Quote

Through our own hard work and ingenuity, America has spent much of its history as the world's dominant economic power. But our dominance is not pre-ordained - history does not roll along on the wheels of inevitability.

And yet, there are still people in American politics who, for some reason, cling to this belief that America is better off adopting the economic policies of nations whose people who immigrate here from there.

Not wishing to be disturbed over moral issues of the political economy, Americans cling to the notion that the government is a sort of automatic machine, regulated by the balancing of competing interests.

The Americans invaded a country without understanding what eight years of a war with Iran had meant, how that traumatized Iraq. They didn't appreciate what they support for a decade of sanctions in Iraq had done to Iraq and the bitterness that it created and that it wiped out the middle class.

Often, foreign policy - which, by definition, is largely out of American control - is simply a matter of not doing the wrong thing, the unwise thing.

Well, in 1947... in Europe and in Italy especially, we thought of America as all-powerful.

Things in our country run in spite of government, not by aid of it.

American influence in the world is certainly considerable, but the United States does not control, directly or indirectly, the politics and economics of other societies, as empires have always done, save for a few special cases that turn out to be the exceptions that prove the rule.

American foreign policy, for all its shortcomings, has underpinned political stability around the world.