Isolationist Thought in America

THURSDAY, March 13, 2025

1:00 PM

THE OUTDOOR ART CLUB MEMBER HDL PROGRAM

Click to view Video on YouTube

Isolationist Thought in America
Mick Chantler, Historian, gives us perspective of history beginning with the first half of our 250 years when Americans generally avoided foreign adventures. When our Founding Fathers warned us against foreign entanglements, we listened. But then Washington succumbed to the siren song of imperialism or “expansionism.” We quickly gobbled up Hawaii, the Philippines, Guam, Puerto Rico, and Panama. The ghastly experience of World War I put the brakes on our endless military interventions overseas, and for a brief period we returned to our isolationist past. Pearl Harbor changed that impulse. But perhaps in the last 20 years or so, we’ve grown weary of what Donald Trump called “the endless war.” Many conservatives on the far right of the spectrum, are once again calling for disengagement, and tending to “America First.” Are they right? Would a second Trump administration take us out of N.A.T.O.? Is it even possible for America to bring home the troops? Can we quit playing “globo-cop?” These are the questions we will probe in this talk about our on-again-off-again romance with staying home.

Program Chair…..Barb Denson