Turning Point: Moving Away from Isolationism

Hulton Archive / Getty

President Franklin Roosevelt

Twenty years ago the U. S. deliberately turned its back on a world made safe for Democracy, elected Ohio's Warren Gamaliel Harding President, sang How Ya Gonna Keep 'Em Down On the Farm and swore by the Founding Fathers: never again.

That oath, sworn in a memorv of sac rifice and bloodshed, gradually soured into a disgusted resolve. The Allies didn't pay their war debts, Uncle Sam became Uncle Shylock, the country heard that the holy crusade had been waged to make good J. P. Morgan's loans, that Our Buddies were the...

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