Against the Beast

John Nichols
December 2004     ISBN: 1560255137

"Our form of government, our traditions, our present interests and our future welfare, all forbid our entering upon a career of conquest," argued William Jennings Bryan, Colin Powell's predecessor as America's Secretary of State. Bryan, like Mark Twain, Edgar Lee Masters, William James, John Dewey, Jane Addams and Samuel Gompers proudly identified themselves in the first part of the last century as battlers against what was frequently referred to as "the beast" of imperialism. "I am an anti-imperialist," Twain declared. "I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land."

The American anti-imperialist tradition dates back to before the founding of the Declaration of Independence. Presidents Washington and Jefferson warned against imperialism in their farewell addresses to the country, John Quincy Adams collapsed on the floor of the House of Representatives after delivering an impassioned condemnation of American expansionism, Abraham Lincoln led the fight in Congress against wars of conquest, Henry David Thoreau spent his celebrated night in jail as part of a protest against an imperialist war, Frederick Douglass Jr. and Dr. W.E.B. Du Bois wrote extensively on expansionism, J. William Fulbright said when he served as chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee: "The price of empire is America's soul, and that price is too high."

As the Bush Administration seeks to spread the eagle's talons further than ever before, more and more American are asking whether the beast of imperialism threatens to destroy not just distant lands but the United States itself.

John Nichols is The Nation's Washington correspondent. He is the author of Jews for Buchanan and co-author of It's the Media, Stupid. Formerly a writer and editor for the Toledo Blade and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, he is now editorial page editor for The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin. His writing has appeared in The Progressive, the New York Times, the Chicago Tribune and dozens of other publications.