Most of this, of course, qualifies as overheated malarkey. As a characterization of U.S. policy at any time in memory, isolationism is a fiction. Never really a tendency, it qualifies at most as a moment, referring to that period in the 1930s when large numbers of Americans balked at the prospect of entering another European war, the previous one having fallen well short of its "War To End All Wars" advance billing.
In fact, from the day of its founding down to the present, the United States has never turned its back on the world. Isolationism owes its storied history to its value as a rhetorical device, deployed to discredit anyone opposing an action or commitment (usually involving military forces) that others happen to favor. If I, a grandson of Lithuanian immigrants, favor deploying U.S. forces to Lithuania to keep that NATO ally out of Vladimir Putin's clutches and you oppose that proposition, then you, sir or madam, are an "isolationist." Presumably, Jennifer Rubin will see things my way and lend her support to shoring up Lithuania's vulnerable frontiers.
For this very reason, the term isolationism is not likely to disappear from American political discourse anytime soon. It's too useful. Indeed, employ this verbal cudgel to castigate your opponents and your chances of gaining entrà ©e to the nation's most prestigious publications improve appreciably. Warn about the revival of isolationism and your prospects of making the grade as a pundit or candidate for high office suddenly brighten. This is the great thing about using isolationists as punching bags: it makes actual thought unnecessary. All that's required to posture as a font of wisdom is the brainless recycling of clichà ©s, half-truths, and bromides.
No publication is more likely to welcome those clichà ©s, half-truths, and bromides than the New York Times. There, isolationism always looms remarkably large and is just around the corner.
In July 1942, the New York Times Magazine opened its pages to Vice President Henry A. Wallace, who sounded the alarm about the looming threat of what he styled a "new isolationism." This was in the midst of World War II, mind you.
After the previous world war, the vice president wrote, the United States had turned inward. As summer follows spring, "the choice led up to this present war." Repeat the error, Wallace warned, and "the price will be more terrible and will be paid much sooner." The world was changing and it was long past time for Americans to get with the program. "The airplane, the radio, and modern technology have bound the planet so closely together that what happens anywhere on the planet has a direct effect everywhere else." In a world that had "suddenly become so small," he continued, "we cannot afford to resume the role of hermit."
The implications for policy were self-evident:
"This time, then, we have only one real choice. We must play a responsible part in the world -- leading the way in world progress, fostering a healthy world trade, helping to protect the world's peace."
One month later, it was Archibald MacLeish's turn. On August 16, 1942, the Times magazine published a long essay of his under the title of -- wouldn't you know it -- "The New Isolationism." For readers in need of coaching, Times editors inserted this seal of approval before the text: "There is great pertinence in the following article."
A well-known poet, playwright, and literary gadfly, MacLeish was at the time serving as Librarian of Congress. From this bully pulpit, he offered the reassuring news that "isolationism in America is dead." Unfortunately, like zombies, "old isolationists never really die: they merely dig in their toes in a new position. And the new position, whatever name is given it, is isolation still."
Fortunately, the American people were having none of it. They had "recaptured the current of history and they propose to move with it; they don't mean to be denied." MacLeish's fellow citizens knew what he knew: "that there is a stirring in our world", a forward thrusting and overflowing human hope of the human will which must be given a channel or it will dig a channel itself." In effect, MacLeish was daring the isolationists, in whatever guise, to stand in the way of this forward thrusting and overflowing hopefulness. Presumably, they would either drown or be crushed.
The end of World War II found the United States donning the mantle of global leadership, much as Wallace, MacLeish, and the Times had counseled. World peace did not ensue. Instead, a host of problems continued to afflict the planet, with isolationists time and again fingered as the culprits impeding their solution.
The Gift That Never Stops Giving
In June 1948, with a notable absence of creativity in drafting headlines, the Times once again found evidence of "the new isolationism." In an unsigned editorial, the paper charged that an American penchant for hermit-like behavior was "asserting itself again in a manner that is both distressing and baffling." With the Cold War fully joined and U.S. forces occupying Germany, Japan, and other countries, the Times worried that some Republicans in Congress appeared reluctant to fund the Marshall Plan.
From their offices in Manhattan, members of the Times editorial board detected in some quarters "a homesickness for the old days." It was incumbent upon Americans to understand that "the time is past when we could protect ourselves easily behind our barriers behind the seas." History was summoning the United States to lead the world: "The very success of our democracy has now imposed duties upon us which we must fulfill if that democracy is to survive." Those entertaining contrary views, the Times huffed, "do not speak for the American people."
That very month, Josef Stalin announced that the Soviet Union was blockading Berlin. The U.S. responded not by heading for the exits but by initiating a dramatic airlift. Oh, and Congress fully funded the Marshall Plan.
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