John Decker SAWYER

John was the first child born in Wisconsin at the Titus homestead in the town of Chester, Dodge County. On November 18, 1875, he was married to Carrie RACE at Waupun, WI. After the marriage, he stayed on the farm and lived in the little log cabin. Later he bought a small farm at the edge of Waupun and lived there for many years. He supplemented his farm income by making furniture, running a sorghum mill, etc. In 1894 he stepped on a rusty nail in his shop and developed blood poisoning. He almost lost his life but recovered though he did have a limb (leg) amputated. Even with this handicap he was a very busy man. He tried hard. He raised a fine family. Later they moved to Mankato, MN. He and his wife were splendid Christian people and devoted workers in the Methodist Church.

Having graduated from nearby Lawrence College (very unusual at the time, <1%?), John served as a lay minister in the Methodist church, occasionally delivering sermons. Also, he was very inventive, designing and making many models for farm equipment, one being a roughly foot-long metal model for an automatic sugar-beet picker/processor (still in our family). Unfortunately, he talked too freely of his ideas and someone else beat him to the patent office!

He is probably named after Major John DECKER (discussed on the page of Benjamin Carpenter), famous for his role during the American Revolution in Orange County, NY.

John Decker Sawyer as a young man c1870

Pat Buchanan (cf br-rne) says Wm McKinley's decision in 1898 (goaded by his War cabinet under-Sec'y TR) to pursue an imperialistic war against Spain caused America to 'jump the tracks' of our historic foreign policy. He lists our 7 foreign policy principles as:

1) Exceptionalism [John Winthrop's 'shining city on a hill']
2) Unilateralism [Washington's 'great rule' of no permanent ('entangling') alliances]
3) The Monroe Doctrine [W hemisphere is America's sphere, other powers stay out!]
4) Manifest Destiny [to eventually occupy the whole N American continent]

... Here's where we jumped the tracks! ...

"Seward was a transitional figure ... like the [c1900] American imperialists, would accept the burden of ruling alien peoples. [But] It was under Wm McKinley, TR, and WW that we would eat the forbidden fruit of imperialism and go out into the world in search of monsters to destroy - leading to America's involvement in all the great wars of the 20C" (141).

5) Progressive Imperialism, associated with McKinley, TR, and Henry Cabot Lodge, broke w/the vision of [Washington's] Farewell Address and raised Manifest Destiny to a new level. America's destiny now entailed overseas annexations and dominations of other peoples. The British Empire was no longer our great antagonist, but an exemplar in advancing the hegemony of the Anglo-Saxon race and civilization" (178-9).

6) Liberal Internationalism, in Wilson's 14 Points, we see his vision ... through the global expansion of free trade, democracy, and disarmament, the way would open up to global governance and universal peace. His ideas are traceable to the classical liberals of the 19C [i.e. Cobden, Bright, hmmm]. Wilson parted w/TR and Lodge in his globalist, rather than nationalist, perspective; his willingness to subordinate US sovereignty to multilateral institutions; and his distaste for 'balance of power' politics" (184).

FDR's Crusading Globalism was a continuation of Wilsonism; "In 1917 Wilson had gone to war to make the world safe for democracy [liberal internationalism], and had made the world safe for Lenin, Mussolini, and Hitler. In 1941 FDR had gone to war to make Europe and Asia safe for democracy, and had made Europe safe for Stalinism and Asia safe for Maoism" (297).

7) Containment, advocated by George Kennan in his famous 1947 "Mr. X" article in Foreign Affairs magazine as an expedient for countering the USSR. "With the end of the Cold War, however, foreign policy went to probate, and by 1999 3 rival schools were claimants" (355): 1) Global Democracy as Panacea [Dems], 2) The Hegemonist Temptation [Bush 43, neocons], and 3) Enlightened Nationalism [Pat's view]. The latter is winning "by default ... [tho] only marginally represented in the foreign policy debate ... [it] alone can unite America - because [all] will agree there are bottom-line vital [national] interests that must be defended to the death; and the more narrow the definition, the greater the willingness to stand together and fight" (364).

His point is that there remains cognitive dissonance, still unresolved as the post-WWII "twilight struggle" continues.

See also br-4mc