Port: Republicans, and all Americans, must stand behind Ukraine and against Putin

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MINOT, N.D. — Isolationism, on the world stage, is folly.

North Dakotans, based on our own history, ought to know this.

“Getting into this return engagement of war to Europe is only as inevitable as we, the people of America, will permit it to be,” a prominent political leader from our state once said. “Staying out of this war is inevitable if only the people will continue and multiply their forceful demands upon the Government at Washington to keep its promise to the people to keep our country out of this mess which seems destined to wreck every civilization that lends its hand to it.”

That reads like it could be a transcript of something Fox News talking head Tucker Carlson could have said about Ukraine last week, but it’s actually former North Dakota Sen. Gerald Nye speaking during a 1941 radio address .

Nye was a progressive Republican and a key member of the isolationist movement of the 1930s and 40s.

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