Henry Wallace The Century Of The Common Man Analysis

War has been a significant cause for debate among American intellectuals for the past century, with World War Two and the Vietnam War in particular leading to divisions based on whether America was right to become involved in certain wars and if it had a positive impact on the nation. Henry Luce coined the term “The American Century” in his essay of the same name, which articulated that the 20th century was a time when America had an obligation to the world to spread democracy and take its place as a world power, with the entrance of America into WWII allowing this to materialise. Henry Wallace however, wrote “The Century of the Common Man” in response to Luce’s essay and while he agreed with Luce in believing that it was America’s duty to …show more content…
Wallace references how changing to an internationalist approach is the United States’ way to finally become of age as a nation, while isolationism is “short pants for a grown-up United States” and holding America back from achieving its full potential. The influence of religion is also shown in Wallace’s petition for America to join WWII, as he talks of how the freedom that the country enjoys is “derived from the Bible with its extraordinary emphasis on the dignity of the individual”. This shows how like Luce, he believes bringing democracy to the world is an American duty and therefore they need to participate in the war, as it is a right for all to have liberty and freedom; something which Nazism in Europe was taking away from …show more content…
Many intellectuals and Americans saw the Vietnam War as damaging to American society and, unlike WWII, lead to people questioning America’s role in the world and whether the country had any right to intervene. Noam Chomsky in his 1969 book American Power and the New Mandarins directly negates the idea of American intervention. Chomsky links the Civil Rights struggle in America with the Vietnamese people in the statement “racism and exploitation at home can be linked with the struggle to remove the heavy Yankee boot from the necks of oppressed people throughout the world”. Whereas intellectuals during WWII encouraged United States to join a war, the vivid imagery of “heavy Yankee boot” and “necks of oppressed people” when concerning the Vietnam War shows how American influence in other parts of the world was now resented by not only people from these oppressed countries, but by Americans themselves. As well as this, the use of this statement implies the United States as forcing people to comply with American input, rather than it being welcomed as seen in WWII, while also addressing the suffering of African American’s in America’s own nation. Historians M. Isserman and M. Kazin argue that the war “proved to be the most