More From Jeane Kirkpatrick

Today's Washington Times had an article entitled Kirkpatrick hit liberals for blaming America first, in which she was quoted as saying:

"I worked very hard on that Dallas speech, and I believe the charges I made were defensible and that I could document them," Mrs. Kirkpatrick, 79, says as she sorts through old manuscripts in the living room of her Bethesda home. "At that time, there really were very widespread attacks on Ronald Reagan and the Reagan administration. I thought they were unreasonably harsh, and that's what I was referring to."

While foreign policy led her away from her former party, Mrs. Kirkpatrick also had domestic policy differences with Democrats.

"Democrat welfare policy not only was not working but was damaging to the people who were the supposed beneficiaries," she says. "I believe in self-reliance."

Her own current foreign policy views seem not quite to match either party's talking points.

"I don't think we have an obligation to engage in a new imperialism," says Mrs. Kirkpatrick, who adds that she is "skeptical of nation-building. It is extremely difficult for one nation to seriously remake another nation."

She calls President Bush's foreign policy "a little too interventionist for my taste, frankly -- but not across the board. I am very much in favor of his actions in Afghanistan and have not opposed them in Iraq."...

If you want to read her 1984 speech, it can be found in the posting, Revisiting Jean Kirkpatrick's "Blame America First Democrats" Speech.