"If I'm not winning, I won't play"

The Tea Party is a frustrating bunch in many respects, but perhaps one of the worst is their foreign policy. Tea Party hero and one of the movement's de facto spokesmen, Rand Paul, stated that "I believe that the United States should withdraw from and stop funding altogether those U.N. programs that undermine legitimate American interests and harm the cause of freedom around the world."

There's a small problem, Mr. Paul: the "great game" of diplomacy continues whether you choose to participate or not. The U.N. is by no means perfect and to suggest that the U.S. should not push for improvements is to be a bit too idealistic for my taste, but to also simply refuse to participate is to give up a massive, monolithic forum of interaction and discussion for diplomatic matters. I consider bilateral or limited multilateral discussion more effective in most cases, but denial of the U.N. in general can only hurt a country's foreign policy. The Tea Party is the equivalent of a kid on the playground unhappy with a game's progress who stalks off yelling "I don't want to play anymore!" if he's not winning.

The problem with that strategy is you ALWAYS lose, regardless of your original reasoning. You will NOT gain anything but isolation from running away from something like the UN, as well as ire from everyone who continues playing. Good luck managing to fight for your interests globally (which is vital to America's future), if you're going to infuriate the globe by ditching commitments to the UN. Improving the organization is a necessary goal, but simply abandoning the organization altogether is a sure way to become the playground loser.