Remembering the America First movement
Interesting article by Jeffrey Lord in the American Spectator:
Who were the American Firsters? The America First Committee came to life on September 4, 1940 and quickly evolved into what one historian called “the most powerful isolationist or non-interventionist pressure group in the United States.” It grew out of a Yale student organization led by a son of a Quaker Oats Company vice president, and was headed by retired Army General Robert E. Wood, who was the chairman of Sears Roebuck at the time. The group’s national committee included such celebrities of the day as the actress Lillian Gish, World War I flying ace General Eddie Rickenbacker, Henry Ford, Alice Roosevelt Longworth (daughter of Theodore) and, most prominently, “Lucky Lindy” himself — Colonel Charles Lindbergh. It was Lindbergh who gets credit for the opening quote above, said in a Des Moines, Iowa speech.
Their philosophy? The Franklin Roosevelt administration, Jews and capitalists were dangerous “war agitators” who “comprise only a small minority of our people; but they control a tremendous influence.” This analysis about the sinister intent of “powerful elements” in America was provided by Lindbergh, whose words and sentiments seem as if they have been lifted verbatim into a MoveOn screed about the Bush administration, Neo-cons, Connecticut Senator Joe Lieberman and Halliburton.
In one speech Lindbergh warned that these three groups “planned, first, to prepare the United States for foreign war under the guise of American defense; second to involve us in the war step by step, without our realization; third, to create a series of incidents which would force us into the actual conflict.” How was this diabolical plot to be carried out? They would be “covered and assisted by the full power of their propaganda” over “the rising opposition of the American people.”
The response from Roosevelt and his supporters was swift. With the Nazis having successfully swallowed Czechoslovakia, Poland, Austria, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes went in front of a Jewish audience to brand the America First Committee as “the America Next” Committee. America First, said FDR’s lieutenant, attracted “antidemocrats, appeasers…and anti-Semites,” adding that “Hitler was enthusiastic about it.” When a rally featuring anti-war celebrity and novelist Kathleen Norris, Massachusetts Senator David Walsh and Lindbergh drew a crowd of 10,000 in Madison Square Garden, one FDR-loyalist labeled it “the largest gathering of pro-Nazi and pro-Fascists of both domestic and imported brands since the German American Bund rallies in Madison Square Garden.” A second, larger anti-war rally in the same place spurred gossip columnist Walter Winchell to snipe that “every hate spreader they could find showed up for that meeting.”
Remind you of anyone today?
September 8th, 2006 at 2:07 pm
A number of hosts from Air America Radio – Al Franken, Jerry Springer, Randi Rhodes but especially Mike Malloy – he is on very late at night, fortunately, when the employed or employable are sleeping.
Fervent Bush Hater, fervent Zionist hater; he has pointed out that American Zionists are the biggests suppoters of teh Iraq war. With good reason, Saddam was donating thousands of dollars to palestinian suicide killer’s families.
All are strident critics of both Afghan and Iraq invasions and silent regarding head choppings, kidnappings, explosions from followers of the religion of peace.
September 9th, 2006 at 5:42 am
An important time to remember. I recently re-read “The Gathering Storm” by Winston Churchill, and the parallels between the pre WWII period and today are chilling. I’m currently reading the next volume of Churchill’s six on the War, “Their Finest Hour,” about the period of WWII when Britain was alone in fighting the Nazis. I would love to see both these books be standard reading in school.
It is both humbling and convicting to see that one of peoples standard responses to disaster or threat is to pretend it doesn’t happen. It’s humbling because I could possibly have been that stupid, had a few of my life choices been different. It’s convicting because it shows that I can not be simply an observer, but that I have to stand up and be counted with the thinking.