Foreign Policy's latest quiz asks us to guess at how many "self-described isolationists" there are in America. Their answer, based on a Pew survey, is 49 percent.
Catchy sure, but as we blogged when that Pew survey was released, the headline "isolationist" finding was a dubious reading of the poll results, to put it charitably. First, the Pew survey does not ask people to describe themselves. It merely asks them to choose between two propositions:
"the U.S. mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own."OR
â??the U.S is the most powerful nation in the world, we should go our own way in international matters, not worrying about whether other countries agree with us or not.â?
The people who chose the first answer were dubbed isolationists. As Daniel Larison noted at the time, this is very absurd:
No doubt, there was a higher percentage that answered that the U.S. should â??mind its own business and let other countries get along the best they can on their own,â? but the alternative was to answer that the U.S. â??is the most powerful nation in the world, we should go our own way in international matters, not worrying about whether other countries agree with us or not.â? Given that choice between something that sounds reasonable and something that sounds idiotic, a great many non-â?isolationistsâ? would prefer the former response
And as I pointed out at the time, CFR's omnibus study of American public opinion showed a more subtle and, to my mind, more accurate assessment of the public attitude toward international relations. And "isolationism" was not much in evidence.
