By Tom Baxter
Southern Political Report

In our lifetimes, the great renegades of presidential politics have almost always been Democrats.

The Republicans’ off-the-reservation candidates have tended to be those, like Pat Robertson or Pat Buchanan, who represent just another strain of the party’s prevailing conservatism. The Democratic primaries, on the other hand, have been a stage for candidates spanning the ideological spectrum from George Wallace to Jesse Jackson, candidates who’ve questioned not only the party line but national assumptions in times of major turmoil.

“There are several signs that the interventionist consensus is coming under increased scrutiny. The first is the undeniable success of Texas Congressman Ron Paul’s campaign for president….”

Argue Like It’s 1991
The interventionist consensus breaks down, and an overdue debate begins.
by Justin Logan – The American Conservative Magazine

It’s tough to believe in the context of today’s imperial paralysis, but for a fleeting moment at the end of the Cold War, the foreign-policy community was so off balance that America had a meaningful, wide-ranging debate about the ends of American foreign policy and the means to pursue them. In a series of essays published first by The National Interest, and then compiled into a 1991 book titled America’s Purpose, conservatives, neocons, and libertarians hashed out their differences. Or tried to, anyway.