Patrick McElhiney doesn’t believe in the process of the U.S. attempting to manipulate and change foreign nations’ laws through the spread of democracy in the Far East. We have tried in the past, and it has set a dangerous precedent in which those foreign nations have opened their foreign intelligence operations to instill hatred and revenge within our own society, without us being aware of it at first. They have brought more attention to opposition groups like the alt-right during the 2016 Presidential election. It has happened with Russia, and it could happen again with China, with Saudi Arabia, and with any other nation. We need to be good stewards of our world – not dictators that demand changes that we can’t afford to follow through on.

Patrick believes that the United States needs to keep its society open, however with technology like social media overtaking our society, we need to restrict what other nations can do to our political environment. One major step in following-through with these goals, is to cease attempting to change the nations’ beliefs and their systems that enforce them. Patrick believes we need to treat foreign nations in the ways and traditions that they believe in, not in the way that we view them in our ideal world. Differences are good – we just need to keep our differences about foreign nations to ourselves here at home, because we can’t change their ways by attacking their beliefs and governing powers. How would you respond if your beliefs and ideals were under attack?

This doesn’t mean that we can’t negotiate with foreign nations – it means that the visions of change agents need to be tabled and kept separate from our government, because we cannot afford to open ourselves up to this type of attack again. We can be opinionated about foreign nations here at home, on our own sovereign territory, but once you go over there, you’ve got to respect their beliefs, their laws, their traditions, and their ways of life. You can’t change societies that don’t want change to happen, and if you try to force it on them – they will hate you for it; they will destroy you.

Patrick isn’t saying that spreading issues like women’s and human rights around the world aren’t good – they are good; but – we can’t force other nations to adapt to our way of life. We must let them evolve, and be supportive of the good things that they do, rather than be there to detest and call for the end to the things that shape their society. Technology is very powerful, and everyone needs to learn how to avoid allowing other people abuse the powers that emanate from it. We need to stop hating foreign nations because of the bad things they do, and we need to start being supportive of the good things that they do at the same time.

When you treat a foreign nation like a terrorist, they will look and appear like a terrorist to you – but the fact of the matter is that this type of opinion on the world stage only helps those nations develop more power that they could then use to attempt to destroy, or intervene in our open society here in the United States. In the future, we could be faced with Presidents that are elected solely based on national security – that have no good intent of working for the American People. We've started to see that with President Trump. Make it known - I will not be one of those Presidents.

Power is a very innocent thing to have – it’s what the power does that causes mistrust and evil to take hold. We must trust in the words of our founding fathers, like George Washington, that having ties to foreign nations could erode confidence in our ability to govern. We must separate national security from politics – we must focus more on our own people, as that is what other nations will do regardless of where we stand on the issues. We must not waste our time and resources trying to police the entire world – instead, we should be supportive, and focus on our own economy, our own defense, our own people – because we are what matters to America.