WJB: William Jennings Bryan Against The Empire

It was almost the force of William Jennings Bryan alone that formed the views and the will of the Democratic Party to resist the imperialist expansion into the Philippines after 1898, an area where either the USA, the Philippine government, or a combination of the two have been fighting insurgency in the southern area centered on Mindinao now for 100 years!

Let it settle in. One hundred years. The insurgents have mostly been Muslim in the south.Get your minds around that when you think of Iraq and Afghanistan, if you think wars and battles cannot go on forever!

William Jennings Bryan almost single-handedly formed the anti-Imperialist opinion of this country in the period following the War with Spain in 1898:

What is our title to the Philippine Islands? Do we hold them by treaty or by conquest? Did we buy them or did we take them? Did we purchase the people? If not, how did we secure title to them? Were they thrown in with the land? Will the Republicans say that inanimate earth has value but that when that earth is molded by the Divine Hand and stamped with the likeness of the Creator it becomes a fixture and passes with the soil? If governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, it is impossible to secure title to people, either by force or by purchase..

The principal arguments, however, advanced by those who enter upon a defense of imperialism are:
First, that we must improve the present opportunity to become a world power and enter into international politics.
Second, that our commercial interests in the Philippine Islands and in the Orient make it necessary for us to hold the islands permanently.
Third, that the spread of the Christian religion will be facilitated by a colonial policy.
Fourth, that there is no honorable retreat from the position which the nation has taken.
The first argument is addressed to the nation's pride and the second to the nation's pocketbook. The third is intended for the church member and the fourth for the partisan..

[rebuttal point 1] It is sufficient answer to the first argument to say that for more than a century this nation has been a world power. For ten decades it has been the most potent influence in the world. Not only has it been a world power but it has done more to affect the policies of the human race than all the other nations of the world combined...

[rebuttal point 2]  The permanent chairman of the last Republican National Convention presented the pecuniary argument in all its baldness when he said:
We make no hypocritical pretense of being interested in the Philippines solely on account of others. While we regard the welfare of those people as a sacred trust, we regard the welfare of the American people first. We see our duty to ourselves as well as to others. We believe in trade expansion...  I place the philosophy of Franklin against the sordid doctrine of those who would put a price upon the head of an American soldier and justify a war of conquest upon the ground that it will pay. The Democratic Party is in favor of the expansion of trade. It would extend our trade by every legitimate and peaceful means; but it is not willing to make merchandise of human blood...

 Farmers and laboring men have, as a rule, small incomes, and, under systems which place the tax upon consumption, pay much more than their fair share of the expenses of government. Thus the very people who receive least benefit from imperialism will be injured most by the military burdens which accompany it. In addition to the evils which he and the former share in common, the laboring man will be the first to suffer if Oriental subjects seek work in the United States; the first to suffer if American capital leaves our shores to employ Oriental labor in the Philippines to supply the trade of China and Japan; the first to suffer from the violence which the military spirit arouses, and the first to suffer when the methods of imperialism are applied to our own government. It is not strange, therefore, that the labor organizations have been quick to note the approach of these dangers and prompt to protest against both militarism and imperialism.

[rebuttal point 3]  The religious argument varies in positiveness from a passive belief that Providence delivered the Filipinos into our hands for their good and our glory to the exultation of the minister who said that we ought to "thrash the natives (Filipinos) until they understand who we are," and that "every bullet sent, every cannon shot, and every flag waved means righteousness."...

We cannot approve of this doctrine in one place unless we are willing to apply, it everywhere. If there is poison in the blood of the hand, it will ultimately reach the heart. It is equally true that forcible Christianity, if planted under the American flag in the far-away Orient, will sooner or later be transplanted upon American soil. . . .

[rebuttal point 4] The argument made by some that it was unfortunate for the nation that it had anything to do with the Philippine Islands, but that the naval victory at Manila made the permanent acquisition of those islands necessary, is also unsound. We won a naval victory at Santiago, but that did not compel us to hold Cuba.
The shedding of American blood in the Philippine Islands does not make it imperative that we should retain possession forever; American blood was shed at San Juan Hill and El Caney, and yet the President has promised the Cubans independence. The fact that the American flag floats over Manila does not compel us to exercise perpetual sovereignty over the islands; the American flag waves over Havana today, but the President has promised to haul it down when the flag of the Cuban republic is ready to rise in its place. Better a thousand times that our flag in the Orient give way to a flag representing the idea of self-government than that the flag of this republic should become the flag of an empire..

Source: Official Proceedings of the Democratic National Convention Held in Kansas City, Mo., July 4, 5 and 6, 1900, Chicago, 1900, pp. 205-227.
WILLIAM JENNINGS BRYAN : The Paralyzing Influence of Imperialism
http://www.mtholyoke.edu/acad/intrel/bryan.htm

In a day when we have become used to the partisan rants of Limbaugh, the cute and homely stupidity of Palin, and the possibly insane ravings of Beck, William Jennings Bryan is a source of reason, patriotism, and hope: a patriotism that hearkens back to the early days, to the values of the Founders and the people who labored to make this country a good place.

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notes

[rebuttal point 2]  underlined section.   Notice that Globalization in its original form was as an accessory to Imperialism.

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Other william jennings bryan posts

http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2011/01/wjb.html

http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2011/03/wjb-h-l-menckens-diatribe-on-bryans.html