Former President George W. Bush Speaks At Florida Forum

Former President George W. Bush spoke for about an hour and 30 minutes at the Florida-Times-Union Performing Arts Center. Bush was the final speaker in the Florida Forum series

Bush: What’s interesting about our country, if you study history, is there are some isms that occasionally pop up: One is isolationism, and its evil twin protectionism, and its evil triplet nativism. So if you study the 20s for example, there was an America First policy that said, “Who cares what happens in Europe?” Well, what happened in Europe mattered, eventually, because of WWII. There was Smoot-Hawley which was part of an economic policy which basically said we don’t want trade, in other words let’s throw up barriers. And there was an immigration policy that I think during this period argued we have too many Jews and too many Italians, therefore we should have no immigrants. And my point is we’ve been through this kind of period of isolationism, protectionism, and nativism. I’m a little concerned we may be going through the same period. I hope that these isms pass.

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