The 5000 Year Leap: A Miracle That Changed the World
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A Duty to the Creator to Preserve Freedom and Unalienable Rights
Samuel Adams emphasized the moral responsibility of Americans to preserve the heritage of freedom and unalienable rights with which the Creator had endowed them. Once these blessings have been vouchsafed to a human being, Sam Adams felt it was a wicked and unnatural thing to allow those great fruits of liberty to languish by neglect or apathy. When individuals combine into a society, they bring all of their natural rights with them. Under no circumstances must these be allowed to dwindle away. Said he:
"It is the greatest absurdity to suppose it [would be] in the power of one, or any number of men, at the entering into society, to renounce their essential natural rights, or the means of preserving those rights; when the grand end of civil government, from the very nature of its institution, is for the support, protection, and defense of those very rights; the principal of which ... are life, liberty, and property. If men, through fear, fraud, or mistake, should in terms renounce or give up any essential natural right, the eternal law of reason and the grand end of society would absolutely vacate such renunciation. The right to freedom being the gift of God Almighty, it is not in the power of man to alienate this gift and voluntarily become a slave." 259
The American Inheritance
Thus the Founders passed on to their posterity a policy of peace through strength. They were peace-loving, but not pacifists. They called for a rugged kind of strength bolted to a broad base. They saw the foundation for their security in a bustling, prosperous economy with a high standard of public morality; and they saw the necessity for a level of preparedness which discouraged attack from potential enemies by creating a rate of risk so high that the waging of war against this nation would be an obviously unprofitable undertaking.
As Samuel Adams wrote to a sympathetic friend in England:
"It is the business of America to take care of herself; her situation, as you justly observe, depends upon her own virtue." 260
Twenty-Fifth Principle: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with
all nations -- entangling alliances with none."
"Friendship with all ... alliances with none." -- Thomas Jefferson
These are the words of Thomas Jefferson, given in his first inaugural address. 261
As the United States emerged on the world scene in the eighteenth century, American leaders took a united and fixed position against entangling alliances with any foreign powers unless an attack against the United States made such alliances temporarily necessary.
This was the Founders' doctrine of "separatism." This was far different from the modern term of "isolationism." The latter term implies a complete seclusion from other nations, as though the United States were to be detached and somehow incubated in isolation from other nations.
In point of fact, the policy of the Founders was just the opposite. They desired to cultivate a wholesome relationship with ALL nations, but they wished to remain aloof from sectional quarrels and international disputes. They wanted to avoid alliances of friendship with one nation which would make them enemies of another nation in a time of crisis. They wanted to keep American markets open to all countries unless certain countries engaged in hostilities toward the United States.
Switzerland Followed the Founders' Policy
Washington Describes the Founders' Plans
The Problem with "Playing Favorites"
Concerning Most-favored Nations
What American Foreign Policy Should Be
A World Policy
Commercial Relations with Other Nations
The Founders' Effort to Reconcile "Separatism" with Manifest Destiny
"Separatism" Replaced by "Internationalism"
Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh Counts American "Internationalism" a Serious Mistake
Visualizing America as a World Peacemaker
A New Role for America?
Switzerland Followed the Founders' Policy
The Founders' original policy was similar in many ways to that of modern Switzerland, which has successfully remained neutral and aloof from entangling alliances during two world wars and numerous European quarrels. During these periods of intense military action, Switzerland did not follow a policy of "isolationism," but one of universal diplomatic relations with all who might wish to come to Switzerland to buy, sell, borrow, or bank. She took a hostile posture toward none unless threatened. In general terms, this is analogous to the doctrine of "separatism" practiced by the early American leaders.
Washington Describes the Founders' Plans
The universality of foreign relations which Washington hoped to engender is reflected in the following statement from his famous Farewell Address:
"Observe good faith and justice toward all nations. Cultivate peace and harmony with all. Religion and morality enjoin this conduct; and can it be that good policy does not equally enjoin it? It will be worthy of a free, enlightened, and, at no distant period, a great nation to give to mankind the magnanimous and too novel example of a people always guided by an exalted justice and benevolence." 262
From experience Washington was well aware of the natural tendency to classify nations as "friends" or "enemies." He felt that in the absence of political, military, or commercial hostility toward the United States, every effort should be made to cultivate friendship with all. He wrote:
"In the execution of such a plan nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations and passionate attachments for others should be excluded, and that in place of them just and amicable feelings toward all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges toward another an habitual hatred or an habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest." 263
Washington pointed out that "antagonism by one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur." 264
The Problem with "Playing Favorites"
By the same token, the United States could become overly attached to some nations because the people feel a special kinship or affection toward them. Washington warned:
"So, likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others, which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions, by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill will, and disposition to retaliate in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld." 265
Concerning Most-favored Nations
Washington also warned that giving a more favored status to particular nations could open up the United States to strong foreign influences which could subvert the security or best interests of the United States. In fact, American officials seeking to accommodate friendly allies could inadvertently compromise American interests to a very dangerous extent. Washington said:
"Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence, I conjure you to believe me, fellow citizens, the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy, to be useful, must be impartial, else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the others. Real patriots, who may resist the intrigu
es of the favorite, are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people to surrender their interests." 266
What American Foreign Policy Should Be
Washington then made his famous declaration of the Founders' policy of foreign relations:
"The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop." 267
Even within the previous few years, Washington had seen the tendency to get the United States embroiled in European disputes, and he saw them operating to the distinct disadvantage of the United States. Therefore, he warned:
"Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.... Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interests, humor, or caprice?" 268
A World Policy
And what he had said concerning Europe he would say to the rest of the world:
"It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world. So far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it, for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements (I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs that honesty is always the best policy). I repeat it, therefore: let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them." 269
He said that "temporary alliances" may be justified for "extraordinary emergencies," but other than that, "harmony, liberal intercourse with all nations are recommended by policy, humanity, and interest." 270
Commercial Relations with Other Nations
Washington felt the same policy should apply to America's commercial relations with foreign countries:
"But even our commercial policy should hold an equal and impartial hand, neither seeking nor granting exclusive favors or preferences; consulting the natural course of things; diffusing and diversifying by gentle means the streams of commerce but forcing nothing; establishing with powers so disposed, in order to give to trade a stable course, to define the rights of our merchants, and to enable the government to support them, conventional rules of intercourse, the best that present circumstances and mutual opinion will permit, but temporary and liable to be from time to time abandoned or varied, as experience and circumstances shall dictate." 271
Washington was not in favor of the United States government begging for special privileges, monopolies, or advantages from other nations in commercial treaties. He said:
"It is folly in one nation to look for disinterested favors from another; that it must pay with a portion of its independence for whatever it may accept under that character; that, by such acceptance, it may place itself in the condition of having given equivalents for nominal favors and yet of being reproached with ingratitude for not giving more. There can be no greater error than to expect, or calculate, upon real favors from nation to nation. It is an illusion which experience must cure, which a just pride ought to discard." 272
Long after Washington was dead, Jefferson reiterated these same basic principles in a letter to James Monroe dated October 24, 1823:
"Our first and fundamental maxim should be, never to entangle ourselves in the broils of Europe. Our second, never to suffer Europe to intermeddle with cis-Atlantic [western hemisphere] affairs. America, north and south, has a set of interests distinct from those of Europe, and peculiarly her own. She should therefore have a system of her own, separate and apart from that of Europe. While the last [Europe] is laboring to become the domicile of despotism, our endeavors should surely be to make our hemisphere that of freedom." 273
The Founders' Effort to Reconcile "Separatism" with Manifest Destiny
American separatism did have one aspect which was clearly distinct from Swiss neutrality: the Founders accepted the doctrine of "Manifest Destiny." This placed upon the American people the responsibility of serving as the vanguard nation for the moral and political emancipation of all mankind. Freedom, education, and progress for all men were a common denominator in the thinking of early American leaders. As John Adams wrote:
"I always consider the settlement of America with reverence and wonder, as the opening of a grand scene and design in Providence for the illumination of the ignorant, and the emancipation of the slavish part of mankind all over the earth." 274
In the same spirit, James Madison wrote: "Happily for America, happily we trust for the whole human race, they [the Founders] pursued a new and more noble course." 275
The Monroe Doctrine was specifically designed to insulate the western hemisphere from further contamination by quarreling European monarchs. The Founders hoped Mexico and each of the Latin American countries would gradually follow the example of the United States in becoming free, self-governing people. Once the spirit of freedom had encompassed North, Central, and South America, they hoped it would do just as James Madison said -- spread abroad until it had become the heritage of "the whole human race."
"Separatism" Replaced by "Internationalism"
"Separatism," and pursuing a "manifest destiny" to encourage the emancipation of "the whole human race," was the official policy of the United States for the first 125 years of its history.
Nevertheless, there were powerful influences congregating in the United States, particularly in financial circles, which wanted America in the thick of things, world-wide. Their opportunity came with the eruption of World War I. Congressional investigations by the Reece Committee revealed that long before the Lusitania sinking, these influences were agitating for U.S. involvement. 276
Although the United States narrowly avoided becoming a member of the League of Nations after World War I, the stage was set for an accelerated involvement of the United States, both economically and politically, in foreign quarrels.
Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh Counts American
"Internationalism" a Serious Mistake
After World War I, Congressman Charles A. Lindbergh, Sr., father of the famous "Lone Eagle" who was the first to fly the Atlantic, asked the people of the United States to reconsider the policy Washington was pursuing in its foreign affairs. He was particularly concerned about how Americans were pushed into World War I. In 1923 he wrote:
"Take for example our entry into the World War [in 1917]. We did not think. We elected a president for a second term because he said he 'kept us out of war' in his first term. We proved by a large vote that we did not want to go to war, but no sooner was the president re-elected than the propaganda started to put us to war. Then we became hysterical, as people always have done in war, and we believed everything bad against our enemy and believed only good of our allies and ourselves. As a matter of fact all the leaders were bad, vicious. They lost their reason and the people followed....
"We cannot properly blame the people of any of the European nations, unless we blame ourselves. None of them were free from danger of the others.... We, however, were not in danger, statements by profiteers and militarists to the contrary notwithstanding.... The greatest good we could do the world at that time was to stay out, and that would have been infinitely better for ourselves, for we could have helped the world had we conserved our resources.
"There never was a nation that did a more un-statesmanlike thing than we did to enter the war. We came out without establishing a single principle for which we entered....
"The one compelling duty of America is to put its own house in shape, and to stand upon an economic system that will ma
ke its natural resources available to the intelligence, industry and use of the people. When we do that the way to world redemption from the folly of present chaos will stand out in our country so clearly, honestly and usefully that we shall be copied wherever peoples do their own thinking. 277
Visualizing America as a World Peacemaker
As World War II broke out in Europe during September 1939, there was widespread hope among Americans that the United States could somehow resist the temptation to become involved. Highly perceptive leaders who had served in Washington and knew the tragic consequences of "internationalism" as a basic foreign policy raised warning voices against participation in another world war. One of these was a former Under-Secretary of State and former ambassador to Mexico. As a prominent writer on Constitutional issues, he consistently reflected the views of the Founders. In 1939 he gave a speech urging American leaders to recognize the role of America as a great world peacemaker. Said he:
"America, multi-raced and multi-nationed, is by tradition, by geography, by citizenry, by natural sympathy, and by material interest, the great neutral nation of the earth. God so designed it. Drawn from all races, creeds, and nations, our sympathies run to every oppressed people. Our feelings engaged on opposite sides of great differences, will in their natural course, if held in due and proper restraint, neutralize the one [with] the other. Directed in right channels, this great body of feeling for the one side or the other will ripen into sympathy and love for all misguided and misled fellowmen who suffer in any cause, and this sympathy and love will run out to all humanity in its woe....