America was not founded to be a tutelary power, patronizing and policing the world, going abroad in every generation seeking monsters to destroy.
It was founded to make a free and secure home for its people, and to be a friend to nations that shared its interests. Nothing more.
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Malcolm, did you ever read this 1990 essay by Jeanne Kirkpatrick, the prominent intellectual and UN ambassador during the Reagan administration? It’s quite astonishing how prescient she was, writing at the end of the Cold War. I especially appreciate her point of view because she was no mindless jingoistic isolationist of the more vulgar MAGA-type (she supported American involvement in the 1990s Bosnian War, for example), but simply a perceptive idealist/realist who recognizes there are limits to what we can and should do in the world.
https://davereaboi.com/jeane-kirkpatrick-a-normal-country-in-a-normal-time-1990/
I’ll look, Jason. Thanks.
Jeanne Kirkpatrick was a smart and practical woman, though as I recall she was still rather a bit more forward-leaning as far as universal democracy-promotion than where I’ve got to these days, (My models for American statesmanship, at this point, are George Washington and John Quincy Adams.)
But I’ll read the essay and see if I remember her position correctly.