play catch up while our forces and those of our allies paid the price for our getting caught with our pants down.
Only this time, it won’t be our soldiers in far off shores of the Phillippines or Midway that will bear the brunt of our unpreparedness and avoidance of involvement - it will be on our doorsteps.
I pray I am wrong, but history has demonstrated over and over again that avoiding or wishing the problem to go away always has disasterous consequences.
1. Democrats will never trust the Republicans, period.
2. A lot of conservatives -- including many right here on FreeRepublic -- who have voted for Republican candidates over the years don't trust the Republican Party, either.
You might be making the mistake of confusing "Republican" with "conservative" on many of these issues. The truth is that the Republican Party leadership is filled with big-government globalists who have no reason for anyone to trust them when it comes to looking out for America's best interests around the world.
As I said in an earlier post ... Hillary Clinton has the same problem among Democrats. With every passing day there are more and more reasonably intelligent people in this country from all points along the political spectrum who have come to believe that America's foreign policy -- and, by extension, its military assets -- are up for sale to the highest bidder (foreign or domestic).
There are more than a few of us out here who don't think its a coincidence that U.S. military campaigns over the last few decades always seem to be carried out for the benefit of nations whose leaders are major real estate investors with the Bush family in Texas, or who contribute millions of dollars to the Clinton Foundation.