bobal:

I think it is possible to sympathize with what the Isolationists thought they were trying to accomplish while also seeing that they were wrong. It was necessary to defeat Hitler. I am pointing out how winning the war against him had a price, a price with deferred costs.

We are the good guys, but that is because our political system gives hope to those who want something other than tyranny in their lives. We have a political system where we can be proud of who we are instead of living under a tyranny where we are told how we can become a great nation. America’s greatness doesn’t come from Americans being supermen, but from our liberty to refuse to conform to the ideals of the superman.

One of the sad side effects of Phillippine independence is how the depredations of Japanese tyranny there didn’t soak into American consciousness. It was what happened elsewhere, to someone else; it wasn’t perceived as happening to some of us on American soil. It feels strange to read maps from the 1940′s portraying the Phillippines as American territory. I’m accustomed to thinking of that place as someplace else.