Sandra Day O'Conner, widely considered one of the most influential of our Supreme Court justices, recently said that it's important for our judicial system to be influenced by the decisions and attitudes of foreign courts. It scares the hell out of me to hear a judge of the highest court of OUR land saying such things. In what part of our history has it mattered what other countries are doing? We've been the engine driving the world economically, technologically, miliatarily, legally, and culturally for much of the last two centuries, all because we did things our way, withoout regard to what the rest of the world thought was best, or held as customary. If we'd ignored our own ideas and logic, how different would the world be today? I couldn't say exactly, but I'd be willing to bet the Europeans would still be warring against one another and dragging the rest of the world to hell with them. The internet wouldn't be here, and who knws what else?

The United States of America was founded as a haven for individualists, yet so much of the left wing of this country seems to want to go against the founding fathers and turn our great nation into some sort of collective with the rest of the world. It's fine to me to be with the rest of the world, but only when they come toward us, not the other way around.