The American tradition of Washington and Hamilton and Madison and Lincoln and TR and Pat Buchanan is of economic nationalism - making America an independent, self-sufficient, sovereign forever country that's able to stand on its own feet.

Saying the Washington Post is just a newspaper is like saying Rasputin was just a country priest.

Taiwan is an independent sovereign country.

Lincoln once said that America was founded on a proposition that was written by Jefferson in 1776. We are really founded on an argument about what that proposition means.

If there is a horrific attack on this country like 9/11, the American people will demand we go to war and settle accounts with those who did it. But America's appetite for intervention, for nation building, for democracy crusades, is fully sated.

Democracy requires common ground on which all can stand, but that ground is sinking beneath our feet, and democracy may be going down the sinkhole with it.