Interesting quote from Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow re imperialism, TR, etc.

[1932]

For at least a century, many people in the United States had believed it was their "manifest destiny" to dominate North America. Most cheered when, in 1898, they were told that this destiny was now global and entitled them to influence and dominate lands beyond their own shores. An outspoken band of idealists, however, denounced this change of national course as a mean-spirited betrayal of the American tradition. Among these protesters were university presidents, writers, several titans of industry including Andrew Carnegie, clergymen, labor leaders, and politicians of both parties, including former president Grover Cleveland. They condemned America's interventions abroad, especially the war against nationalist guerrillas in the Philippines, and urged Americans to allow other nations the right to self-determination that they themselves so deeply cherished. One of these critics, E.L. Godkin, the crusading editor of The Nation, lamented that by new standards, no one was considered a "true-blue American" who harbored "doubts of the ability of the United States to thrash other nations; or who fails to acknowledge the right of the United States to occupy such territories, canals, isthmuses or peninsulas as they may think to have, or who speaks disrespectfully of the Monroe Doctrine, or who doubts the need of a large navy, or who admires European society, or who likes to got to Europe, or who fails, in case he has to go, to make comparisons unfavorable to Europe."

This kind of talk drove expansionists to distraction. Theodore Roosevelt denounced Godkin as "a malignant and dishonest liar." The anti-imperialists as a group, he wrote in a letter to his friend {Henry Cabot} Lodge, were "futile sentimentalists of the international arbitration type" who exhibited "a flabby type of character which eats away at the great fighting features of our race." On another occasion he described them as "simply unhung traitors."

Like Mark Twain said, history may not repeat itself. But it does rhyme.

The book is Overthrow and the author is New York Times reporter Stephen Kinzer, who, IIRC, also wrote a book titled All The Shah's Men.

[Terran1212]

1. I definitely need to check it out