America “goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy.” (John Quincy Adams)
It was long a family tradition to read the Declaration of Independence at breakfast on July 4. We found that an appropriate way to start the day of celebration, parades and fireworks. This year I decided instead to read just one long paragraph from a speech delivered nearly two centuries ago: the famous speech John Quincy Adams delivered to the House of Representatives on July 4, 1821. One sentence in it, quoted above, is well known, but one needs to read the whole paragraph to grasp its rationale. Here it is:
And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the older world, the first observers of mutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to inquire, what has America done for the benefit of mankind? let our answer be this–America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity. She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, equal justice, and equal rights. She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations, while asserting and maintaining her own. She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when the conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart. She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama, the European World, will be contests between inveterate power, and emerging right. Wherever the standard of freedom and independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be. But she goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all. She is the champion and vindicator only of her own. She will recommend the general cause, by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example. She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom. The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force. The frontlet upon her brows would no longer beam with the ineffable splendor of freedom and independence; but in its stead would soon be substituted an imperial diadem, flashing in false and tarnished lustre the murky radiance of dominion and power. She might become the dictatress of the world: she would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit.
This year, I could not resist reading it twice. Couched in the flowery oratorical language of yesteryear one has the essence of a policy that is both realistic in terms of America’s place in the world, and idealistic in terms of what America should mean to itself and others. Can anyone devise a sentence that better warns against the foreign policy of our last three presidents than this one?
She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself, beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom
Having ignored this advice, we have not only failed to be “the dictatress of the world” but have lost much of the sprit on which our nation was founded. It is time we start finding our way back. Others are not to blame for our political disarray; we are, and only we can mend it.
