The United States could have been a big neutral Continent far away from competing powers but our own politicians couldn’t wait for their own opportunity to play Empire Builder. So they added an Income tax to pay for their fancy war machines and the rest has been downhill ever since.
We should have listened to George Washington’s farewell address
Yep...This is the government our Founders warned us about.
So true your statement.
From America's greatest President (1796)...
"Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people, under an efficient government, the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor, or caprice?"
Once we gained the Philippines and Hawaii after the Spanish-American War, we had to expand our Pacific Fleet, at the expense of our Atlantic Fleet, thereby making us dependent on The Royal Navy, and tied to Britain.
Our own politicians are undoubtedly handed many $$$ by the munitions makers, foreign bigwigs, etc. . Otherwise how do candidates with law or business degrees get elected when they have perhaps a million or two in the banks and leave congress as multimillionaires. Just look at Joe Biden’s huge house in Delaware, worth millions. He had it as a congressman.
Nice thing about Trump is that he already had the billions when elected, making him unbribable. Can’t have that!!!!