From the Associated Press:
Americans are turning away from the world, showing a tendency toward isolationism in foreign affairs that has risen to the highest level in four decades, a poll released Thursday found.
Almost half, 49 percent, told the polling organization that the United States should “mind its own business” internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own, the Pew Research Center survey found. That’s up from 30 percent who said that in December 2002.
Results of the survey appear to conflict with President Barack Obama’s activist foreign policy, including a newly announced buildup of 30,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan to fight Taliban and al-Qaida extremists.
To say that Americans are "turning away from the world" because they think we should mind our own business, is idiocy. Americans want to be free to engage in business or pleasure with people everywhere. They don’t want to tell other people how to live their lives. Trade and friendship, unencumbered by imperial politics, are not isolationism, they are civilized behavior and reflect common sense. It is the government’s global interventionist and warmongering policy that bothers Americans. It interferes with trade and friendship which are the antithesis of isolationism.
Good neighbors don’t intervene in other people’s business and don’t invade their neighbor’s property if they disapprove of something their neighbor does or might do. The Bush doctrine, intervention and undeclared preemptive war, now supported by Obama, seems to be the approved style of conducting foreign policy. If you don’t support it, you’re an isolationist.
How crazy is that?
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#1 by CorkyAgain on December 3rd, 2009
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It must also be pointed out that non-interventionism does not imply disarmament. Prudential wisdom should tell us that there are others in the world who would do us harm if they could (and also that our past policies have created or aggravated much of this ill will). So it behooves us to be ready to defend ourselves.
Above all, there’s a need to have a realistic view of how things stand in our world and of what will be the likeliest consequences of our actions. Too many people on both the left and the right are living in a dream world in which outcomes are shaped only by their own desires (or fears), and thus they fail to accurately discern cause and effect. Like Obama, they believe that having good intentions is all that matters — where “good” is whatever furthers progress toward the full realization of the idyllic dreamworld — and if things don’t work out as they intended, it’s always and only the fault of those recalcitrant, evil others.
#2 by Libertarian on December 4th, 2009
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We’d do a lot to learn from the Swiss. They hold the money while everyone else fights!