The United State’s practiced its long-standing policy to stay out foreign disputes and affairs until World War II. Wendall Willkie’s One World reflects the shift in American support from “isolationism” to “internationalism” as well as their new role as a global leader during the early 1940’s. The book, like internationalists, opposed intolerance and oppression and, in turn, valued cooperation among and within the nations. It highlights contradictory American efforts of becoming a democratic world power, while remaining an internally racially intolerant nation. Willkie also recalls earlier tragedies catalyzed by notions of racial supremacy.
Never before did the Unites States have a greater desire to cooperate with other nations and to assume a position of global leadership, than after the second world war. The war gave America an opportunity to be at the forefront of creating this “one world” raised on independence and freedom. While domestic concerns were quickly evolving into international interests, the United States soon learned of the incompatibility of the later with its past and (at …show more content…
The mocking contradiction of advocating liberty and opportunity for all nations became so obvious that turning the other check was no longer an option. Where was the democracy at home? If the United States wanted to continue talking about tolerance and equality, it had to start promoting these same freedoms within its own frontiers in the same manner as it was being promoted on the outside. Freedom and opportunity were still being denied to those not considered “authentically” American. And freedom of speech and the pursuit of the life promised by the constitution was bestowed upon only a privileged few. And those to whom these birthrights were not extend to remained second-class citizens without access to the “American standard of
Never before did the Unites States have a greater desire to cooperate with other nations and to assume a position of global leadership, than after the second world war. The war gave America an opportunity to be at the forefront of creating this “one world” raised on independence and freedom. While domestic concerns were quickly evolving into international interests, the United States soon learned of the incompatibility of the later with its past and (at …show more content…
The mocking contradiction of advocating liberty and opportunity for all nations became so obvious that turning the other check was no longer an option. Where was the democracy at home? If the United States wanted to continue talking about tolerance and equality, it had to start promoting these same freedoms within its own frontiers in the same manner as it was being promoted on the outside. Freedom and opportunity were still being denied to those not considered “authentically” American. And freedom of speech and the pursuit of the life promised by the constitution was bestowed upon only a privileged few. And those to whom these birthrights were not extend to remained second-class citizens without access to the “American standard of