I'm Ben Sawyer and this is the road to now. Today on the show, the topic is the Monroe Doctrine.

A timely topic that I honestly did not see coming as timely. But, you know, there's so much I haven't

seen coming recently and was not always, not always to my liking. Anyway, we can

sometimes turn the madness into good by using it as a learning moment. And today's guest, Jay Sexton,

Professor of History at the University of Missouri, is fantastic. We had a great conversation.

The man has written books on the Monroe Doctrine. He's a specialist in international relations. And honestly, we just fell right into it. We just clicked immediately. He's making the rounds lately. I thought it was funny. I actually found him by reading academic journals. But, you know, I guess there's only so many people who have written books on the Monroe Doctrine. And if you've got to have the limits, man, this guy is awesome.

And this conversation, of course, as you can tell from my voice, is a lot of fun.

I should add here that Bob could not make it.

He had to go see a family member and missed him on this conversation.

Obviously, as a book about John Quincy Adams coming out, for those of you guys who don't know, the Monroe Doctrine was actually mostly written by

Adams, although it was something of a negotiation, as you will hear. Nevertheless, I think regardless

of him here or not, we were going to let Jay do most of the talking because the guys are

a delight. So here we go. I hope everybody's year is kicking

off. Great. We're doing good here at the Sawyer household. And I want to say a special thanks to

everyone who supports us on Patreon. You guys keep the lights on. Thank you so much. If you want to

support the show, it's patreon.com slash the road to now. We really appreciate that support and we thank you for it.

To everyone, though, I hope you enjoy this conversation with Jay Sexton. I think you will.

And have a great week. Take care.

Jay Sexton, welcome to The Roads Now.

It's great to be here. Great to be on the road. Jay, professor of history at University of Missouri, expert on the Monroe Doctrine, apparently highly sought after dinner guests at this moment. As many free meals I can get as they last. Well, let's get into it. All right, the Monroe Doctrine. People are talking about it now. That's while we're here.

If you're just in a general survey class of U.S. history, and I might know the answer to this

question, how do you tell the story of the Monroe Doctrine in that kind of like one slide or one paragraph in her textbook? How would you put it together in kind of the way that most people understand it? Well, you know, you've got to get across right away that this isn't law, this isn't

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