Please, please tell me you're being sarcastic, ironic, or employing a similar literary device with which we've all been heretofore unfamiliar. You don't think "genocide" is something that has ever happened in the real world? Really? What the hell do you actually know about World War II, the Armenian Genocide, Darfur, Bosnia, or any kind of history at all? No, it wouldn't make for a better world; it would make for an ignorant world.

2 million deaths during a time of war when you're expecting people to die versus a still as-yet uncounted number of people who die of starvation because of the government's standard operating procedure? And the export controls? We've given them food in exchange for promises to not build nukes. When you give someone something, you have every right to put strings and conditions on it. If they renege on their end of the deal (which they demonstrably have), you can't blame the people who were trying to help the situation. If you'd rather live in North Korea than Iraq, that's all you. Don't pretend that it's because the U.S. is some horrid monster of a superpower keeping others down, though.

Re: Home-schooled kids and social awkwardness, I have never seen anything to support this. I know many home-schooled kids (a lot of them went to my alma mater), and I've never known any who were any more socially awkward than anyone else.

I see what you did there. Your logic break down at a couple of points, though. First, you assume an equivalence between nations and an individual citizen where none exists. Individual citizens have rights. Governments do not. Second, when those individual citizens consent to form a government and police force, that force is not beholden to any one private citizen. There are citizens who are not cops. When nations agree to international law, they are expected to uphold it themselves; they're supposed to be their own cops, in other words. There are no nations designated as "cops."

And what force does international law have behind it? The idea that it exists by itself, independently of the power granted it by the consent of its signatories, is beyond laughable. No country is going to submit to international law if it perceives that submission as contrary to its interests.

And why is it cheaper to outsource manufacturing? Labor cost, which unions drive up, is a huge part of that. With nuclear energy you're a little more on, I think, but environmentalists and their legislation have increased the cost of doing business in the oil and nuclear industries both. Because we've been scared shitless to build new reactors in forever and a day, the advances in construction and maintenance techniques have (surprise!) not materialized out of thin air.

Is the United Nations the actual reason why we haven't had a "major war" since WW2, or would that be US power looming over the international system, keeping trade routes open and actually doing the work of facilitating economic productivity? You may disagree with my leading questions, but I disagree with your absolutist declaration. Both of us have evidence, which means that for the time being, all of our evidence is non-conclusive.

Finally. I'm only saddened that it took criminal charges to get rid of that porker. I wonder how Sarah Palin is going to govern her state without all that federal money coming in?