A Nation Engaged: How Middle Tennesseans See America’s Role In The World

This election season, WPLN is participating in a national conversation, along with other NPR member stations, called A Nation Engaged. This week, stories are exploring diplomacy, migration and the military and asking this question: What is America’s role in the world?

Here are five viewpoints from Nashville-area residents:

“I’m a proponent of a strong military, but not a military that is involved with every little situation. …the Middle East is definitely a hot mess right now. I don’t think we have been a leader as far as showing radical Islam that we’re not going to tolerate terrorism.”

—
Rebecca 
Eakes
, of Smyrna

“I feel as though America thinks that they have a different reputation than they actually do, in that, we feel as though other countries love us, like we’re all just one big happy country, when the other countries mostly see us as a threat, and see us as a poor example of how to run a country.”

—

LaTia
Glasgow, freshman at Fisk
University

“I think we need to kind of take less of a steel fist approach to things and more of a neighborly, ‘We want to be here to help and we’re not going to force our help on you.’ ”

— Chelsea Wilson, of Nashville

“I think there are some things that we are pioneering, but we’re not the intellectual mind that we used to be.”

— Emmanuel Jackson, senior at

Fisk
University

“I don’t know how respected we are. I kind of feel like the rest of the world … I don’t know if they think that we need to swoop in and take care of what’s wrong, or if they think that we’re selfish.”

— Lacy

Hardison
, of Nashville