"I’m about to fly to Paris and shoot ‘em in the head myself!" - Anti-Muslim rhetoric ramps up..

Wait a sec, what happens to all that excess food that you said would no longer be exported? So you think Americans will still have computers and cars, but no food? Was most of the country starving in the 70's? How about in the 50's?

The status quo is a mix of bombing countries and militias with external supply lines and funds connected directly or indirectly to the US, and outright appeasement. You have some sort of alternative radically different from my way, or Trump's kick 'em all out way?

 

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It would rot in the field and would not be replanted. Farmers would not be able to afford to do so.

You don't eat cars, so they'll have them for a while longer. The rich will even be able to afford to fuel them.

How about -

Reduce/eliminate support for foreign governments
Reduce/eliminate US military presence around the world
Allow free trade with anyone who isn't at war with us
Institute an open border with a basic biometric ID check to screen out known criminals

 

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Honestly? Too simple on paper; too complicated politically.

Just as a for instance↱, I might recall that in 2008 some Christians in West Virginia pitched such a fit about digital photography for driver licenses that the state invented a special protocol just for them.

More generally, we've heard for years about various iterations of The Beast, alleged vast databases by which the tyranny knows our most intimate realities. It's a staple of the delusional libertarian hardline crowd, however significant or otherwise we might consider them.

We could throw in some PPACA opposition as well, if we really wanted.

That the government is only looking for criminals via biometrics means the government is checking biometrics. Politically speaking, it's possible, but it's a long, tough slog in a nasty quagmire of tinfoil, potsherds, and rhetorical excrement.

Working backward up the list, the challenges to free trade with anyone who isn't at war with us is politically complicated for any number of reasons. I might simply wonder about free trade and tyrannical governments abroad, but others would also suggest all manner of danger for American jobs, which in turn makes everything politically complicated such to mean it ain't happening. Not that we can't overcome the rhetoric, but here I would ask you to consider ramming common sense through the political process at a time when human and civil rights send certain factions into panic; these will just perceive greater hatred, oppression, and alienation from the rest of society, and, frankly, they're not going away until they die off, with the caveat that they, like people in most applicable political classifications, breed. That is to say, they can cause a headache, and smacking them back into place will only augment their verging paranoia and concomitant truculence.

The military presence? I don't think you'll hear me objecting, but how do either of us expect that policy discussion to go? Not well, I would suggest, and that's probably an understatement. Indeed, I would project that a concerted effort to significantly reduce American military presence abroad will lose out to a backlash that will, in the end, increase our presence and its meddling effects.

Similarly with foreign aid. Most days it feels like we did more for Sam Doe than we will for a free Liberia. There is a certain (ahem!) diplomatic necessity I think we both can see; what credence either of us might grant or assign that proposition of need is its own question, but in the end the political pitch is one by which failure will likely result in even greater entanglement.

As matters of principle and policy, why not? As matters of politics and policy, we can discover myriad reasons why not along the way, and I certainly haven't devised a method or plotted a course to aoid the complications.

 

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I see, so millions of Americans starved to death in the 60's and 70's until trade with China at last made Snickers bars affordable for the common peasant.

Americans didn't just have cars before they learned about the joys of sweatshoppery. They also made planes and *gasp* even computers, nearly all for domestic consumption.

My proposal is to eliminate all support for governments that don't protect democracy and human rights or implement drastic reforms on the way to compliance. Why do you want to eliminate aid for legitimate fledgling democracies alongside aid to the jihadists and sweatshops? How is that supposed to make the world a better place? You think we'll all live better and safer if we just hand off South Korea to some fat Hitlerian narcicist?

Once again, are you talking about pulling the US military out of democracies who've asked for its assistance, or just the countries where it props up unelected dictators? If it's the former, again I ask you what we gain by handing South Korea to fat Hitlerian narcicists, let alone sacrificing any other pawns to people who hate America because it won't let them rape and plunder.

That would put unprecedented sums of cash in the hands of authoritarians and jihadists. Trading with anyone who isn't directly at war with you inevitably also means indirect trade with those who are at war with you. Terrible, terrible move.

Sounds like something right out of a cheesy sci-fi B-movie. What exactly do you plan to do with all the unknown criminals?

Doesn't seem like you've given this one very much thought, to be honest.

 

No, that didn't happen. Back then we had a different culture and different methods of planting, harvesting and managing farms.

Yes, they did. (Emphasis on "did.") You might as well claim we don't need oil because we once used horses.

That's great! Stopping government aid to other countries who treat their citizens poorly is something I'd support. And quite different from what you proposed earlier - which was to stop all imports of oil, most imports of rare earths, and stop selling food to most of the world.

I don't. I am in favor of eliminating aid to GOVERNMENTS - not PEOPLE.

Democracy imposed from without is the severest form of tyranny. Let the people of the world choose their own governments.

It would put large sums of cash in EVERYONE'S hands. And that tends to destroy dictators.

Same thing we do with them now. We have a justice system here that actually works pretty well at finding unknown criminals. Indeed, it is part of their job.

I'll close with a quote from someone who said it better than I could:

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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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