Even though our nation has lost "credibility" in the world, they say, it is imperative that the United States continue to project power and influence around the world. To do otherwise, they say, would create a "vacuum" into which would flow Russia, China, Iran, the terrorists, or some other adversary, opponent, or enemy. Some of them are even bringing up the dreaded I word — isolationism! 

One big problem here is that advocates of empire and interventionism often conflate the U.S. government and the United States. Actually, the federal government and the country are two separate and distinct entities. 

This fact is borne out by the Bill of Rights, which expressly protects the country from the federal government. If the federal government and the country were one and the same thing, the Bill of Rights would be nonsensical.

Why is it important to keep this distinction in mind? Because it holds a key to the liberty and well-being of our nation going forward in the wake of the Afghanistan debacle.

Two of the founding principles on which our nation was founded were non-interventionism and a limited-government republic. 

As John Quincy Adams pointed out in his Fourth of July Address to Congress in 1821, the U.S. government does not go abroad in search of monsters to destroy.