First off, I didn't say that not giving people freedom is a just policy. My argument is that if a people do not believe in freedom, democracy just gives them the right to vote in a tyrannical regime.

From the point of view of America, in many cases it serves us better to have dictators who keep the peace over democracies whereby the people elect governments hostile to us and our allies.

I do not believe it is our job to to patrol the Middle East and intervene in every situation that is not advantageous to us, but in this case our President goaded a dictator that helped keep stability in the Middle East out of office while legitimizing a sworn enemy who worked with Hitler from its earliest beginnings.

As for the part about Muslims living under Muslim law, you are right that it is their choice. But their choice can become our problem, and if you view Egypt as a situation which may lead to a region dominated by Iran, Turkey or other now hostile regimes, the effects of which will hurt our allies and ourselves, then one cannot stand idly by in celebration of democracy.

While there are many useful idiot leftists out there who fall into this camp, there is a similarity in the ideologies in that both Islam and leftism (socialism, communism, progressivism whatever you want to call it) are concerned with power, in the one case with man ruling over fellow man as a god, and in the other with Allah ruling over man. Not surprisingly, these systems are incompatible with individualism, property rights, free enterprise, etc. But the key is that they deal with power, that which adherents of both sides thirst for.

Hanzo, at the very least, the U-6 measurement of unemployment of around 17% is the closest thing we have to a real unemployment rate. That being said, unemployment, like inflation and all the other govt data is watered down. John Williams over at Shadow Stats (http://www.shadowstats.com/) probably has numbers that are closest to being accurate. Government has gotten further and further away from producing data with any real meaning or credibility out of expedience and likely more insidious motives.

I am a neocon because I believe that Spencer correctly interprets the Koran?

If I told you that in an ideal world I would want to get rid of Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, the Fed and all of the unnecessary departments would you feel the same way? I think you're being a bit unfair, but you can't please everyone.

I submit that you're not going to be able to just leave these people alone. Iraq and Afghanistan may not be the wars to fight, but if you study Islam and see what's going on in Europe (where they were welcomed with open arms: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=azhuuh_C2jk&fe... I think you may come to a different conclusion. Read Robert Spencer, Steve Emerson or the recent book on CAIR, or take a look at the videos from the FDI event (http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2... and especially the second video by the former federal agent and you may view things a bit differently.

And in the 30s and 40s they were complicit with the Germans, as the Grand Mufti worked very closely with Hitler. They had massacred Jews in the Middle East intermittently from 1900-1948 as well.

All -

As a rule I'm going to try to limit my comments because there are simply too many things to address, and arguments here may often proven fruitless, but I did want to address a few things:

1. I like Ron Paul as I said in my article on everything but defense. We have a fundamentally different worldview, and while as I mentioned I do believe we can have a debate on the merits of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that isolation (i.e. avoiding battles except when strictly necessary and getting rid of some of the unnecessary bases around the world) is generally preferable to adventurism, the view that we can simply open up free trade with people and make them like us or work with us is flawed. This is not the nature of the enemy we face in Islam. To protect liberty and free trade will require overseas security at times, and it is never going to be perfect.

2. I am no shill for Fox News, nor am I a neo-con. I am an Austrian with regards to most social and economic issues, and believe in a government without almost all of the bureaucracies we have, and the welfare state generally, even if at this time it's politically untenable to scrap these institutions.

3. I was surprised at the vitriol of Ron Paul's supporters at CPAC. These people reminded me of the anti-war, Code Pink type leftists, and were surprisingly intolerant of other views for supposed libertarians. I love and have learned much from the Mises Institute, but we can differ on defense and have a civilized debate. Not everyone is going to agree on every issue, but the animosity is counterproductive and unwarranted.

Anyway, that's my two cents.

drbagger -

Mellon here. I thought that I adequately addressed my view of Dr. Paul when I said:

"The merits of Paul’s belief in Austrian economics, strict adherence to the Constitution and defense of the individual are great, but his world view is warped and potentially suicidal." I happen to be an Austrian myself when it comes to economics, but differ in terms of defense because I believe a precondition for liberty is security, which sometimes requires overseas military operations.

Leaving aside the electability issue, the odds of which I believe are very low (regardless of my opinion of the man), as I explain I fundamentally disagree with his worldview. While "Surely reasonable conservatives can debate on the prudence of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the efficacy or lack thereof of nation-building in general," my issue with Paul's foreign policy and that of many libertarians is their view that somehow we have caused Muslims to want to attack us, and that if we simply opened up trade with them we would have peace. This view is misguided. One of Paul's ideological heroes Jefferson realized this when he built the Navy to take down the Muslim Barbary pirates.

I believe our military is probably unnecessarily overextended (and indeed it may be worth it to get out of Afghanistan and/or Iraq), I believe that nation-building does not work in most situations (and/or may be a totally unjustifiable option on a cost-benefit basis) and I believe that we need to choose our wars very carefully. But if you don't realize properly who the enemy is, and what they're all about, I don't think you can properly defend against them. We can agree to disagree on this, but I wanted to clarify.