In the long view, though, American exceptionalism can be isolationist as well as internationalist.
It is a vision certain to upset both American isolationists as well as some third world leaders who fear a that stronger, more independent organization would mean a new kind of colonialism.
Before joining the U.S. Army, he led isolationist opposition as a U.S. representative from Oregon d.
That was the theme that France's prime minister, Lionel Jospin, picked up this spring: "This is not an isolationist administration as has been the case before in the Republican tradition," he noted.
As World War II approached, Mr. Fairbanks, an Anglophile, generated controversy as an outspoken opponent of the America First isolationists and as a fervent backer of a third term for President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Throughout his career, he was instrumental in moving his party away from the control of isolationists, and as a congressman was a persuasive advocate of containing Soviet communism.
Commonly called the North Korea of Africa, Eritrea suffers under a regime almost as repressive, fanatical, and isolationist as that in Pyongyang.
The president is not as isolated or as isolationist as he is sometimes portrayed, and Mr. Kerry is not as beholden to his multilateralist convictions as the French might wish.
He deconstructs the early texts of the Republic, suggesting that Washington's Farewell Address was not as isolationist as its warnings about entangling "our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice" might sound.
More and more domestic gadgets that, since their creation, have been as isolationist as North Korea are now becoming decidedly verbose.
