Ron Paul's Fortress America: How would it work?
Ron Paul's Fortress America: How would it work?
People talk about Ron Paul but I can never get anyone to elaborate on the pros and cons of his Fortress America concept.
Build big walls. We hide behind them. We have a few missiles. Anyone who messes with us we annihilate.
That can't work well or at all.
Can anyone elaborate on what it would really be like and include the pros and cons of Ron Paul's sophomoric sounding concept?
I'd suggest it is not much use to pay attention
to Politicians of any ideology on any subject. Even less attention than usual on "the use of force."
Watching what they do, OTOH, can be helpful... :D
Good advice, it seems to me.
Mr. Paul is in good company with past American Presidents. Consider John Quincy Adams' Independence Day Address in 1821:
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/John_Quincy_Adams
Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet on her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world; she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit. . . . Her glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.
As for this "just trust the President and let him do what he wants in waging wars for democracy or revolutionary change" that is Wilsonian at best, and Jacobin at worst.