If you think our country has engaged in shameful wars of choice, drifted from our Constitutional moorings and generally failed to live up to our self-proclaimed role as the world's guarantor of liberty, you may be right. But which century are you talking about?

According to historian Ted Widmer, a former adviser and speechwriter for President Bill Clinton, the America of lofty ideals about freedom and human rights has always had one stubborn enemy: itself.

Throughout this valuable history of the ideas that have shaped American foreign policy, Mr. Widmer reminds us that the errand into Iraq, which opponents consider a nightmarish aberration, is not without precedent in the nation's history. Our country "always had tendencies working against our best ideals," he writes. "It was never accurate to see America as the embodiment of pure virtue. . . LINK