Why, may you ask, do I recall this event on here? Simple. Many of the same people who come on-line to chat about any of the thousands of topics may also create web pages and build comprehensive sites that look imposing on the outside, but are really filled with half-truths, misconceptions and outright lies. It was once said that statistics don't lie, but that people who make statistics do. This is entirely correct because the numbers that a person attributes to a given issue can be tainted by what they want those numbers to mean. We're not just talking about the half-empty/half-full glass argument here.
We are talking about a situation where someone will suggest that the U.S. can completely solve the problems in the U.S. if they cut off aid to a particular country — let's say Israel, which receives several billion dollars in U.S. aid each year. This argument doesn't hold very much water since as a percentage of the overall U.S. budget it is so miniscule that the impact would be negligible. A drop in the bucket would make more waves than cutting the foreign assistance to another country.
It's understandable that there are people out there who would rather spend the money on people here in the United States, who would rather not have the government spend their money at all, or who would not want money to go to certain issues because of any one of a million different reasons. In the political arena, these viewpoints receive marginal attention, except when they coincide with mainstream politics. On-line, these viewpoints can be fully expanded to their natural conclusions and often what was masked as being patriotic or pro-U.S. turns out to be nothing more than naked racism or bigotry, not to mention a poor understanding of world affairs.
Many people on-line would have you believe that the US should not interact with the rest of the world, or, if they do, they should force U.S. values and ideals on them. Isolationism may have a long history in the U.S., but many of the long-term goals of the U.S. are best served through the co-operation among nations and giving aid to the countries that best serve those goals.
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