Changes

Starting as a leading liberal supporter of the [[New Deal]], Beard in the late 1930s turned against Franklin Delano Roosevelt's aggressive foreign policy. Beard promoted "American Continentalism," arguing that the U.S. had no vital stake in Europe, and that a foreign war would threaten dictatorship at home. Beard was thus one of the leading proponents of isolationism. After the war, Beard's last work (''President Roosevelt and the Coming of the War'', 1948) blamed Roosevelt for lying to the American people and tricking them into war. It generated angry controversy as internationalists denounced Beard as an apologist for isolationism. As a result, Beard's reputation collapsed among liberal historians who previously had admired him. His whole interpretation of history came under widespread attack, though a few leading historians such as Beale and Woodward clung to the Beardian interpretation of American history. After 1990 Beard's foreign policy views became popular with supporters of [[paleoconservatism]], such as [[Pat Buchanan]]. Beard's stress on economic causation influenced the "Wisconsin school" of [[New Left]] historians William Appleman Williams, [[Gabriel Kolko]], and James Weinstein.