21 - “The New American Century”
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
People don't want to go to war. … But, after all, it's the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it's always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it's a democracy or a fascist dictatorship or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to great danger. It works the same way in any country.
Hermann GöringAllow the President to invade a neighboring nation, whenever he shall deem it necessary to repel an invasion … and you allow him to make war at pleasure. … [This would place] our President where kings have always stood.
Abraham LincolnThe sixty years of U.S. history treated in this book began with Henry Luce's hopeful reference to the twentieth century as “The American Century.” Writing in 1941, before America's entry into the Second World War but after Hitler's conquest of nearly all of continental Europe west of the Soviet Union, Luce made a plea for the United States to take on the leadership role that its industrial and cultural strengths made more or less obligatory. He noted especially the force of America's prestige and the spread abroad of many of America's cultural and scientific achievements as evidence of the readiness of much of the world to follow the United States.
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- America TransformedSixty Years of Revolutionary Change, 1941–2001, pp. 319 - 334Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006