Mitch McConnell’s Warning Against Isolationism

To the Editor:

Re “Mitch McConnell: We Cannot Repeat the Mistakes of the 1930s” (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, June 6):

I rarely find myself agreeing with Mitch McConnell, and even then it is usually on a position he quickly backtracks from to keep himself in the good graces of the party that has pulled away from traditional Republican values. But his call to end isolationism is compelling.

Now, if he could only convince what is left of the Republican Party of that, the world would be a safer place. America needs and thrives on a true two-party system, but when one of them is blindly bound to a narcissistic wannabe dictator, that system will fail.

Mr. McConnell needs to restore his party to one that argues over policy differences with the left, as opposed to one that exists solely to support a man who would lead us back to the mistakes of the 1930s. Show some guts, Mitch.

Robert Wallenstein
San Diego

To the Editor:

Bravo to Senator Mitch McConnell for praising the courageous American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who fought in World War II to preserve freedom and democracy. And bravo to him for taking a swing at the “disgraced isolationists” who strove to persuade Americans in 1940 that the fate of our European allies was irrelevant to our own national security.

Senator McConnell, however, does not mention that the influential, pro-fascist and antisemitic isolationist organization was called America First, a slogan that Donald Trump has adopted to encapsulate his nationalist and unilateralist views.

In the months and years ahead, I suggest that we remember the words of Henry L. Stimson, the Republican who served as secretary of war under Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman and who believed that America must act with a sense of global responsibility.