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We seemed to be in agreement, I thought you'd be interested in the background, which was essentially a disagreement between founders over whether we entangle (sorry paulies, the founders entangled us frequently) ourselves with France (Jefferson the entangler), the Brits (Adams the entangler), or Washington, who thought we should sit this one out. Needless to say at various times the founders not only entangled us with France and England, but went to war with both of them. So much for isolationism.

Hamilton, of course, simply wanted an American Empire, his vision of America as a world power the most on target, the paulies hate that too, brought about partially by Jefferson in Louisiana, but most forcefully by Polk, my candidate for underrated President, who took us from sea to shining sea by driving out the Mexicans from the west and Brits from the northwest, something I presume the paulies don't like either. Were we a non entangling, non empire building nation, we'd have a handful of states on the Atlantic coast. And Paul still couldn't get nominated, voters recognizing what America could have been.

It's a good address if you haven't read it all, though nothing like Lincoln of 144 years ago yesterday.