Humanity can be welded together only by love, by sympathy, by justice, not by jealousy and hatred. I am sorry for the man who seeks to make personal capital out of the passions of his fellow-men. He has lost the touch and ideal of America, for America was created to unite mankind by those passions which lift, and not by the passions which separate and debase. … It was but an historical accident, no doubt, that this great country was called the “United States”; yet I am very thankful that it has that word “United” in its title, and the man who seeks to divide man from man, group from group, interest from interest in this great Union is striking at its very heart.
No doubt you have been disappointed in some of us. Some of us are very disappointing. No doubt you have found that justice in the United States goes only with a pure heart and a right purpose, as it does everywhere else in the world. No doubt what you have found here did not seem touched for you, after all, with the complete beauty of the ideal which you had conceived beforehand. But remember this: If we had grown at all poor in the ideal, you brought some of it with you. … And if some of us have forgotten what America believed in, you, at any rate, imported in your own hearts a renewal of the belief. That is the reason that I, for one, make you welcome. … You dreamed dreams of what America was to be, and I hope you brought the dreams with you. No man that does not see visions will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise. Just because you brought dreams with you, America is more likely to realize dreams such as you brought. You are enriching us if you came expecting us to be better than we are.
—Woodrow Wilson, to 4,000 newly naturalized citizens, Philadelphia, May 10, 1915
I was deeply moved by this speech. This country represents more than the daft politics and prejudice blinding people to immense ignorance. It angers me when some people label what is ‘American’, believing that being white, playing sports, or eating hot dogs or watching ‘Wizard of Oz’ is more American than whatever someone else does( My freshman year English teacher). Being Chinese, ethnically, I still deeply ascribe myself to be American. Not because I've been steadily inundated with daily pledges or propaganda, but because I truly think that in such a heterogeneous world, a country that represents the ideals of an equal liberty and pursuit of happiness for all humans is truly a blessing to have. America has its terrible flaws, but its greatest flaw would have been its non-existence.
Wilson was definitely a visionary. Its a shame more attention wasn't paid to him at home and abroad after WWI. The post-war years could have been radically different, and who knows, maybe WWII could have been avoided. He was definitely a citizen of the Word before that was even a thing.
Wilson was regarded very warmly by much of the colonial world, you could say he was a hero in many of the areas that labored under colonial oppression. He was regarded as a starry eyed fool by many of the international politicians in the post WWI world. Although he didn't prevent the division of the middle east or the oppression of Germany post WWI I think he left a legacy that makes being a citizen of the world more possible then it was before he hit the scene. I have read many presidential biographies and a bit of post WWI history, but never a biography on Wilson, it's probably something that I should check off my liberal education list.