Isolationism's Contradictions

In one sense, it's dead, but pockets of it remain:

[D]ifferent strains of isolationism persist. Newt Gingrich has argued for a policy of total “energy independence” (in other words, domestic drilling) while fulminating against President Obama for “bowing” to the Saudi king. While recently driving through an agricultural region of rural Colorado, I saw a giant roadside billboard calling for American withdrawal from the UN. Yet in the last decade, the Republican Party, with the partial exception of its Ron Paul/libertarian faction, has veered into such a belligerent unilateralism that its graybeards—one of whom, Senator Richard Lugar of Indiana, just lost a primary to a far-right challenger partly because of his reasonableness on foreign affairs—were barely able to ensure Senate ratification of a key nuclear arms reduction treaty with Russia. Many of these same people desire a unilateral war with Iran.

And as the author of the article points out, this doesn't just apply on the Right. Drone attacks under the Obama administration have greatly increased, all while that uniquely American emphasis on homeland security has intensified to a pitch of fear that in a sense echoes the former sentiment, isolationism.