This deep respect for the other that I sense in Daniel will make it very hard for his voice to gain any credibility with the GOP, because his attitude seems as going against the grain of American exceptionalism. He will have to wait for more than 8-11 years. If he keeps his head above water and he is able to write a good book analyzing american foreign policies from a coherent perspective and without any veil left hanging, he has good chances to become at 50 the next wolfovitz or frum or whatever.

Blogging and journal writing is necessary for keeping a finger on the current events, but one or two books would really help. As a leftist and pacifist, I wish him good luck and success, ‘cus heaven knows how badly GOP and republicans need to reform (not that democrats are much better, just that they seem at the moment a lesser evil).

Do you know what year American will become a minority majority country? And do you know that blacks aren’t the only non-whites?

Thank you for the answer but why not look at what the six members of the CBC on the House Committee on Foreign Affairs are saying. They are in the majority and as the U.S. becomes a non-white nation their POV will become the dominate point of view.

The only relevance that the Republicans have on any policy issue comes from whatever the Democrats give them. The Democrats have total control over foreign policy and will have for at least the next seven years. Whatever the Republicans are saying is totally irrelevant.

Also, the idea that the Republicans can make a comeback in a decade after the Democrats pass amnesty and pass massive new entitlements is laughable. Instead of trying to affect the irrelevant Republicans why not try to affect the party in power and what they will be doing in the future. At least the Obama Administration was smart enough not to get involved in Darfur or anywhere else in Africa. The Obama Administration is also smart enough to ignore South America since those countries are all working hard to make themselves irrelevant.

Another reason why I keep talking about Republican foreign policy arguments is that the combination of hawkish intervention and empty “freedom” rhetoric has to be beaten out of the party. These ideas are destructive, and unless the GOP changes when it is out of power these will be the ideas that prevail in some future Republican administration. That may not occur for another seven or eleven years, but there will eventually be another Republican President, and he will need sound counsel. He isn’t going to get it if this kind of thinking goes unchallenged during the time in the wilderness.

Elvis, I never used the word crisis for any of these things. There is mounting debt, the dollar is weakening, and the largest of our entitlement programs (Medicare) is unsustainable. None of these things is necessarily beyond repair, and they are medium to long-term problems, but they are real problems.

BarryD, what are the lies?

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/deficit-hysteria/
http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/11/24/notes-on-the-dollar-panic/
http://www.prospect.org/csnc/blogs/ezraklein_archive?month=05&year=2007&base_name=social_security_as_signifier

If what you said were true, current US policy would look really, really, really different – both foreign and domestic.

Daniel should stop wasting time ripping the Republicans when the Republicans are irrelevant to politics. Why not take a few days and study what the Democrats and especially the CBC and CHC are saying since they are the ones who control policy in the U.,S?