>>I’m not sure how our having it all means that Putin should be able to take over a nearby country.
Has our CIA ever engineered a coup in Latin America? Putin is just playing by our rules.
>>Using that logic, the UK could retake the Republic of Ireland, and many other examples come to mind.
They never left Northern Ireland.
>>Actually, whatever is wrong with the USA is something we should fix, not become so cynical or pessimistic that we’re willing to see an expansionistic autocrat gobbling up neighboring counties to assuage his Mussolini-like ego.
Conservatives cannot fix what is broken with their present mentality, period. Conservative is obsolete in principle in a rapidly evolving electronic world where it is better to be well informed than to possess any sort of ideology. I’m voting for the Better Informed Party.
>>America - for good and for bad - is about the struggle to make itself better.
Yes, certainly, but we didn’t make it better, we made it worse...we didn’t learn from our mistakes and we don’t apply what we know. We don’t think for ourselves based upon raw data. Republicans became the party of Empire rather than remaining the Party of Lincoln.
>>Quitting and whining about how we had it all is frankly unmanly and another sign that you might be happier as a leftist.
That comment is no different than Obamaites accusing any critic of racism. The Wall St. banking elite rubber stamp Republican Party is obsolete. Clinging to it is like a drowning man clinging to an anvil.
Why don’t you join the far left since you’ve their critique and you’re not manly or brave enough to face the horribly tough demands of being on the right? When did you first think you were a conservative, or do you? I ask because for me things were much more daunting when I began to push back against lefties. In those days I argued with Marxist and Communist saying America was all bad and the Soviets were all good. Now, surprisingly, I deal with philistines like you who are so world weary and scared that you want to give up to the crackpot narcissist Putin just because we’ve another Carter in charge. Man up if you can.