Examples Of American Rationalism

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President Wilson, those in his administration and other Americans who believed in the supremacy of democracy might’ve thought it was the best form of government for others around the world simply because they were arrogant, in denial, believed heavily in the idea of American Exceptionalism and were idealists.

I don’t think that Wilson and those like him honestly thought that true democracy was a great idea for everyone mainly because the people who were advocating for it the hardest did not practice it at home. Wilson when urging for U.S. involvement in the war and even during his declaration of war against Germany asserts that the U.S. is fighting to save Europe from German aggression and militarism and to make the world safe for democracy, but how does one make the world safe for democracy to continue spreading when the U.S. isn’t even practicing the democracy it wants to see around the world? I think this contradiction is where Wilson and his supporters are in denial. It wasn’t simply …show more content…

Wilson, like any other ordinary American, was deeply patriotic so it was not that strange for him to believe that the way that his nation went about conducting itself on the world stage in comparison to other European nations that had had a history of fighting amongst themselves and attacking smaller or weaker nations in order to add them to their empires, would make it easier to convince those who had been under European control that American democracy was the best government for them after their new independence because the “people” would be the ones to rule and not a single family or party. It seems like besides creating more “democracies” in the world, this also would’ve strengthened the American economy as there would’ve been more capitalist -styled nations with a wide arrange of markets for the U.S. to trade

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