American Intervention, Neoconserative Ideal or Amercian Ideal?

Here is an article by Robert Kagan, a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, who argues that the supposed "neoconservative" ideals that people so blindly quote are actually part of American history (in respect to military interventions, unilateral or otherwise). In other words, advancing "liberty" isn't a foreign concept. The article is rather long, yet very interesting.

To understand where the idea of promoting American principles by force comes from, it is not really necessary to parse the writings of Jewish émigrés. One could begin with less obscure writings, like the Republican Party’s campaign platform of 1900. In that long-forgotten document, the party leaders, setting the stage for what would be William McKinley’s crushing electoral victory over William Jennings Bryan, congratulated themselves and the country for their recently concluded war with Spain. It was, they declared, a war fought for “high purpose,” a “war for liberty and human rights” that had given “ten millions of the human race” a “new birth of freedom” and the American people “a new and noble responsibility . . . to confer the blessings of liberty and civilization upon all the rescued peoples.”

The past or the present?

I'm going to leave you with this JFK quote (which is partly quoted in the article) from his Inaugural Address in 1961.

Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe, in order to assure the survival and the success of liberty.

Would he get by saying that today?

Where I found this article:
The Weekly Standard blog