n7axw wrote:TFLYTSNBN wrote:https://nypost.com/2020/05/02/intelligence-report-says-china-lied-about-origin-of-coronavirus/
Don:
My response to your earlier post was undiplomatic. The apocolyptic presumptions of nuclear winter or radioactive fallout short circuit people's cognitive functions, making rational thought impossible.
We need to acknowledge that we are entering a new era of nuclear proliferation. The folks that were chanting "Bush Lied People Died" enabled North Korea to get nuclear weapons. The betrayal of Daffy Gaddafi by Obama and Clinton demonstrated to every dictatorship in the world that they can not trust the US to not destroy them if they surrender their WMD. We will inevitably have over a dozen nuclear powers within a few years and probably a score of nuclear weapons states within a decade. The US needs to fold up it's nuclear umbrella and come home. Modernization of our nuclear deterrent plus missile defenses plus robust, shelter in place, civil defense combined with neo-isolationism are America's best, grand strategy for survival.
I wasn't offended by your response, merely pointing out that I certainly am not all knowing on every subject and usually try to acknowledge that.
Also, my biases tilt left. I do self identify liberal, after all. But I do try to think hard about stuff. I don't want any ideology --left or right-- turning my brain to mush.
The problem with your last sentence is that I don't believe that any form of isolationism would serve us well. I fear that it would hasten the oncoming of a major conflagration into which we would invariably be sucked whether we wanted to or not. Best to continue our present role and be smart about the conflicts we get into, limiting our involvement to protecting our allies and defending our interests. Otherwise we need a heavier role for diplomacy, relying on economic carrots and sticks. And if for some reason we are forced to apply force, do what Bill Clinton did...fight our wars from 30,000 feet.
The world is much smaller and more interconnected than its ever been. No way for us to escape that. Our role has been expensive, especially militarily. But the other side of that --and the payoff-- is that since ww2, we have become very wealthy as a country.
Don
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https://www.theamericanconservative.com ... o-destroy/
and the short quote:
John Quincy Adams's
Warning Against the Search for "Monsters to Destroy," 1821
And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind? Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right. 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.... She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....
[America's] 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.
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