Don’t disagree about W.
Pat is more of an isolationist than he is conservative.
What is the meaning of this word “isolationist”?
It means someone who puts the interests of the United States first, right? Someone who puts the interests of future generations of Americans above the interests of France, above the interests of South Korea, above the interests of Saudi Arabia, above the interests of the U.N., NATO, the World Bank.
The word “isolationist” is a myth. The United States in all of its history has never been “isolationist.” In the so-called “isolationist” period of American history, we traded with the entire world and intervened everywhere from Panama to Japan.
In the worldview of the Washington establishment, being an “isolationist” means being a “nationalist,” being someone who rejects the post-WW2 liberal consensus of globalism.
What is “globalism”? Is that conservative? In what way is globalism conservative? Woodrow Wilson and FDR and LBJ were conservatives?
Of course they weren’t. The JFK/LBJ/Nixon policy of sending Americans to their death in Vietnam wasn’t “conservative” at all.
“Isolationist” is merely an epithet. It is not a serious description of public policy. George Washington wasn’t an “isolationist.” He was just a statesman like Buchanan who avoided (as a matter of principle) stupid, useless foreign conflicts.
If the neocons had been in power in the 1790s, they would have demanded America intervene on behalf of the French Revolution, in the name of “conservatism”!