{"id":95680,"date":"2016-05-11T12:11:18","date_gmt":"2016-05-11T20:11:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=95680"},"modified":"2016-05-11T12:11:18","modified_gmt":"2016-05-11T20:11:18","slug":"why-george-washington-would-have-agreed-with-donald-trump","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=95680","title":{"rendered":"Why George Washington Would Have Agreed With Donald Trump"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michael Hirsch writes for Politico<\/a>: For all the lamentation about the level of rhetoric in this Trumped-up election year, the race between Donald Trump and all-but-certain Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is already shaping up to be a debate over America\u2019s global role of the kind we haven\u2019t had for decades, perhaps since the last \u201cAmerica First\u201d movement of the late \u201830s. And it is a debate that some foreign-policy experts suggest is long overdue, even if it tends to distress U.S. allies around the world. (“The unthinkable has come to pass,” Germany\u2019s Die Welt wrote after Trump became the presumptive GOP nominee this week.)
\nIt is also a debate that, were they still around to witness it, a majority of past U.S. presidents going back to George Washington would probably welcome\u2014and most of them, believe it or not, might well take Trump\u2019s side.
\nIn his big foreign-policy rollout speech last week, Trump declared it was time \u201cto shake the rust off of America\u2019s foreign policy\u201d and drop American pretensions about remaking the world in our image any longer. Or as he put it, in an obvious reference to the failed invasion of Iraq and intervention in Libya, America should abandon the \u201cdangerous idea that we could make Western democracies out of countries that had no experience or interest in becoming a Western democracy.\u201d Brazenly calling his agenda \u201cAmerica First\u201d\u2014never mind that was the name of the notorious pre-World War II isolationist movement\u2014he also directly challenged the 70 years of bipartisan consensus over the post-World War II global order that America created. He suggested that the world needs America far more than the other way around, and he effectively warned U.S. allies that without a new global deal that demands a kind of tribute paid to Washington for its defense umbrella\u2014he wants them to \u201cprove\u201d they are our friends, he says\u2014he\u2019d walk away from the world\u2019s trade table, so to speak.
\n\u201cWe will no longer surrender this country or its people to the false song of globalism,\u201d Trump said. \u201cThe nation-state remains the true foundation for happiness and harmony. I am skeptical of international unions that tie us up and bring America down.\u201d
\nPredictably, Trump\u2019s views have outraged commentators who lament the allusions to the prewar, anti-Semitism-laced isolationism of Charles Lindbergh and other members of the America First movement. His statements have also invited mockery from allies of Clinton, who as a pro-interventionist former secretary of state sees Trump\u2019s turn away from the world as a naive and dangerous anachronism. Madeleine Albright, a mentor to Hillary on foreign policy and, as a refugee from Nazi Germany, a lifelong and passionate advocate of the idea that America is the \u201cindispensable nation\u201d in overseeing global order, accused Trump of historical illiteracy. \u201cMaybe he never read history or he doesn\u2019t understand it,\u201d former Secretary of State Albright told reporters in a conference call organized by Clinton\u2019s campaign…<\/p>\n

So Trump may be an \u201cid with hair,\u201d as Hillary Clinton calls him, but at least when it comes to his foreign policy views, he\u2019s an all-American id. His \u201cAmerica First\u201d campaign theme has far deeper roots in the history of this country than most pundits are acknowledging. Indeed, Trump shouldn\u2019t be dismissed as a mere apostate in his view of America\u2019s role in the world; against the backdrop of all 239 years of America\u2019s existence, he represents more a reversion to the American norm. Trump, in condemning one of the worst instances of American overreach in U.S. history, the Iraq invasion, declared in his speech: \u201cThe world must know we do not go abroad in search of enemies.\u201d The line was an allusion to the famous injunction of John Quincy Adams in 1821 that America “does not go in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.\u201d Adams went on to warn, somewhat presciently, America should know that \u201conce enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michael Hirsch writes for Politico: For all the lamentation about the level of rhetoric in this Trumped-up election year, the race between Donald Trump and all-but-certain Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton is already shaping up to be a debate over America\u2019s … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21791],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-95680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-america"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=95680"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95680\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95681,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95680\/revisions\/95681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=95680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=95680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=95680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}