American Isolation is a Good Thing

Here are my links from my opening: http://en.wikipedia.org... http://www.theblaze.com... http://www.gallup.com... http://www.washingtonpost.com... Important to Note: The idea of American Isolationism was created in George Washington's farewell address, specifically the line "The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible." (http://avalon.law.yale.edu...). By saying isolation is bad, I am assuming that you are going against this statement, since that has been the meaning of American Isolationism since America was founded. You also did not really give any concrete examples of alternatives to Isolationism, and I really never asked you to defend the current system. P1 The fact of the matter is we have already harmed our place in the world by not minding our own business. The Banana Republics in Latin America are a prime example of how America has ignored every human right imaginable to gain some extra cash. Going back to the Massacre at El Mozote, where America backed a government that sent out death squads to stop protestors. The reasons for the protests are numerous, but they all revolved around the fact that the majority of the El Salvador land was used for coffee exports to the US which benefited the rich powerful elite that was backed by the US and of course the US. If you are wondering where the word banana republic comes from, just look up United Fruit Company and Sam Zemurray's impact on Honduras. It's hard to say that not intervening is good, because not invading a country and then saying what could of happened if we did invade a country is pure speculation. For example, I could say its a good thing that we do not take over Japan and radically change its education system but I don't really know for sure. Instead I can point to the Bay of Pigs Crisis as an example of US intervention failing and its positive effects on Cuba. Fidel Castro defeated the Pro US dictator Batista and distanced himself from the US by cutting them off from Cuba's oil. The US, believing that the Cubans would support them against Castro, launched a covert operation, aka Bay of Pigs, but they were humbled by the fact that none of the Cubans supported them and the militias and army easily defeated the US attack. Cuba has been at peace ever since. P2 "If we take Isolationist policies and refuse to share jobs with poor parts of the world, we are harming the greater good." No, not exactly. First off, the reason why jobs are getting outsourced is not to create new jobs in foreign lands, because our government has no control over what the corporations do. Its because in worse off countries, people are forced to work for less than in the US, which has a very high minimum wage. Workers here in the US also have strong unions and the people will not tolerate corporations taking advantage of people, in ways such as child labor or physical abuse. This is not the case in developing countries such as Indonesia, where workers are too afraid to speak out because they are afraid of losing their jobs (here is a link to Nike sweatshops http://www.dailymail.co.uk...). So if the people there want to be taken advantage of by greedy corporations and their "jobs", more like slavery to me, then let them go for it. But why should tax payers pay for businesses that are "too big to fail", when they will not see any returns? America should distance itself from the corporations that, as John Kerry says, "move offshore simply to avoid paying American taxes, yet they still get all of the same benefits, including government contracts. We should penalize these companies and deny them government contracts." P3 I am confused what you are arguing here, you say that you agree with me that we should not intervene in politics then you say that we are shutting ourselves from the world. There is situations where either A) you decide that you must intervene or B) you stay out of it. You don't really seem to get war, either you are killing people or you are not, there is no in between. You keep on talking about reforms, what exactly are they? You never really challenge my position here, and instead called my position of attempting to stay free of wars a "overreaction", when war is the greatest overreaction of all. I'll post the WP article again for you:http://www.washingtonpost.com... Its the 2011 federal budget, and as you can see, the amount of money we use use for defense is far bigger than education, infrastructure, veterans or science. You give us a budget that is incomplete because 2014 is not finished yet, who knows what the government has planned for the second half of this year. Since it seems we are getting ready to send solders into Iraq again, I think it is safe to say that defense will get much more funds. The trade chart that you gave does show how active we are in trade, but it does not tell us how much we depend on other countries. America is a huge country that can easily be more self dependent if we wanted to, as we are twice the size of the EU and slightly bigger than China. The America has an economy of $16 trillion and California makes $2 trillion (http://www.aei-ideas.org...) which is as much as Italy! The fact of the matter is nothing is more economically powerful than the American working class. Plus, the chart is what we are importing and exporting so we are not making money off of what we are importing we are paying for it. We are actually the fastest growing producer of oil right now in the world, and we just passed Saudi Arabia (http://www.usatoday.com...) as the biggest producer of oil. We are working with Mexico and Canada currently to create a "New Middle East", but tapping the oil requires technology we do not currently have. That is why it is important to stop spending money on pointless wars across the world and starting to invest in our future, science and education. Summary P1- Isolationism is good because we do not take advantage of smaller countries with our imperialistic foreign policy. Even if we "reform" and intervene less, we are still being imperialistic which is bad P2- American tax payers should not have to pay for big businesses that take jobs away from them. Also, the jobs that the businesses do create overseas is inhumane, and we should punish those that take advantage of people that do not know better. Not making tax payers pay for unnecessary things is a good thing because you can then spend money on ACTUAL growth P3- Avoiding war is a good thing, and being isolationist means that you are in as few wars as possible, making isolationism good AR1- I doubt that any country trusts that the federal government will actually aid them in natural disasters. We cannot even help ourselves, just look at Hurricane Katrina. Money rarely goes to where it is needed, and the foreign nation just ends up upset with us, so not bothering them is a good thing AR2- We do not need the world, being self dependent is good because the world is always falling apart and we do not let their mistakes affect us. AR3- We are already taking steps to become energy independent, which is a good thing (http://en.wikipedia.org...