I’m reading Michael Lind’s provocative “The American Way of Strategy” (published a few years ago, but I’m behind) and came across this interesting nugget:

“Historians have sometimes explained American expansionism as the result of American racism, without acknowledging the degree to which the former was checked by the latter.” He points to some of arguments made by anti-imperialists against the annexation of larger and more populated swathes of Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and even Kara’s own Hawaii. Lots of worry about “unassimilable” non-white populations. You can hear Franklin Roosevelt venting these concerns as late as 1941.

Yet another example of how a lot of our standard left-right continua (anti-racist = anti-imperialist) are pretty much worthless.