I agree with all that, just didn't realize it was what you meant. One part I definitely agree with is that our gluttonous way of life is a factor. Not every individual, of course, but a great many of us "average Americans" have been living beyond our means. "We" have taken out mortgages we can't afford, run up credit card bills on discretionary items, have a horrible savings rate, etc. This is not to let the big guys off the hook but we are dishonest if we do not admit our own culpability is this crisis.

>Not isolationist, just not war mongers
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>Iraq did nothing to warrant the killing of 10's if not 100's of thousands of Iraqi citizens
>More than likely that Georgia instigated their own problems, also likely we were covertly behind the scenes
>We are putting missiles on Russia's borders and expect them to accept that, would you accept Russia putting missiles in Cuba, or Mexico.
>We are closer to WW3 than during the cold war, and I would not be surprised to see W bomb Iran before he leaves office (or let Israel do it for us, we just gave them 1000's of bunker buster bombs)
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>We are the aggressor, we are causing these problems to protect our gluttonous way of life. Most of the world hates us. We spend more on the military than all other countries combined. Even so, they do an embarrassing job, we can barely maintain what we have instigated and we are bankrupting our country doing it.
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>Time to look in the mirror.....
>Bob
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>>The world has changed a lot since the 1700s. I don't think we could be that isolationist any more without catastrophic global consequences, including to ourselves.
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>>>How about a democracy based on the constitution without a FED and with a military that is based at home for defensive purposes and a plan based on long term slow sustainable growth. Just a thought...
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>>>>>Is it far-fetched for me to start contemplating a Second Revolution? The Founding Fathers, in the Federalist Papers and other writings, made it clear that they expected a periodic uprising against the federal government when the feds became too powerful and too neglectful of the common citizen. With the bailouts and the steady move to socialism in this country, aren't we way over the line of what would have been acceptable to the individualists the Framers were?
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>>>>>Seriously, with the bipartisan gridlock and gotchas, the difference in both major parties between what is said and what is done, what hope is there of returning to ideals and not a buncha jerks political expediency?
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>>>>>Really, there is no hope. It's getting close to the time to rise up and reclaim the country and can these bast@rds. The Founding Fathers knew that this time would come; that's why they made DC a helpless demilitarized zone.
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>>>>The obvious question is what you propose to replace the present system with.
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>>>>It's easy to be angry, especially in crazy times like these, but to just overthrow the government (if that were even possible) without a plan beyond that is just embracing chaos.