World View, reader's digest version

So now that we've gotten the basic introductions out of the way, I wanted to talk briefly about my world view, some of my influences, and so on.

One of the biggest influences on my thinking these last few years has been Thomas P.M. Barnett, who is a grand strategist and a fellow Democrat.

I am sure I will not do sufficient justice to his ideas here, but Dr. Barnett believes that the current strategic challenge facing the United States is what he calls "the Non-Integrating Gap," or more simply, the Gap.

The developed world of the United States, Western Europe, Japan, South Korea is what he calls the Core -- and it is simply the well-integrated world of globalization.

New Core countries are China, India, Russia and Brazil, among others. Whether they stay in the Core or fall back into the Gap makes ALL the difference between whether a majority of humanity lives in increasingly better conditions, or slips back into the old world wherein two-thirds of humanity lived in desperate conditions.

The moral and strategic challenge for the Core, then, not merely the U.S., is to "SHRINK the Gap." (emphasis mine) And that just might require, not merely economic shrinkage of the Gap, but employing what Dr. Barnett calls the Leviathan to take down bad actors in the Gap.

The Leviathan is, for lack of any alternatives, the U.S. military. And its most recent Gap-shrinking exercise was taking down the Saddam Hussein regime in Iraq.

And that's where we get to the parting of the ways currently underway in the Democratic Party. The vast majority of the party are following Saint Obama to the far left, and those like Senator Lieberman who think sometimes the United States should use its military might to take down the bad guys are being purged from the party.

I know I am wildly oversimplifying, but those are the battle lines as I see it. And I just can't side with the Obama / MoveOn.org / Cindy Sheehan / Michael Moore faction that seems increadingly dominant in the Democratic Party.

For the record, this is not because I'm a disgruntled Hillary Clinton supporter. I'm no such thing -- about the only positive thing I can say about Obama as a candidate is that he at least put an end, hopefully permanent, to any thought of a Clinton Restoration. I voted for Bill twice in the 1990s, happily, but I cringe at the thought of the uber-Nixonian Hillary as President.

So that makes me -- oh God no, don't make me say it! -- a McCain Democrat.

More on that in my next post, as soon as I can.