Buchanan the Islolationist

Pat Buchanan, considered a "conservative" by most pundits, could not be further from George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan, than is Howard Dean or Michael Moore. In Townhall, Buchanan takes umbrage with Condi Rice's address to the Southern Baptist convention, where she said,

"Here, ladies and gentlemen, is the choice before our country, before us as Americans. Will we lead in the world or will we withdraw? Will we rise to the challenges of our time or will we shrink from them?"

Buchanan rails Condi for her comments, saying that she was instructing the crowd not to turn isolationist, which he believes in. Buchanan then goes on to defend his argument by saying that isolationists weren't the cause of the Iraq War, of global terrorism, or of the negative opinion of the U.S. in the Muslim world. He's right, but he also fails to mention that isolationism simply ignores the underlying problems that are already there. I believe that the 1990s were something of an isolationist experiment, where we ignored the world's terrorism problems in favor of an era of good feeling. The only difference is that we pretended we were engaged.

We have tried isolationism often in our history and it has never been successful. I don't know how Buchanan still carries the mantra of "conservative" because that term means something very different to me.