One cannot perpetually espouse and demand complete individual freedom without considering what everyone else is doing on the planet, including those major global countries that are military dictatorships, obnoxious and state-less religious terrorists, and other successful democratic republics that have taken different approaches to similar challenges. While there may be laudable philosophical ideas behind the original tenants of personal liberty, autonomy, and the pursuit of various self-interests, they cannot be perpetually pursued in a vacuum

Wow. I wouldn't say that individual liberties should be preserved in the absolute sense no matter what, but I'm fairly confident that our founders as well as the millions of people who've died to ensure our liberties would be turning over in their graves at the suggestion that we should take those principles so lightly and overturn them if it has become too costly for us or too inconvenient.

“How do we make the U.S. globally competitive and continue to be the pre-eminent influence in every field of global endeavor?”

A far better question would be: What can the US Government do to make it's citizen happier, healthier & wealthier? How can it improve the standard of living of it's current citizens without damaging the prospects of it's future citizens?

“How do we make the U.S. globally competitive and continue to be the pre-eminent influence in every field of global endeavor?”

What's with the nationalistically elitist half there? How about “What should our priorities be to best benefit our nation and world?'. Then we can pick the most important priorities for each level of government, fix the things that it should be doing and drop the things that it shouldn't be doing.

I'm pretty sure that you'll still get into some pretty heated discussions, but even fights have to be prioritized.

It depends on the question asked whether or not you can succeed.