President Clinton accused Republicans in the U.S. Senate of advocating "a new isolationism" in opposing the nuclear test ban treaty.

I wish.

"Isolationism" is apparently the new dirty word that Clinton and the Democratic Party will use to demonize political enemies. I've been called a lot worse.

I'm not sure I'm an isolationist, and I don't like anyone labeling me, but America could stand a dose of isolationism in 1999.

Clinton doesn't like Americans who believe our country is a unique experiment in freedom and independence. He and his political allies prefer a world of "interdependence." Listen carefully and they will tell you this. They'll admit it.

The trouble with "interdependence" is that it is still dependence. Look it up. It is not in America's best interests to be dependent on any other country, any other leader, any other people -- even if they are dependent upon us as well. It is for this ideal of independence that our revolutionary forebears fought and died in the fields of Lexington and Concord and at the battles of Bunker Hill and Trenton.

Are concepts like independence and sovereignty now outdated? Have they outgrown their usefulness? Have they been scrapped in favor of some other vision without so much as a national debate?

There are people, Bill Clinton included, who would like America locked in a world of interdependent relationships. They'd like to take us where Europe is today and where it's going tomorrow. That is not a pretty picture. The European Union, GATT, NAFTA, NATO, the United Nations and other supra-national alliances mean less accountability, less responsive government, more centralization of authority and less freedom.

You don't scare me by throwing the "i" word around. A little isolationism would be healthy for America. Less foreign aid, fewer military engagements and "peacekeeping" missions, fewer treaties and more focus on our own national security interests would be a good thing -- a great thing.

Think about it. We can't fix the whole world. The best thing we can do as a nation is to provide an example -- to be that "shining city on a hill." We can also take care of our own. I don't mean with welfare, food stamps and other government dependence programs -- but with liberty and prosperity.

We can't have liberty and prosperity without national security. That's why I would take all the money we throw away playing nursemaid to the Third World and redirect it to a strategic national defense program. We need to be able to defend this country from incoming ballistic missiles. We have no such defense today. Nothing. Nada. Zip. Zilch.

Yet, would you believe the leading presidential candidate for the Republican Party says we ought to build missile defenses in Israel and for Taiwan and Japan? Don't get me wrong. I love Israel, Taiwan and Japan. I think they should have missile defense programs. But they are more than capable of building them with their own resources and initiative.

There is a role for U.S. foreign intervention. There is a time and place for military involvements. But, on those rare occasions we, as a nation, must be certain that those commitments are in our vital national interests.

I do not advocate retreating from the world. In fact, I believe in the case of the Panama Canal that we are making a mistake by withdrawing -- leaving a strategic national interest unprotected. That's what Bill Clinton wants to do. It's funny, but he seems always to choose the option most detrimental to America's national security. Is this a coincidence? Or is it a pattern that should alert Americans to his true intentions and motivations?

But the Panama Canal is the exception today. The rule, in recent years, has been for America to be involved everywhere in everything. That's not healthy. That's not good. That's not constitutional. That's not smart.

That's why I say America could use a dose of isolationism. We must do a better job picking our spots, making good foreign policy choices, forming temporary alliances when it suits us, but avoiding the kind of permanent foreign entanglements about which George Washington warned us.