Question 4: Should the U.S. concern itself with "keeping the world safe for democracy"?
Read the documents below to help you develop your opinion on this essential question regarding the future of our world and the role of the United States in that world.
Submit your comments below. For each question, every student should:
- Write a comment using evidence to back up your opinion (either by referencing the document or referencing specific facts discussed in class or in your readings)
- Ask a question
- Respond to someone else's comment or question
Document 1: Woodrow Wilson, "War Message", 1914
The world must be made safe for democracy. Its peace must be planted upon the tested foundations of political liberty. We have no selfish ends to serve. We desire no conquest, no dominion. We seek no indemnities for ourselves, no material compensation for the sacrifices we shall freely make. We are but one of the champions of the rights of mankind. We shall be satisfied when those rights have been made as secure as the faith and the freedom of nations can make them.
Document 2: Woodrow Wilson, Message on the Treaty of Versailles, 1919
It was almost exactly twenty-one years ago that the results of the war with Spain put us unexpectedly in possession of rich islands on the other side of the world and brought us into association with other governments in the control of the West Indies. ... Weak peoples everywhere stand ready to give us any authority among them that will assure them a like friendly oversight and direction. They know that there is no ground for fear in receiving us as their mentors and guides. Our isolation was ended twenty years ago ... There can be no question of our ceasing to be a world power. The only question is whether we can refuse the moral leadership that is offered us, whether we shall accept or reject the confidence of the world.
The war and the Conference of Peace now sitting in Paris seem to me to have answered that question. ... It is thus that a new role and a new responsibility have come to this great nation that we honour and which we would all wish to lift to yet higher levels of service and achievement.
The stage is set, the destiny disclosed. It has come about by no plan of our conceiving, but by the hand of God who led us into this way. We cannot turn back. We can only go forward, with lifted eyes and freshened spirit, to follow the vision. It was of this that we dreamed at our birth. America shall in truth show the way. The light streams upon the path ahead, and nowhere else.
Document 3: Charles Lindbergh, September 1941
We are on the verge of war, but it is not yet too late to stay out. It is not too late to show that no amount of money, or propaganda, or patronage can force a free and independent people into war against its will. It is not yet too late to retrieve and to maintain the independent American destiny that our forefathers established in this new world. . . .
Document 4: Donald J. Trump, inaugural address
Under a Trump administration, no American citizen will ever again feel that their needs come second to the citizens of foreign countries. My foreign policy will always put the interests of the American people and American security first.
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