Unlike the British and French who declared war over Poland in 1939, Americans did not think Eastern Europe worth the risk of a new world war. We waited patiently for the evil empire to collapse, and collapse it did under steady pressure from Reagan’s America. Patience paid off, for, as Reagan always believed, time was on our side, time was on the side of freedom. It still is.

Today, however, the independent foreign policy of Washington and Jefferson, the non-interventionist policy of Eisenhower and Reagan—of peace through strength, of staying out of wars where U.S. interests are not imperiled, of keeping one’s powder dry unless the United States were attacked—is derided as cowardly isolationism. ~Patrick Buchanan