WEBVTT NOTE The Anti-Imperialist League and the Battle Against Empire 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:06.000 Well, the title of my talk is The Anti-Imperialist League and the Battle Against Empire. 2 00:00:06.000 --> 00:00:13.000 Now, thankfully, Professor Reiko gave us a little bit of the history, so I don't need to go over that ground too much, 3 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:22.000 other than to say that what I'm talking about involves the ending, the last few years of the 19th century and the opening of the 20th century, 4 00:00:22.000 --> 00:00:30.000 And that this organization that was formed in late 1898 called the Anti-Imperialist League, the American Anti-Imperialist League, 5 00:00:30.000 --> 00:00:38.000 was founded after the conclusion of the Spanish-American War, which was a war between the United States and Spain 6 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:43.000 that dealt with issues involving Cuba, as Professor Reiko pointed out, 7 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:48.000 but that also was a very fateful moment in the point of view of American foreign policy, 8 00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:54.000 because it also involved the acquisition of territories from Spain by the United States. 9 00:00:54.000 --> 00:01:00.000 And it was this that the anti-imperialists who formed this league sought to oppose 10 00:01:00.000 --> 00:01:05.000 because they believed that that would fundamentally alter the American character in undesirable ways. 11 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:07.000 It became an imperial power. 12 00:01:07.000 --> 00:01:12.000 Now although they were by and large also opposed to the annexation of Puerto Rico, 13 00:01:12.000 --> 00:01:17.000 which in addition to Guam was also acquired from Spain, the emphasis was always on the Philippines. 14 00:01:17.000 --> 00:01:21.960 in the Philippines, among the anti-imperialists, and the battle against American involvement 15 00:01:21.960 --> 00:01:26.240 in the Philippines, and the refusal of the American government under President McKinley 16 00:01:26.240 --> 00:01:32.040 and then Roosevelt, Theodore Roosevelt, to grant independence to the Philippines. 17 00:01:32.040 --> 00:01:36.880 And in fact, they waged a war against the Filipinos to prevent their independence. 18 00:01:36.880 --> 00:01:43.120 These sorts of things struck the anti-imperialists as, well, undesirable modifications of the 19 00:01:43.120 --> 00:01:51.120 and the original American tradition of non-interference and being the well-wishers of independence and freedom for all. 20 00:01:51.120 --> 00:01:58.120 It's worth noting that the impetus for the League, in fact, got started during the Spanish-American War itself, 21 00:01:58.120 --> 00:02:04.120 just around the time it was beginning to wind down in the early summer of 1898. 22 00:02:04.120 --> 00:02:10.120 The initial moves were made that then became a formal organization in November of that year. 23 00:02:10.120 --> 00:02:22.120 The initial meeting was held at Boston's Faneuil Hall and was presided over by a descendant of William Bradford, who had been governor of Plymouth Colony centuries earlier. 24 00:02:22.120 --> 00:02:32.120 Now those who later became anti-imperialists and joined this league could be found both among supporters and opponents of the Spanish-American War. 25 00:02:32.120 --> 00:03:02.120 and War. So there were people like William Jennings Bryan who had supported the war but then opposed some of the consequences, that is the acquisition of colonial territories. At the same time, a great many anti-imperialists had been against the war to begin with and I'd like to focus on a few of those at the beginning here because their comments on war are, I think you'll find them quite revealing and useful and unfortunately depressingly familiar. For example, Moorfield's story is an interesting 26 00:03:02.120 --> 00:03:06.480 figure, who's an accomplished lawyer and graduate of Harvard Law School, sometime president 27 00:03:06.480 --> 00:03:11.400 of the American Bar Association, and a supporter of laissez-faire and a well-known advocate 28 00:03:11.400 --> 00:03:14.080 of the gold standard and free trade. 29 00:03:14.080 --> 00:03:18.640 He was also the first president of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored 30 00:03:18.640 --> 00:03:22.320 People, or the NAACP, from 1909 until 1915. 31 00:03:22.320 --> 00:03:24.600 The story, by the way, was white. 32 00:03:24.600 --> 00:03:29.020 He spoke at the Boston meeting presided over by Bradford and went on to become both a vice 33 00:03:29.020 --> 00:03:37.020 The Vice President of the New England Anti-Imperialist League because there were in fact regional chapters founded and eventually became President of the National Organization. 34 00:03:38.020 --> 00:03:43.020 Now consider Story's words in April 1898 on the eve of the Spanish-American War. 35 00:03:44.020 --> 00:03:45.020 He says, 36 00:03:59.020 --> 00:04:06.020 by the armies, the strength of her fleets, or even by the insolence with which she tramples upon her weaker neighbors. 37 00:04:06.020 --> 00:04:15.020 But him who knows that the true greatness of a nation, as of a man, depends upon its character, its sense of justice, its self-restraint, its magnanimity, 38 00:04:15.020 --> 00:04:25.020 in a word, upon its possession of those qualities which distinguished George Washington from the prizefighter, the highest type of man from the highest type of beast. 39 00:04:25.020 --> 00:04:29.720 It's kind of unkind to say that about prizefighters, but you understand the point. 40 00:04:29.720 --> 00:04:33.480 Carl Schurz, who, among other things, was the first German-born American to serve in 41 00:04:33.480 --> 00:04:38.440 the U.S. Senate, was likewise deeply involved in the League as an officer, as well as firmly 42 00:04:38.440 --> 00:04:41.420 opposed to the Spanish-American war itself. 43 00:04:41.420 --> 00:04:47.740 And he likewise wrote in April 1898, the man who, in times of popular excitement, boldly 44 00:04:47.740 --> 00:04:53.780 and unflinchingly resists hot-tempered clamor for an unnecessary war, and thus exposes himself 45 00:04:53.780 --> 00:05:23.780 Up to the approprious imputation of a lack of patriotism or of courage, to the end of saving his country from a great calamity, is, as to loving and faithfully serving his country, at least as good a patriot as the hero of the most daring feat of arms, and a far better one than those who, with an ostentatious pretense of superior patriotism, cry for war before it is needed, especially if they then let others do the fighting. Thankfully, that's never happened. 46 00:05:23.780 --> 00:05:36.780 He also reminds us of quite an illustrative verse, I believe, from James Russell Lowell, writing around the time of the Mexican War under President Polk in the 1840s. 47 00:05:36.780 --> 00:05:38.780 And those verses read, 48 00:05:38.780 --> 00:05:45.780 And President Polk, you know, he is our country. 49 00:05:45.780 --> 00:05:56.780 And what Short said as a commentary on this was that in our own time we hear with the old persistency the same old plea to the voters of the nation to be loyal to the country right or wrong. 50 00:05:56.780 --> 00:06:04.780 And when we probe the matter we find that we are being urged to be loyal not to the country right or wrong, but to President McKinley right or wrong. 51 00:06:04.780 --> 00:06:08.780 Lowell's lines might fit the present case with only a little paraphrasing. 52 00:06:08.780 --> 00:06:14.780 The side of our country must always be took and Mr. McKinley, you know, he is our country. 53 00:06:14.780 --> 00:06:18.780 Well, again, this is a fairly familiar phenomenon, I believe. 54 00:06:18.780 --> 00:06:23.780 Well, one of the best known members of the Anti-Imperialist League was Mark Twain. 55 00:06:23.780 --> 00:06:28.780 And incidentally, there were a great many illustrious figures in the Anti-Imperialist League, to whom I will refer later. 56 00:06:28.780 --> 00:06:34.780 But Twain, from 1901 until his death in 1910, was a vice president of the Anti-Imperialist League. 57 00:06:34.780 --> 00:06:41.780 And a fellow named Jim Zwick has collected some of Mark Twain's anti-war writings into a book, and it's absolutely excellent. 58 00:06:41.780 --> 00:06:47.780 Zwick has an excellent anti-imperialist website online. If you do a search for Jim Zwick, it'll come right up. 59 00:06:47.780 --> 00:06:54.780 I love that last name, by the way, Zwick. When The Passion of the Christ came out, for a while I wanted to be Tom Caviezel. 60 00:06:54.780 --> 00:06:58.780 Then I came across this guy. I'd kind of like to be Tom Zwick, I think. 61 00:06:58.780 --> 00:07:01.780 All right, anyway, this is really this number... 62 00:07:01.780 --> 00:07:06.780 But I'd like to read an excerpt from one of Twain's stories. It's called The War Prayer. 63 00:07:06.780 --> 00:07:12.780 The War Prayer was not published in Twain's lifetime. It was thought of as being too radical. 64 00:07:12.780 --> 00:07:17.780 And in fact, Twain himself lamented, I don't think the prayer will be published in my time. 65 00:07:17.780 --> 00:07:20.780 None but the dead are permitted to tell the truth. 66 00:07:20.780 --> 00:07:24.780 Well, after he died, he'd left instructions, please somebody try to get this thing published. 67 00:07:24.780 --> 00:07:25.780 It was later published. 68 00:07:25.780 --> 00:07:34.780 Well, the story of the War Prayer was a vivid commentary on the misappropriation of religion on behalf of nationalistic causes, particularly war. 69 00:07:34.780 --> 00:07:46.780 Now I myself as a Catholic am fairly well mortified to know that the war crazed version of modern evangelicalism is what is on display to the non-Christian world as Christianity. 70 00:07:46.780 --> 00:07:52.780 So I very much appreciate Twain's point and I would urge fellow Christians to take his critique in the proper spirit. 71 00:07:52.780 --> 00:08:02.780 The story begins with a church service in which the pastor calls down the blessings of God upon American forces that they may be successful and safe as they wage war against the enemy. 72 00:08:02.780 --> 00:08:16.780 And then a frail old man enters the church and pushes the pastor aside and explains that he's just spoken with God himself, who wishes to hear the other half of that prayer, the half that was only in their hearts and uttered only implicitly. 73 00:08:16.780 --> 00:08:17.780 And he says, 74 00:08:32.780 --> 00:08:38.240 is aware of and then he goes on to say you heard these words grant us the 75 00:08:38.240 --> 00:08:41.620 victory oh Lord our God that is sufficient the whole of the uttered 76 00:08:41.620 --> 00:08:45.820 prayer is compact into those pregnant words elaborations were not necessary 77 00:08:45.820 --> 00:08:49.780 when you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results 78 00:08:49.780 --> 00:08:54.020 which follow victory must follow it cannot help but follow it upon the 79 00:08:54.020 --> 00:08:57.540 listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer he 80 00:08:57.540 --> 00:09:02.540 commanded me to put it into words listen and this is the other half of the prayer 81 00:09:02.540 --> 00:09:16.040 O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle. Be thou near them, with them in spirit. 82 00:09:16.040 --> 00:09:23.040 We also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. 83 00:09:23.040 --> 00:09:27.540 O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells. 84 00:09:27.540 --> 00:09:32.040 Help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead. 85 00:09:32.040 --> 00:09:37.040 Help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain. 86 00:09:37.040 --> 00:09:41.040 Help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire. 87 00:09:41.040 --> 00:09:46.040 Help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief. 88 00:09:46.040 --> 00:09:57.040 Help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst. 89 00:09:57.040 --> 00:10:06.040 Sports of the sun, flames of summer, and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it. 90 00:10:06.040 --> 00:10:20.040 For our sakes who adore thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet. 91 00:10:20.040 --> 00:10:31.040 We ask it in the spirit of love of Him who is the source of love and who is the ever faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen. 92 00:10:31.040 --> 00:10:39.040 The story ends abruptly with people considering this man a lunatic and then presumably carrying on as before, unaffected. 93 00:10:39.040 --> 00:10:42.040 Well, what sorts of things did the League itself do? 94 00:10:42.040 --> 00:10:44.040 Well, they did what they could as intellectuals. 95 00:10:44.040 --> 00:10:55.040 They held public meetings and lectured, and they published books and pamphlets and leaflets, published newspaper articles to bring the information before the public. 96 00:10:55.040 --> 00:11:00.040 What kind of information? Well, they brought information about what exactly was going on in the Philippines. 97 00:11:00.040 --> 00:11:09.040 What kinds of atrocities were being perpetrated? These were things that a lot of people were not frankly interested in hearing, but the anti-imperialists helped to keep these issues front and center. 98 00:11:09.040 --> 00:11:19.040 Now, it's sometimes said of the anti-imperialists that they were thinking only in terms of the good of the United States when they opposed colonialism and imperialism. 99 00:11:19.040 --> 00:11:26.040 That is to say that their main critique was that the soul of America will be destroyed if she becomes an imperial power. 100 00:11:26.040 --> 00:11:28.040 And it is true that they did make that argument. 101 00:11:28.040 --> 00:11:36.040 But I think this is not entirely fair to at least some of the anti-imperialists who actually were concerned about the Filipinos themselves. 102 00:11:36.040 --> 00:11:53.040 In 1901, for example, the League passed a resolution instructing its executive committee to use its best efforts in promoting a petition for the President of the United States that General Aguinaldo, Emilio Aguinaldo was the leader of the Filipino rebels, 103 00:11:53.040 --> 00:12:01.040 should be permitted to come to this country under safe conduct to state the case of his people before the American Congress and nation. 104 00:12:01.040 --> 00:12:07.040 Well, needless to say, Theodore Roosevelt ignored that appeal, was not really interested in hearing from Aguinaldo. 105 00:12:07.040 --> 00:12:09.040 But that was the sort of thing the League tried to do. 106 00:12:09.040 --> 00:12:17.040 Or, as I indicated before, they sought to uncover and report abuses against the Philippine population. 107 00:12:17.040 --> 00:12:26.040 For example, the anti-imperialists were seeking to point out the methods of torture that were often used to get information out of some of the people. 108 00:12:26.040 --> 00:12:36.040 And we have here, for instance, a letter that was publicized by the Anti-Imperialist League by a private A.F. Miller of the 32nd United States Volunteers, 109 00:12:36.040 --> 00:12:42.040 who described the so-called water cure, which was one of the favorite methods that was used. 110 00:12:42.040 --> 00:12:44.040 Private Miller said as follows, 111 00:12:44.040 --> 00:12:51.040 We go out on a hike, catch a negro, which is a term they used to refer to natives of the Philippines, and ask him if he has a gun. 112 00:12:51.040 --> 00:13:21.040 A Sergeant in the Ninth United States 113 00:13:21.040 --> 00:13:35.040 John E. White told the Atlanta Constitution that to make a prisoner talk after the water has been forced into them, the soldiers would tap the man's stomach with the butt of their guns. 114 00:13:35.040 --> 00:13:44.040 And if the water did not spurt out of him high enough to satisfy them, in effect, they would, quote, playfully jump on him. 115 00:13:44.040 --> 00:13:47.040 These are very playful people, you understand. 116 00:13:47.040 --> 00:13:57.040 which usually has the desired effect, and when they get through with him, if there are any guns concealed or buried around there, he will very promptly produce them. 117 00:13:57.040 --> 00:14:12.040 A journalistic investigator wrote in 1901, the Spaniard used the torture of water throughout the islands as a means of obtaining information, but they used it sparingly, and only when it appeared evident that the victim was culpable. 118 00:14:12.040 --> 00:14:15.040 Americans seldom do things by halves. 119 00:14:15.040 --> 00:14:21.040 We come from here and announce our intention of freeing the people from three or four hundred years of oppression 120 00:14:21.040 --> 00:14:24.040 and say we are strong and powerful and grand. 121 00:14:24.040 --> 00:14:29.040 Then to resort to inquisitorial methods and use them without discrimination 122 00:14:29.040 --> 00:14:33.040 is unworthy of us and will recoil on us as a nation. 123 00:14:33.040 --> 00:14:38.040 It is painful and humiliating to have to confess that in some of our dealings with the Filipinos 124 00:14:38.040 --> 00:14:56.040 And we seem to be following more or less closely the example of Spain. We have established a penal colony. We have burned native villages near which there has been an ambush or an attack by insurgent guerrillas. We kill the wounded. We resort to torture as a means of obtaining information. 125 00:14:56.040 --> 00:15:06.040 These were the kinds of things the anti-imperialists wanted to bring into the public eye, and yet so often they found the public was unmoved. 126 00:15:06.040 --> 00:15:13.040 One anti-imperialist meditated upon this. What is the significance of such silence? 127 00:15:13.040 --> 00:15:24.040 Do we realize that amidst all the sunshine of our rich, prosperous life, we are being weighed in the balance of a true civilization, of eternal justice, and are being found wanting? 128 00:15:24.040 --> 00:15:33.040 It is the product of arbitrary government authority without justice, force from which the lifeblood of righteousness and truth has run out. 129 00:15:33.040 --> 00:15:39.040 Indeed, not everyone found the Anti-Imperialist League especially endearing. 130 00:15:39.040 --> 00:15:48.040 The Grand Army of the Republic's New York Chapter Commander called for all League members being stripped of their citizenship and, quote, 131 00:15:48.040 --> 00:15:52.640 and, quote, denied the protection of the flag they dishonor. 132 00:15:52.640 --> 00:15:58.400 Teddy Roosevelt described the anti-imperialists as, quote, simply unhung traitors and liars, 133 00:15:58.400 --> 00:16:04.560 slanderers, and scandal mongers to boot. 134 00:16:04.560 --> 00:16:10.600 In about 1968 or the late 60s, Political Science Quarterly featured an interesting article 135 00:16:10.600 --> 00:16:15.240 by Robert Beisner, who was one of the scholars of the Anti-Imperialist League, and he was 136 00:16:15.240 --> 00:16:30.240 Beisner was interested to compare the anti-imperialists of 1898 and the years following to the doves, the anti-war activists of 1968, and he did some interesting comparisons and contrasts. 137 00:16:30.240 --> 00:16:42.240 One thing he noted was that compared with some of the maybe rougher around the edges protesters of 1968, the anti-imperialists were relatively genteel, Beisner found. 138 00:16:42.240 --> 00:16:52.240 So, for example, Thorsten Veblen, as a child, had defaced property in his neighborhood with classical Greek obscenities, in classical Greek. 139 00:16:54.240 --> 00:16:58.240 So this is the sort of thing he means when he says these folks are relatively genteel. 140 00:16:58.240 --> 00:17:03.240 And then he contrasts that with some of the more vulgar forms of protest that occurred in the late 60s. 141 00:17:03.240 --> 00:17:07.240 And he actually quotes Arthur Schlesinger Jr. 142 00:17:07.240 --> 00:17:11.240 There's a hack government historian, if you ever wanted one, 143 00:17:11.240 --> 00:17:16.240 who insisted in 1966 that the President did not want a large Asian war 144 00:17:16.240 --> 00:17:19.240 and quoted President Johnson as saying, 145 00:17:19.240 --> 00:17:25.240 I don't want to save my face, I just want to save my rhymes with glass. 146 00:17:25.240 --> 00:17:30.240 To which Elizabeth Hardwick replied, I can't, being a lady, use that word, 147 00:17:30.240 --> 00:17:38.240 but does he conceive of that portion of himself as extending all the way to Southeast Asia? 148 00:17:38.240 --> 00:17:44.240 Funny thing is, today, that seems relatively genteel to me, I think. 149 00:17:44.240 --> 00:17:52.240 But for all their alleged gentility, nevertheless, the anti-imperialists were withering in their own way. 150 00:17:52.240 --> 00:18:00.240 E.L. Godkin said that the U.S. government had substituted keen, effective slaughter for Spanish, old-fashioned, clumsy slaughter. 151 00:18:00.240 --> 00:18:04.240 William James, the philosopher, was astonished that his country could, quote, 152 00:18:04.240 --> 00:18:07.240 puke up its ancient soul in five minutes. 153 00:18:07.240 --> 00:18:12.240 Andrew Carnegie, the great industrialist, wrote to a friend who favored expansion, 154 00:18:12.240 --> 00:18:18.240 It is a matter of congratulation that you have about finished your work of civilizing the Filipinos. 155 00:18:18.240 --> 00:18:22.240 It is thought that about 8,000 of them have been completely civilized and sent to heaven. 156 00:18:22.240 --> 00:18:24.240 I hope you like it. 157 00:18:24.240 --> 00:18:32.240 Well, again on this line of the alleged gentility of the anti-imperialists, we have the example of the great Edward Atkinson. 158 00:18:32.240 --> 00:18:39.240 Edward Atkinson had been involved in the anti-imperialist league since that initial meeting at Boston's Faneuil Hall. 159 00:18:39.240 --> 00:18:46.240 He actually wrote to the War Department, it was called the War Department, aren't those quaint days when at least they'd be honest? 160 00:18:46.240 --> 00:18:51.240 It's the War Department, let's be honest about it, to get a list of soldiers serving in the Philippines 161 00:18:51.240 --> 00:18:56.240 And he wrote, this is actually a letter he wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury. He wrote, 162 00:19:21.240 --> 00:19:44.240 Well, they never got back to him with a list of addresses so that he could send anti-war propaganda to the troops in the Philippines. 163 00:19:44.240 --> 00:19:46.240 So he went ahead and did it anyway. 164 00:19:46.240 --> 00:19:52.640 He started to send some pamphlets to at least a limited group of officers and American officials and other people in the Philippines as a start. 165 00:19:52.640 --> 00:19:57.840 Postmaster General ordered that all Atkinson pamphlets heading for Manila be seized from the mails. 166 00:19:57.840 --> 00:20:04.840 Atkinson then thanked the government for all the attention, pointing out that interest in his pamphlets had risen dramatically throughout the country. 167 00:20:04.840 --> 00:20:05.440 He wrote, 168 00:20:05.440 --> 00:20:10.440 I think the members of the cabinet have graduated from an asylum for the imbecile and feeble-minded. 169 00:20:10.440 --> 00:20:20.440 They have evidently found out their blunder because the administration papers suddenly ceased their attacks on me all on the same day, and I missed the free advertisement. 170 00:20:20.440 --> 00:20:24.440 I am now trying to stir them up again to provoke another attack. 171 00:20:24.440 --> 00:20:31.440 Now, some sectors of the League were reluctant to support Atkinson in this, although the Chicago branch was fairly supportive. 172 00:20:31.440 --> 00:20:36.440 But he continued his work, and he observed in 1899 that his latest pamphlet was, quote, 173 00:20:36.440 --> 00:20:41.440 This is the strongest bid yet for a limited residence in Fort Warren. 174 00:20:41.440 --> 00:20:46.440 As early as 1896 though, Atkinson had written to the New York Evening Post 175 00:20:46.440 --> 00:20:52.440 with an interesting suggestion for a petition to be drawn up to the US Congress along the following lines. 176 00:20:52.440 --> 00:21:00.440 It is requested that an act may be passed to the effect that any citizen of the United States who proposes to force this country into a war with Great Britain 177 00:21:00.440 --> 00:21:28.440 It is suggested that representatives in Congress shall be assigned to the command of brigades. 178 00:21:28.440 --> 00:21:42.440 Of course, men who, in high public position, have expressed such an earnest desire to assert and defend the honor of the country at any cost, would most enthusiastically vote for this enactment and would immediately enroll themselves for actual service in the field. 179 00:21:42.440 --> 00:21:52.440 This proposal for the immediate enrollment of the Jingo Army will at once develop the sincerity of purpose of the advocates of aggression and violence by their enlistment. 180 00:21:52.440 --> 00:22:07.440 An indirect but great benefit would then ensue by the removal of these persons from the high positions in which they have proved their incapacity to deal with questions of peace, order and industry, and to give them the opportunity to exert and prove their military prowess. 181 00:22:09.440 --> 00:22:14.440 Well, that didn't actually go through, you know, needless to say. Yeah, I know it, right. 182 00:22:14.440 --> 00:22:21.440 But interestingly, again, Atkinson-like story was for laissez-faire, which was an important strain in anti-imperialist thought. 183 00:22:21.440 --> 00:22:25.440 George E. McNeill, for example, summed up the position this way, 184 00:22:25.440 --> 00:22:30.440 Wealth is not so rapidly gained by killing Filipinos as by making shoes. 185 00:22:30.440 --> 00:22:32.440 Simple. 186 00:22:32.440 --> 00:22:36.440 Andrew Carnegie, again, the great industrialist who was an anti-imperialist. 187 00:22:36.440 --> 00:22:41.440 Some of you may know he offered to purchase the independence of the Philippines with a check for $20 million, 188 00:22:41.440 --> 00:22:45.440 which is the amount that the U.S. government had paid Spain for the islands. 189 00:22:45.440 --> 00:22:49.440 The New York Times denounced the offer as, quote, wicked. 190 00:22:49.440 --> 00:22:52.440 Are they ever right about anything, the New York Times? 191 00:22:56.440 --> 00:23:01.440 But at the same time, labor leaders like Samuel Gompers belong to the League, 192 00:23:01.440 --> 00:23:07.440 as did other people like Jane Addams, William James, and a great many others who might be associated with the left. 193 00:23:07.440 --> 00:23:11.440 So it really was a cross-ideological organization. 194 00:23:12.440 --> 00:23:15.440 And yet, the anti-imperialists were unsuccessful. 195 00:23:15.440 --> 00:23:25.440 The Philippines were eventually granted their independence decades later, but by and large the American population seemed fairly uninterested in what the League had to say. 196 00:23:25.440 --> 00:23:31.440 This was something they had to face. Now, why were they unsuccessful? That's a topic for another day. 197 00:23:31.440 --> 00:23:38.440 But there is at least some food for thought in these words by Felix Morley in his book, Freedom and Federalism. 198 00:23:38.440 --> 00:23:42.440 Felix Muller was a great old right journalist and writer, and he said this, 199 00:23:42.440 --> 00:23:46.440 The problem of empire-building is essentially mystical. 200 00:23:46.440 --> 00:23:53.440 It must somehow foster the impression that a man is great in the degree that his nation is great, 201 00:23:53.440 --> 00:24:01.440 that a German as such is superior to a Belgian as such, an Englishman to an Irishman, an American to a Mexican, 202 00:24:01.440 --> 00:24:06.440 merely because the first-named countries are in each case more powerful than their comparatives. 203 00:24:06.440 --> 00:24:12.200 And people who have no individual stature whatsoever are willing to accept this poisonous nonsense 204 00:24:12.200 --> 00:24:17.000 because it gives them a sense of importance without the trouble of any personal effort. 205 00:24:17.000 --> 00:24:18.760 And finally, from Morley, 206 00:24:18.760 --> 00:24:24.200 Empire building is fundamentally an application of mob psychology to the sphere of world politics. 207 00:24:24.200 --> 00:24:27.880 And how well it works is seen by considering the emotional satisfaction 208 00:24:27.880 --> 00:24:33.880 many English long derived from referring to the empire on which the sun never sets. 209 00:24:33.880 --> 00:24:42.880 Some Americans now get the same sort of lift from the fact that the stars and stripes now floats over detachments of quote our boys in 40 foreign countries. 210 00:24:42.880 --> 00:24:49.880 Forty. That's quaint. That's obviously decades ago, only 40. What's going on? Are we losing our backbone? 211 00:24:49.880 --> 00:24:58.880 So the anti-imperialists lose. But what can we learn from them? I think part of the reason that they lose is precisely the reason that's identified by Felix Morley. 212 00:24:58.880 --> 00:25:04.880 is that people have been taught to identify with their state as being, in effect, the highest expression of themselves. 213 00:25:04.880 --> 00:25:11.880 So when you criticize their state, it is as if you are criticizing them, and they will jump to its defense at the drop of a hat. 214 00:25:11.880 --> 00:25:17.880 They think of their government as a football team, the local team, ra-ra, go team. 215 00:25:17.880 --> 00:25:23.880 And you notice that at football games, even when you obviously have a case of pass interference, 216 00:25:23.880 --> 00:25:34.880 The crowd boos when the referee calls pass interference on their team, because ra ra go team, the truth be, well we'll say darned in the spirit of the rest of this talk. 217 00:25:34.880 --> 00:25:46.880 And in effect the same thing goes on now, because when you look at typical conservative type outlets, let's say, it is like you are reading the old Pravda. 218 00:25:46.880 --> 00:25:50.880 No propaganda is too embarrassing for them to repeat. 219 00:25:50.880 --> 00:25:52.880 They'll just go and repeat it. 220 00:25:52.880 --> 00:25:56.880 Propaganda that if the Soviet Union had uttered it in the late 70s, 221 00:25:56.880 --> 00:25:59.880 well, they would have been the first to condemn it as ridiculous and propagandistic. 222 00:25:59.880 --> 00:26:02.880 But again, ra-ra, go team. 223 00:26:02.880 --> 00:26:06.880 Whatever will make the team look good, that we will support no matter how ridiculous. 224 00:26:06.880 --> 00:26:10.880 This is difficult. This is a difficult problem to overcome. 225 00:26:10.880 --> 00:26:15.880 It is a difficult kind of false consciousness, as Joseph Salerno said earlier. 226 00:26:15.880 --> 00:26:21.040 and but this is more than anything what needs to be overcome people need to 227 00:26:21.040 --> 00:26:25.640 learn at some point that the government is not you these people who are governing 228 00:26:25.640 --> 00:26:29.440 and who are oppressing people around the world and who are looting you are not 229 00:26:29.440 --> 00:26:33.840 you they are a different people they're a different group of people from you they 230 00:26:33.840 --> 00:26:38.560 are not you they expropriate you to carry out their worldwide scheme but they are 231 00:26:38.560 --> 00:26:42.200 different from you and they are not you and they are alien and unnecessary now 232 00:26:42.200 --> 00:26:48.200 Now, this is a radical message, but I don't see any other message that can break through this fog. 233 00:26:48.200 --> 00:26:52.200 President Polk, he is our country. That was bad enough. 234 00:26:52.200 --> 00:26:57.200 President McKinley, he is our country. That was much worse. 235 00:26:57.200 --> 00:27:02.200 But what genuine American patriot, in the sense to which story refers, 236 00:27:02.200 --> 00:27:09.200 could bring himself to say, George W. Bush, he is our country? 237 00:27:09.200 --> 00:27:18.200 That alone, I think, reminds us of how important it is to oppose empire with every ideological tool we have at our disposal. 238 00:27:18.200 --> 00:27:19.200 So thank you all very much.