Ron Paul could double his popularity by giving up on this isolationism bit.
Isolationism has been dead since the 1930s, or even earlier. There are far too many nutcases and fanatics in the world for them to ever leave us alone again.
This leaves three alternatives: move the USA to another planet; kill everyone else on this planet; or put up walls around the US and kill everybody who approaches them, and wait for the inevitable day when they figure out a way to get weapons over that wall we can’t stop.
You must have a perverted definition of isolationism.
War isn’t expensive, by comparison to what we’ve done after wars. We could kill nutcases and lunatics on the cheap. It is all this “enforced peace” that costs money.
Consider the amount of money we spent crushing the Nazis vs. the amount of money we’ve spent on maintaining a force structure in Germany since 1948.
We should withdraw our troops from Europe post-haste. We’ve been doing nothing more or less than subsidizing Europe. They’ve had the luxury of spending their tax monies on all sorts of social welfare, because they have not had to pay for their own defense. If we withdraw and pull that money back home, the EU won’t be quite so high-handed with us - because they’ll have to make some hard choices.
The Europeans don’t like us. So let’s leave. The South Koreans don’t like us. So let’s leave.
We should give all of these sad-sack whiners about US ‘hegemony’ what they want: an isolationist US. And when they get stepped on, our response should be “Golly. That looks like it hurt. Put some ice on it.”
Isolationism involves restricting trade, as in high protectionist tariffs and such, in addition to keeping the military at home. Paul is in favor of the latter, not the former. That makes him him a non-interventionist not an isolationist IMO.