Or that time that we parked an army on the Rio Grande because a bunch of people from the US decided to settle in the Mexican territory of Texas? That was a whole thing and the President of the US at the time, James K. Polk, ran on a platform of "Manifest Destiny" -- that the US should span "from sea to shining sea." There were a whole host of other countries with interest in that territory, not to mention the Indian tribes who would be displaced by that policy. The US has had a lot of dark periods in our history, and we shouldn't let those periods displace us from the moral certainty we derive from the Declaration of Independence and things like The Bill of Rights.

Yes, because we weren't an empire then. At the time Trump befouled our country, Pax Americana was a thing. We have voluntarily walked back from that position of moral and strategic leadership.

In that regard, history offers few precedents to learn from. Most countries have to be physically attacked to suffer the kind of damage that American voters are inflicting on themselves.

Yeah, and that time we sacrificed nearly 1 million of our own citizens to end slavery.