Breathe, You're Getting Historical!
- FDR braids a tangent on the Napoleonic era into his argument about the importance of American influence on the world stage.
- He serves up an amazing run-on sentence that mentions Napoleon (and all the trouble he caused) and the War of 1812 (and all the trouble it caused). He puts these conflicts in perspective by indicating that neither France nor Britain ever tried to rule the planet.
- They were just messing with America.
- Roosevelt's trip through time continues across most of the 19th century and into the early 20th century simply to illustrate that nobody messed with America for 99 years, and for the most part, America politically dominated the continent like a big dog that sleeps in the middle of the bed.
- The only exception to America's top-dog status was the short reign of Archduke Ferdinand Maximilian in Mexico, which FDR negates by calling it an "interlude."
- He gives a shout-out to the British navy because the United Kingdom and the United States are best buds now.
- The topic of World War I rears its ugly head, which FDR characterizes as that time America almost underestimated the negative impact of a global conflict on the future of democracy—both at home and abroad.