The First World War would not be the first war when the United States would say it was fighting for democracy — the Civil War and Spanish-American War were both fought, in a sense, under the same pretenses — but it would be the first global conflict in which the United States took the lead and sought to reshape the governments of the planet in her own image.
The two primary source selections for this week offer perspectives on the war, and on American idealism, that were not often heard. How powerful do you find these perspectives given the current discussions in the United States surrounding “patriotism” and “loyalty”?
How do Goldman and DuBois speak to us today, even as the United States has become the most powerful nation, militarily, on the planet, but one in which many of the inequities of the World War I era still exist?
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