Twilight of the Republics?

An American president fails to learn from history as a Houthi army working for Iran closes a major artery of global commerce, including that of Americans.

Via Wikimedia Commons
Leon Alaric Shafer: 'Invest in the Victory Liberty Loan,' a World War I-era poster, detail. Via Wikimedia Commons

‘America lives in a world of her own . . . safe from attack, safe even from menace, she hears from afar the warning cries of European races and faiths, as the gods of Epicurus listened to the murmurs of the unhappy earth beneath their golden dwellings . . .’ —James Bryce, ‘The American Commonwealth,’ 1888

These words, penned by Victoria’s ambassador to Washington, are quoted in Robert Kagan’s history of the failures of American isolationism in the early 20th century, “The Ghost at the Feast.” Someone ought to send the book to President Biden, who is losing the Battle of the Red Sea. Mr. Kagan writes how foreign perils troubled the tranquility traced by Bryce, as a feckless Democratic president failed to confront our enemy’s threat to American ships.

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