Donald Trump, and Most Americans, Do Not Understand the Monroe Doctrine - (Yes, willful ignorance will lead to STUUUPIDITY! - CL)

 I want to make you a wager… I bet that 99% of Americans have never read the speech that President James Monroe made to the US Congress on December 2, 1823. As part of that speech — which was the seventh annual address to the US Congress — President Monroe outlined a policy that is now commonly referred to as the Monroe Doctrine. Understanding what President Monroe actually said has taken on more importance because Donald Trump referenced the Monroe Doctrine to justify his kidnapping of Venezuelan President Maduro. I am going to show you that President Monroe said nothing that would excuse or support Trump’s action. To the contrary, Trump is behaving like one of the old European colonial tyrants.

Trump is not the first to misunderstand the Monroe Doctrine, which is now widely interpreted in America as giving the US control of the Western Hemisphere and giving the US the right to take action against ANY foreign government that has relations with the countries of Central and South America, Mexico and Canada.

The essence of the Monroe Doctrine originally was a firm declaration to oppose European colonization of the Americas. Read carefully what Monroe said:

In the discussions to which this interest has given rise and in the arrangements by which they may terminate the occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers....

....Monroe made two critical points in the preceding two paragraphs… First, the US will act only if it is attacked or threatened by European powers. Again, his concern was to keep America free of the wars among the various European powers as they sought to secure and consolidate their respective colonial ambitions. Second, Monroe insisted that the US will not interfere with existing colonies or dependencies. However, if people in Mexico, Central America or South America decided to declare independence — as did the 13 British colonies on July 4, 1776 — then any European military action against those former colonies would be viewed as an attack on the United States. In other words, the US policy proposed by Monroe gave priority to those American countries that declared independence a tacit promise that the US would support them. However, this did not grant the US the right to unilaterally insert itself into the political affairs of countries in Central and South America, nor did it empower the US to carry out regime changes in those countries simply because we did not like the new rulers or the structure of the new government.

Monroe then makes a policy statement that every US president in the 20th and 21st Century has ignored… No interference in the internal affairs of other countries:

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2026/01/no_author/donald-trump-and-most-americans-do-not-understand-the-monroe-doctrine/ 

.....Sadly, the Monroe Doctrine has been desecrated and ignored by a bevy of Presidents, starting with President Polk in 1848. Instead of defending Mexico and our Central and South American neighbors from foreign interference, we have repeatedly behaved as an authoritarian dictator. Mexico declared independence from Spain on 16 September 1810. Thirty-six years later, the US provoked a war with Mexico by annexing Texas and manufacturing a border crisis in service of a broader expansionist project. Maybe we should christen this kind of behavior as the Polk Doctrine, i.e., only we, the US, have the right to decide what kind of government the people and nations in the Western hemisphere can have. The Monroe Doctrine was intended to combat foreign interference by imperial powers… The US has bastardized that doctrine and now uses it as an excuse to feed our own imperial ambitions. Venezuela is just the latest casualty.