I wrote the item below for the 2018 mid-term elections, under the title ‘100 Years Since America’s Arrival on the World Stage.’ It suggested we Americans would be wise to follow and protect ideals evoked in 1918 when Europeans, in shock from the Great War they had just endured, aspired to our form of self-rule. It seemed urgent then to point out how that centennial of America’s first global influence was coinciding with elections whose outcome might have irretrievably harmed our democracy.

That seems only more crucial as the 2026 mid-terms approach, so I re-post it now. Since 2018, we have seen the reckless passion of countrymen who care about law and order only as long as such protect dominance they presume to be theirs by right. And who feel cheated if it is not forthcoming.

Worse, the primal horror of the then-President at being a ‘loser’ led him to foment insurrection instead of accepting the outcome of the 2020 election, prioritizing the rule of law and they peace of the Republic. By contrast, in 2000, Al Gore had far more reason to believe he had really won, though the Supreme Court decided that year’s election against him. But bitter as it must have been, Gore put the national interest before his ego; as any mature Patriot must.

As you vote, please bear in mind what the current President has already shown what he is willing to do rather than accept being legitimately defeated. If we are serious about remaining above the ‘Might makes Right’ brutality of many unhappy lands, we will use our deeds and votes to protect the principles of orderly, rational self-government.

We have long – and unwisely – taken those for granted, so this time, may have to defend the results from attack by those who could not gain ‘the consent of the governed.’

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100 Years since America’s Arrival on the World Stage:

By November 1918, after four years of unimaginable violence in The Great War (now known as World War I), much of Europe had been bled white, wrecked, bankrupted and entire societies were disintegrating. Exhausted and gripped by despair, Europeans looked to America – the vigorous, visionary “New World” that had joined the War on the side of the western Allies in mid-1917 – to save the Old World. This image shows U.S. President Woodrow Wilson receiving a rapturous greeting in Paris’ Place de la Concorde from a French public that regarded him as a Savior, after he had come to Europe to help negotiate the Treaty of Versailles.

President Wilson had said his country’s mission in sending its young men to prevent the defeat of France and Britain by militarist Imperial Germany was that “the world be made safe for Democracy.” American arms were crucial to the Allies’ eventual triumph, forcing the Germans to cease fighting by the Armistice of November 11, 1918.

(An unapologetic racist whose concern for equality and personal liberty was only for Caucasians, Wilson is less revered in our era. But ideals are often more inspiring than coarse reality, and the ones he promoted might help pull us all beyond his backward, disappointing underlying attitudes: A fitting irony.)

It was arguably the first time America had ever commanded the global stage, having been summoned to rescue Europe from the calamity of miscalculations by its traditional rulers. And even more than U.S. military help, many dazed, desperate Europeans (from both sides of the war) hoped for an advent of American-style governance: That ordinary people might be able to lead themselves better than those ‘traditional rulers’ ever could, with wisdom, justice and decency.

So this November, 2018, Americans should proudly recall the optimism that our great experiment in freedom offered 100 years ago to a continent prostrate with catastrophe. And we can show again, in deeds, the same luminous promise our nation once represented for humanity by acting consistent with our hopes of what we might build together, rather than have our passions, resentments and fears exploited by those who would control us (from the shadows) for reasons of their own.

Please reflect on this precious mission – Democracy made safe, again, by Americans – if you vote this November, 2018. You may help to reinvigorate the ideals for which the world once looked so urgently to us.