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michaelflutist's avatar

You've just contradicted yourself. Supporting expansionism and conducting it on a huge scale is not isolationist. If we go back to Washington, what the U.S. was wary of was "entangling alliances" - not attacking countries and peoples on our own. That's not isolationism; it's unilateralism.

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James Trout's avatar

The British and American governments of the 19th century would have disagreed with that statement. Until the Entente Cordiale of 1904, the UK was considered to have practiced "splendid isolationism." And by American standards, not interfering with countries in the Americas but not Europe was "isolationism."

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michaelflutist's avatar

OK, they could misdefine "isolationism" as encompassing huge-scale aggression and imperialism, but why should we?

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James Trout's avatar

Because we did the same thing. We just had a different name for it: Manifest Destiny.

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michaelflutist's avatar

Right, which was imperialist expansionism. Isolationism is what was practiced by Japan for centuries, when they didn't invade any countries and kept foreigners out except under heavy restrictions in Nagasaki. Had the British done that, there would have been no British Empire throughout the world, and what's now the U.S. would have had a very different history.

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