OK, I know the analogy is going to break down here some. Let’s say that everybody who lives in my house knows karate. If my neighbor comes over and tries to paint the house, he’s going to find some serious resistance. Yes, I know you could say “what if nobody was home” but the fact of the matter is that in the “house” of the US, there will always be somebody home.

Well, here we go. Let’s say I have my yard fenced and two dobermans in the yard. My neighbor is going to think twice about trying to paint the house. He’ll have to decide whether it’s worth it to try. He probably knows he’s going to have to kill my dogs or something.

In any case, the analogy does break down. A country is made up of thousands or millions of people. Some people are more aggressive than others. Some want us to enforce our will on other countries. Etc. Etc. Etc. There probably isn’t any adequate way to model this.

Ultimately, I think our difference of opinion on this matter will never be resolved … there will always be people who are more like me and people who are more like you. The fact of the matter is that you are essentially right that elements in any country want to paint their neighbor’s house. We want our neighbors to be like us. We want other nations to buy our stuff and support our industry. Their are a million economic reasons to go to war with another country (and I do believe that most wars have their genesis in economic issues).

Plus, we can never just “go back to the way it was”, say, in the early 1800s when we really handn’t bothered any other nations. If we packed up every piece of equipment and military person and brought them home, we’d still have people peeved at us, and there would always be the chance they’d use that as an excuse to pester us or invade or something.

I say our best course of action is to come home and prepare our citizens to defend themselves against an incursion. You say we have to take some proactive action to deter them outside of our borders (if I read you right, anyway).

We have to think about how we’d respond if somebody else treated us the way we’re treating another country. If we did that, I think we’d act a lot differently.

Now, just to be clear, I’m not opposed to private organizations giving aid or working in other countries when there is a need, disaster, etc. That I think is part of the free market. But the government should focus its interventionist energies within our borders only (and as little as possible at that) and pursue non-interventionist diplomacy with the rest of the world.

I look at it as a “good neighbors” kind of policy. I let my neighbor paint his house whatever color he wants, I let him plant whatever trees he wants in his yard, and he can park his car wherever he wants as far as I’m concerned, and he lets me do the same.

I know you think I’m naive, but I honestly feel that if we pursued a policy like that, and didn’t interfere with our citizens’ right to bear arms, and we took our own self-defense seriously, if anybody decided to meddle with us, we could seriously kick their butts back to where they came from.