Undoubtedly, the greatest barrier to wisdom is presupposition. It ignores, subverts, skews and twists facts to adhere to its positions.
The Republicans are no more the "party of death" than the Democrats, under whose administrations, WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam were initiated. (You could look it up). The Korean and Vietnamese wars were ended under Republican presidents and, it should be noted, it was Congress that authorized the continued funding of these wars.
Labeling those who disagree with us as warmongers or traitors does not stregnthen our arguments.
Here's the skinny. All nations act in their own self interests and those actions affect other nations. America does not exist in a vacuum. Like it or not, we owe our prosperity and our standard of living to our economic standing. That we have not, always, acted for the universal good goes without saying but, compared to other powerful nations, in history, we have been the least venal. It's easy to point out our warts but doing so, out of historical context, is dogmatic and craven.
Another misconception is this nonsense that Christian Fundimentalist constitute a majority in America. They should be so lucky. What they do constitute is a solid voting bloc, similar to the pro-union voters back in the day. They wield power because most Americans don't vote in general elections and damned near nobody votes in the primaries.

                      Mike Miller