Having followed the Founders' vision for the US in the world, the nation was completely unprepared for WWI -- no guns, ammo, troops, or anything. It took us months to get to a place where we had a credible Army, and we had no shipping to get them to the war, and no artillery to use once they got there.
Following the war, Americans attempted to revert to the Founders' vision once again. We disarmed and pulled back ... and the world became ugly once again. Not through our fault, necessarily, but we ignored what was happening. The one great thing FDR did, was to move in time ... to start the wheels of war moving before we were actually pulled into the war. But we still weren't ready when the war came, and it was a much closer-run thing the second time around.
We almost fell for it again, except that Mr. Truman did the one thing that really mattered, and acted to counter Soviet expansion in Europe. So much for the Founders' vision: real world events had rendered it moot.
What we learned, then, was that the Founders' vision worked fine when the nearest enemy was 2 months away by ship. It was a rather different world when the enemy was 30 minutes away by ballistic missile. Our presence in Europe made sense during the Cold War, and it even makes sense now, though for less pressing reasons. As it does in South Korea.
And now we're in a world the Founders could never have imagined: one where what happens in a place like the Middle East has profound effects on the US.
Mr. Paul does not inhabit reality. Instead, he apparently inhabits a world where everybody plays nice-nice, and nobody has nefarious aims. If the past century taught us nothing else, it taught us the utter stupidity of that assumption.
Thanks for pointing out what should be obvious.
Excellent post, I hadn’t thought about WWI in those terms and you make an excellent point. I think another technology they couldn’t have envisioned are the multiple forms of instant communication that is available to nearly the entire country.