Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright drew parallels between 1920s isolationism, which she said downplayed fascism, and today’s nationalism while speaking to an audience in Fulton Wednesday.
She said those who embrace an anti-globalization attitude were wrong in the past and are wrong now.
“The issue of immigration is complicated because countries have a right to protect their borders,” Albright said. “But the best solution by far is to prevent wars, create a healthy global economy and to protect the environment so that people don’t have to leave their homes in quest of safety and the means to survive.”
She criticized President Donald Trump’s treatment of immigrants.
“There are no easy answers, but of one thing I am sure: The situation is not helped when politicians try to advance their careers by suggesting that most migrants are terrorists and rapists or that families fleeing persecution and war are less than human,” she said.
Albright was born in what was then Czechoslovakia. She gave the John Findley Green Foundation Lecture at Westminster College where Winston Churchill delivered his “Iron Curtain” speech in 1946.