Dear World...America Speaking

Dear World,

This is America speaking. I know you are wondering about what is going on here. I know you are worried about the direction that I appear to be going. This is a message to reassure you that things will be ok.

You have ample reasons to be worried. I have been this direction before, just last century. The twentieth century saw two huge cataclysms that shook the very foundations of society. Peoples of the world had to start numbering our global wars, and there was ample evidence that the numbering might stop at three. Mankind was very fortunate not to end itself in a third global war.

And after both global wars, having waited to join the fighting, I appeared ready to return to my norm, isolationism. Our people have a long history of wanting to be left alone by the world. It started with our first president, George Washington, who warned of foreign entanglements. After World War I, Americans shrugged off our brief period of global involvement and turned within. Perhaps it was because Wilson, president at the time, shouldn't have spent six months in Paris at the peace conference. Perhaps it was because he didn't take any Republicans to Paris. Perhaps it was all the people he had alienated by 1919. For whatever reason, the Senate refused to join the League of Nations, and left the world stage.

After World War II we were quick to demobilize, just like after WW I. That vast armada of ships that had brought death and destruction to Europe and Japan was used to bring the boys (and not a few older men) home. Five million men and women in our Armed Forces rapidly dropped below one million. Most of the ships were mothballed. Almost all of the aircraft were recycled, or left for scrap at the hundreds of airbases that had been so rapidly created. The demobilization was so swift that raw recruits, fresh out of basic training, were sent to Germany and Japan for occupation duty. Americans had always hated occupation duty.

Many of you in the world had wondered if America would turn inward again. Those of you in Berlin wondered if the Soviet Union would take over. Those of you in South Korea wondered the same, although North Korea would be the Soviet's proxy. It took an airlift in Berlin and a "police action" in Korea to force our hand and to demonstrate that Americans would protect the freedoms that FDR and Churchill proclaimed through the Atlantic Charter.

After both of those World Wars, Americans became tired of fighting for freedom. It is a sad fact that many times the people on the ground no little of what they are fighting for. It took a real effort, and a movie series, to help the men and women fighting World War II understand the reasons they were fighting. That included the folks at home who were fighting by building the weapons of war and growing the food to feed the army and navy.

It's not often that Americans are united to that degree. America truly is a melting pot. That means that all manners of people will have all manners of opinions. We appear to oppose each other all the time. That hasn't changed. But there are some things we all agree on. The freedoms that were enumerated in the Atlantic Charter. The basic freedoms in our Bill of Rights. Americans become overbearing when we attempt to wish our freedoms on other peoples in other countries. We forget that many others do not have our basic freedoms.

And now we appear to have a president that wants to "Make America Great Again". Even many Americans, much less the rest of the world, wonder what that means. Great Again when? When we were truly united to fight the world wars? When we were the only superpower that had not been damaged by WW II, and could sell our goods to the rest of the Western World? When we lead the world in space by sending a man to the moon?

Just when were we great? And how were we great?