Detractors keep wanting use the word "isolationism" on Ron Paul's foreign policy, and it's nonsense. What do they think? That Ron Paul wants to turn the US into North Korea? That's ridiculous!
Someone a while back, and I can't recall who, posted the following quote here on Free Republic and it fits:
In 1943 Garet Garrett wrote: ...If you say of this history that its intense character has been nationalistic, consistently so from the beginning until now, that is true. Therefore, the word in place of isolationism that would make sense is nationalism. Why is the right word avoided? The explanation must be for the wrong one, for that is what it is intended to do, it is the perfect political word. Since isolationism cannot be defined, those who attack it are not obliged to defend themselves. What are they? Anti-isolationists? But if you cannot say what isolationism is, neither can you say what anti-isolationism is, whereas nationalism, being definite, has a positive antithesis. One who attacks nationalism is an internationalist. The use of the obscurity created by the false word is to conceal something. The thing to be concealed is the identity of what is speaking. Internationalism is speaking. It has a right to speak, as itself and for itself, but that right entails a moral obligation to say what it means and to use true words...
Ron Paul is an anti-globalist, American nationalist. He cares about what is good for the American people, not what is good for the international bankers or international corporations that are protecting their overseas interests on our dime.
Everyone wants to believe that we are fighting Islamists. But every single NATO intervention since the end of the Cold War has done the precise opposite of fighting Islamism -- the fact is that since the 1990's we've empowered Islam and Islamism from the Balkans to Iraq to Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt and Libya -- and in the process, sent Balkan and Middle East Christians running for their lives. NATO destabilizes regions, it doesn't stabilize them. And even Israel's security has never been in more jeopardy since these interventions. NATO has been hijacked by the globalists to their bidding, none of which is in the interests of the American people.
There is a reason that Ron Paul has more support from US military members than all the other Republican candidates combined -- because those boots on the ground know that our interventions are not what we've been told that they are.
Now people can love or hate Ron Paul for whatever reasons you want. But there is no need to paint him into what he isn't to do that. The guy doesn't want to build a moat around the US -- or turn us into wimps. But we are broke and can't keep spending on forever wars to bankrupt ourselves because that is a bigger threat to our security than any terrorist will ever be.