American ideas in governing have been dominating the world for nearly 250 years.
The Declaration of Independence was the first truly revolutionary document, its ideals a model for democracies ever since.
But other American governing inventions aren’t worth celebrating. Our genocide of the American Indian became a model for dictators worldwide. Our Constitution was designed to enshrine slavery. The idea of eugenics, that certain people were genetically inferior and deserved to be eliminated, became Hitler’s model for the Holocaust.
A later invention is now threatening to undo all the work of the Declaration. That’s the Monroe Doctrine.
On its face, the doctrine written by John Quincy Adams and pronounced by James Monroe is nothing but beneficial. It proclaimed that Europe should keep its hands off the Americas. But it didn’t promise that this country would keep its hands off.
Since the doctrine was first promulgated, in 1823, the United States has treated the rest of the hemisphere as its empire. We invaded Mexican, seizing the larger half of it. We created Panama to build the canal there. We acquired Puerto Rico in a war and still hold it.
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