How did we get here?

I find myself wondering this election how America got here, probably like everyone else. How did we go from the vision of the "City upon the Hill" (Originally proposed by John Winthrop, a Purtian settler, not Ronald Reagan!) to this country where Americans have lost their respect from others and their self-respect. Our Founding Fathers once agreed to write a document stating to the world our intentions for separating from the 'tyranny' of Great Britain, a very honorable and decent thing to do. The world respected us and accepted us much more quickly because we explained ourselves. We don't do that anymore. You know what else we don't pratice? Neutrality. If you look at the presidencies of George Washington, John Adams, and even Thomas Jefferson you can see a strong pull toward isolationism. George Washington said that America should stay as neutral as possible and only attack to defend. This policy seemed to work well until the time period around World War I and II when Russia fell to communism. That was a terrible nightmare we dreaded. Communism is the enemy of capitalism in the eyes of so many. Communists and capitalists should be able to agree to disagree and I think this is where the turning point was. The threat of communism put America on alert. It changed our policy of avoiding conflict at all cost, it changed how Americans viewed our government, and it changed domestic policies to give up some of our privacy rights for our protection. Of course we know what Benjamin Franklin says about that, "He who would trade liberty for some temporary security, deserves neither liberty nor security." Does that ring a bell at all? Does that strike a chord? Today we are fighting a war in Iraq that has absolutely nothing to do with a war on terrorism. We have given up some of our basic rights through the wrongly-named Patriot Act. It is NOT patriotic to give up your rights! That is what our founding fathers fought against: giving up rights for protection. I love America, and I love the ideals it was founded on; I just can't stand what it's turned into. Maybe we were the "City upon a Hill" but we are that no longer. When we can once again find ourselves culpable of our actions and willing to explain ourselves to the world, maybe, maybe, we could gain back some of that respect from the world and from ourselves that we had when the founding fathers wrote our Declaration of Independence.