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Entry: Say It Loud: Isolationist-Proud! Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/say_it_loud_isolationist_and_proud#14244 Post contents: Now Sid, I know how painful that it can be to think that the Republica de Masachusetts is a civilized place for independent thinkers but there are likely more than one or two folks from that state who heartily agree with you and even place their fellow citizen JFK in the top spot of infamy. However, JFK was not given the chance to create as much mayhem as we have aforded the current President from Texaconnetibunkport and so I would toss Jack in favor of Deeciderputshut I, George W as the champeen worser President and heres why: Interesting how the higher death rates expressed in this article were experienced by the proactive and pre-emptive war statists and their chief antagonists. The U.S. wants it both ways. We have a long history of conducting ourselves as internationalists while thinking and acting like isolationists. A sobering manifestation of this today is our current President who asserts that we need to fight "over there" to keep the "evildoers" from "coming here". Meanwhile, with media-enhanced asymmetrical warfare, we stock the arsenal of the terrorist by weakening our own civil rights law here at home. By granting the President the power, as we have done...and continue to do..... to suspend habeas corpus and the posse comitatus laws in the event of an emergency of his determination, we have added an efficient tool to the asymmetric arsenal of the terrorist. With another event like 9/11, the President can do the terrorist's work for them by curtailing our liberties here at home... literally by attacking ourselves. This is a vicious cycle that both adds incentive for the terrorist to conduct strategic asymmetric attacks while insuring that we project ourselves militarily abroad in order to keep the terrorist occupied. The Terrorist can simultaneously kill the people they purport to support in foreign suicide or cell-phone bombings thus continuing to enflame the psychological atmosphere of fear that causes people to grant the President unprecedented and unconstitutional powers. Neither isolationism nor internationalism alone is an answer but when one conducts one's country in a kind of schizophrenic manner that expresses isolationism through belligerent internationalism and preemptive warfare, then the ultimate nihilistic isolationist's creed of suicide is met. Eisenhower remarked in his autobiography how Taft was misunderstood as an "isolationist" . As I understand it, he was less an isolationist than a skeptical pragmatist who used history to guide his understanding that power may be demonstrated but sometimes the demonstration of it results in compromises that can only lead to weakness. More importantly, the descent into Big Government Conservatism vs. Big Government Liberalism has eliminated the kind of informed debate that validates and nourishes the Constitution. Needless to say, the Main Street of this "think globally, act locally" unilateral form of government is that trusty home of Corporate Sponsored Thinktankery, K Street. Would that they were isolationists and left us all the hell alone. We lose ourselves to either-or arguments only to find out our choice of "either" has led to "or". Sent at: 2008 11 21