Political Hot Topic #2: America First

As I mentioned, I've started Ron Paul's book, Revolution. In the second chapter he argues against "nation building" and military intervention to impose our governmental philosophy on foreign countries. After Bush had to abandon the WMD justification for invading Iraq, he's fallen back on "establish a free democracy" as the reason we're spending billions of dollars and losing thousands of lives. But check out these quotes by W during the 2000 presidential debates: "I think what we need to do is convince people who live in the lands they live in to build the nations. Maybe I'm missing something here. I mean, we're going to have kind of a nation building core from America? Absolutely not. Our military is meant to fight and win war. That's what it's meant to do. And when it gets overextended, morale drops . . . . "I'm not so sure the role of the United States is to go around the world and say this is the way it's got to be. We can help. And maybe it's just our difference in government, the way we view government. I want to empower the people. I want to help people help themselves, not have government tell people what to do. I just don't think it's the role of the United States to walk into a country and say, we do it this way, so should you." Source.