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Doug Keefe's avatar

Great as always. One small point that, as a fellow Canadian has no doubt occurred to you but does not seem to have dawned on anyone else; Canada is among the Nato delinquents and, even by our own government's estimates, will remain so for some years. So Mr. Trump has invited Russia to mass troops along the longest undefended border in the world. Perhaps it has escaped the notice of his supporters that the world is round not spherical.

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Ben Justesen's avatar

As a longtime admirer of the much-underrated William McKinley, i could not have stated his views on world trade cooperation any more succinctly than he did in his final speech— or as you have so ably recapped here—after being pulled by Congress into a war he did not want or approve of, but which he managed shrewdly and quickly. Becoming a world power meant, as he knew instinctively, that with it came real, imaginative responsibility for helping lead that world to a better state of affairs. Whether his viewpoint might have prevailed— some early prototype of the League of Nations, peaceful but flexible and proactive at heading off future wars through global prosperity— is probably unlikely, but at least he was willing to push for it. I think he would shudder to see what ridiculous nonsense his party seems so willing to embrace a century later, led by an unpredictable charlatan who could not think his way out of a wet paper bag— but talks loudly and laughably about his misunderstandings of where we have been and still need to go s a world power. Many thanks for this posting.

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