What recent president has done otherwise? Obama tried to turn us into a pack of globalists who couldn't quite remember their nationality. Bush wanted us to be kinder and gentler missionaries for Christian capitalism and democracy.
Clinton was too busy fending off bimbo eruptions to do much. Reagan succeeded in building a military that, in its day, intimidated the Soviets into history's dustbin. Nixon did the opening to China, probably at Kissinger's urging, but he made the move.
My point: every president takes the country in his own direction. He has the monumental ego necessary to win the office and believes that makes him right because the people chose him. Good ol' boy Lyndon Johnson sure did that with his Great Society.
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Back to Friedman, he doesn't like Trump so he doesn't like where Don is taking the country. So? I didn't like where Obama took the country and said so repeatedly in this space. Many of us like America just as The Donald is remaking it, unabashedly pursuing its self-interest.
It is long past the time Europe had any rational excuse to ride on our gravy train. All need for the Marshall Plan ended by 1960-70; Europe has been leaching off us for the last fifty years. So has Canada. Trump says as much.
Like the millennial whose parents had to sue to evict him from their basement, the nations of Europe whine when the tap gets turned off. It is long past time for them to grow up and act like adults, responsible for their own affairs.
