Dear Friends, as some of the brightest people I know are on the Mark Twain Form, I thought it might be helpful to pass along some insights that were shared with me by my good friend from Palmyra, Mike Moore.  Although I know that many of you nestled in institutions of higher learning and particularly those of you on the east and west coasts will be amazed to learn that there are intellectually alive people functioning in Marion County, Missouri, but Mike is senior editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (no joke).  When he is not flying off to Washington, D. C. or some world capital, we get together for the odd beer or game of poker and talk about what the damn fools are doing.  As the world is replete with damn fools there is always plenty to talk about.
    Anyway, a few weeks ago, Mike put together a primer for me on neo-conservative foreign policy thought so that I could fathom what the hell Bush the Second was up to.  I thought I would share a couple of the articles with you so you could read them.
    The first of these (and excuse the improper format, literati friends) is "The Lonely Superpower" by Charles Krauthammer, New Republic, July 29, 1991,  page 23.  It is subtitled, "How to bear America's New World Burden."  The second is "Toward a Neo-Reganite Foreign Policy," by William Kristol and Robert Kagan, in Foreign Affairs, July/August 1996, p. 18.  Kristol and Kagan actually coined the phrase "benevolent global hegemony."  After you digest these,  you will be in a position to better understand President Bush's "National Security Strategy of the United States of America" which can be found at www.whitehouse.gov/nsc/print/nssall.html.
    I proffer these because of my respect for the intellect of those of you on the forum and because if we are going to discuss the topics that have been bounced around I would like to see a little more depth to the conversation.  At risk of offending you, I really don't care who you like or don't like.  We should all be interested in knowing that this Republican Party notion of a unilateral foreign policy predates the 9/11 experience and our difficulties with the Germans and the French by a decade!
    I regret that I am not tying this directly to Sam Clemens, but I do know that Sam was an ardent reader and an active partisan from his youngest days.  I believe he would not object to this posting.  I also believe that others have made it relevant.
    I want to close by sharing one of my father's maxims with you.  My dad died in March of 2001.  He was a great guy, a navy and CIA veteran.  While he was very patriotic, he also was very explicit in telling us kids to be careful to never believe our own propaganda.  May you give your children and grandchildren such advice.  This is a great country, let's love it enough to pay very close attention to what goes on.
    Terrell Dempsey