Fulbright: 1966

That's when he wrote "The Arrogance of Power". Forty-four years later Fulbright is being quoted in a book I'm reading, "Washington Rules" by Andrew Bacevich. Here are some thoughts Fulbright had in the 20th century:

• "What I do question is the ability of the United States... to go into a small, alien, undeveloped Asian nation and create stability where there is chaos, the will to fight where there is defeatism, democracy where there is no tradition of it, and honest government where corruption is almost a way of life." 
• "I think the world has endured about all it can of the crusades of high-minded men bent on the regeneration of the human race."
• "Maybe we are not really cut out for the job of spreading the gospel of democracy. Maybe it would profit us to concentrate on our own democracy instead of trying to inflict our own particular version of it" on others.
• "If America has a service to perform in the world, it is in large part the service of her own example."
• "A nation immersed in foreign affairs is expending its capital, human as well as material."
• It is "unnatural and unhealthy for a nation to be engaged in global crusades for some principle or ideal while neglecting the needs of its own people."
• "Bellicosity is a mark of weakness and self-doubt rather than of strength and self-assurance."

Do these thoughts have any relevancy in the early years of the 21st century?