It's high time to get back to this story line:
In Saturday's Graphical History Tour, I remarked that William Jennings Bryan's and his supporters' opposition to U.S. imperialism was not entirely altruistic.
The Democrats' 1900 campaign platform "condemn[ed] and denounce[ed] McKinley's Philippine policy for having "involved the Republic in an unnecessary war," and bemoaned the loss of U.S. soldiers' lives. All well and good; then the platform explained that Filipinos were unfit to be Americans:
The Filipinos cannot be citizens without endangering our civilization; they cannot be subjects without imperiling our form of government; and as we are not willing to surrender our civilization nor to convert the Republic into an empire, we favor an immediate declaration of the nation's purpose to give the Filipinos, first, a stable form of government; second, independence; and third, protection from outside interference, such as has been given for nearly a century to the republics of Central and South America. ...
We are not opposed to territorial expansion when it takes in desirable territory which can be erected into States in the Union, and whose people are willing and fit to become American citizens. We favor trade expansion by every peaceful and legitimate means. But we are unalterably opposed to seizing or purchasing distant islands to be governed outside the Constitution, and whose people can never become citizens.
True, Filipinos were also unwilling to become U.S. subjects. But there are reasons why Democrats today do not venerate the memory of three-time presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan.
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