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By "focused internally" do you mean "conquered, massacred, and forced off the inhabitants of vast stretches of empty land that we then used to fuel our economic growth through immigration"?
Are you advocating we invade Canada?
I was speaking of "internal impovements" -- railroads, roads, ports, canals, mining enterprises etc. Investment in America's productive capacity and the infrastructure necessary to support it.
To some, no doubt, the removal of the Indians was indeed an improvement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_Removal_Act
How about I modify it to state, "focused on our immediate sphere of vital interest."
As you correctly note though, we were never "isolationist." The entire 1800s almost there was some sort of tension between us, Canada/Britain, and Mexico, with periodic war, and there were also little military adventures into the Caribbean and South America.
But since Woodrow Wilson, the League of Nations and now the UN we have foresworn all that. "Self-determination." "Inviolability of borders."
The myth of isolationism was created in order to convince the electorate that we needed to meddle on the other side of the planet inplaces that are far outside our sphere of "vital national interests" in pursuit of goals that enrich narrow special interests.
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