WEBVTT NOTE Anti-interventionism in American Politics 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:09.500 Isolationism is deeply rooted in American history. As Selig Adler, the pro-interventionist historian, once pointed out, 2 00:00:09.500 --> 00:00:21.000 quote, quote, the American Revolution was in itself an act of isolation, for it cut the umbilical cord to the mother country, end quote. 3 00:00:21.000 --> 00:00:26.800 Prior to the annexation of Hawaii and the Spanish-American War, it simply did not occur 4 00:00:26.800 --> 00:00:32.120 to anyone that an American empire was either possible or desirable. 5 00:00:32.120 --> 00:00:37.800 There was no anti-interventionist movement in America before the late 1800s for the simple 6 00:00:37.800 --> 00:00:44.480 reason that a marked aversion to foreign adventurism was well nigh universal. 7 00:00:44.480 --> 00:00:49.620 The idea that we ought to keep aloof from the world was not just a political or ideological 8 00:00:49.620 --> 00:00:59.620 The Social Principle upheld by all parties and factions, it was a cultural trait, part of what it meant to be an American. 9 00:00:59.620 --> 00:01:12.620 Isolationism was not the policy of a particular party or movement, the anti-imperialist movement, but the cultural consensus and deeply held conviction of Americans at every social level. 10 00:01:12.620 --> 00:01:14.620 We were different. 11 00:01:14.620 --> 00:01:20.700 For the Europeans, we did not go marauding about in search of trouble, treasure and trade 12 00:01:20.700 --> 00:01:27.700 concessions. Interventionism was the policy of kings and emperors, not of free republican 13 00:01:27.700 --> 00:01:34.180 governments. Seemingly inoculated against the European vice of foreign adventurism, 14 00:01:34.180 --> 00:01:43.180 we were almost, almost never tempted to indulge until February 3rd, 1893. On that day, a curious 15 00:01:43.180 --> 00:01:47.500 The five-man delegation appeared in the city of San Francisco. 16 00:01:47.500 --> 00:01:53.300 Arriving on the steamer Claudine, the five-man delegation represented a conspiracy of white 17 00:01:53.300 --> 00:02:00.020 planters who had seized the island of Hawaii, deposed Queen Liliuokalani, and now sought 18 00:02:00.020 --> 00:02:07.460 to incorporate the islands into the first American outpost of empire. 19 00:02:07.460 --> 00:02:13.060 What one congressional opponent of annexation would later call the vacillus of imperialism 20 00:02:13.060 --> 00:02:16.540 had finally touched U.S. soil. 21 00:02:16.540 --> 00:02:23.240 Now the annexationists pressed their case in terms of the alleged economic and military 22 00:02:23.240 --> 00:02:25.780 benefits to American business. 23 00:02:25.780 --> 00:02:30.460 Hawaii, it was said, is the gateway to the markets of the Orient. 24 00:02:30.460 --> 00:02:37.020 The opponents of annexation, southern democrats and northern mudwumps, saw the conquest of 25 00:02:37.020 --> 00:02:42.300 of the Hawaiian Kingdom as the first breach in the walls of the American Republic and 26 00:02:42.300 --> 00:02:44.340 so it was. 27 00:02:44.340 --> 00:02:50.300 The country in possession for the first time of a colonial empire would be no different 28 00:02:50.300 --> 00:02:54.260 from the imperial powers of Europe. 29 00:02:54.260 --> 00:03:00.180 One such anti-imperialist was the mug lump Carl Schurz, editor of the influential Harper's 30 00:03:00.180 --> 00:03:01.440 Weekly. 31 00:03:01.440 --> 00:03:06.540 He made the same arguments against the annexation of Hawaii as he made against President Grant's 32 00:03:06.540 --> 00:03:10.140 ill-fated attempt to grab Santo Domingo. 33 00:03:10.140 --> 00:03:16.780 Schurz had argued that we could not absorb Santo Domingo and survive as a republic, for 34 00:03:16.780 --> 00:03:23.240 the United States could never rule other peoples by sheer force without doing violence to itself 35 00:03:23.240 --> 00:03:26.940 and fundamentally altering its own nature. 36 00:03:26.940 --> 00:03:33.740 If Santo Domingo were to be annexed, it therefore followed that it must be admitted as a state, 37 00:03:33.740 --> 00:03:40.020 a full-fledged part of a union right up there with Massachusetts and Indiana. 38 00:03:40.020 --> 00:03:45.380 But this, he averred, was impossible, since no republic had ever flourished beneath the 39 00:03:45.380 --> 00:03:47.100 tropical sun. 40 00:03:47.100 --> 00:03:52.420 To annex the American tropics would be to acquire no end of trouble. 41 00:03:52.420 --> 00:03:59.740 Quote, have you thought of what this means, he asked, fancy ten or twelve tropical states 42 00:03:59.740 --> 00:04:03.540 added to the southern states we already possess. 43 00:04:03.540 --> 00:04:09.140 Fancy the senators and representatives of 10 or 12 millions of tropical people. Fancy 44 00:04:09.140 --> 00:04:15.040 them sitting in the halls of Congress, throwing the weight of their intelligence, their morality, 45 00:04:15.040 --> 00:04:20.560 their political notions and habits, their prejudices and passions into the scale of the 46 00:04:20.560 --> 00:04:23.640 destinies of this republic. 47 00:04:23.640 --> 00:04:29.160 He goes on to denounce, quote, a singular delusion that has taken hold of the minds 48 00:04:29.160 --> 00:04:34.880 of Otherwise Clear-Headed Men. It is that our new friendship with England would serve 49 00:04:34.880 --> 00:04:42.040 firmly to secure the world's peace." Now, this suspicion of Britain's baneful influence 50 00:04:42.040 --> 00:04:47.240 is a theme that started in Jefferson's day and resurfaced again during the debate over 51 00:04:47.240 --> 00:04:53.940 what to do with the spoils of the Spanish-American War. Speaking against the annexation bill, 52 00:04:53.940 --> 00:05:00.180 Senator Bland of Georgia declared, quote, the secret reason for this bill, he said, 53 00:05:00.180 --> 00:05:04.260 was to, quote, pressure on the part of Great Britain. 54 00:05:04.260 --> 00:05:11.100 Isolated yet possessed of a vast empire, Great Britain needed allies, really subordinates, 55 00:05:11.100 --> 00:05:16.300 to do her bidding and had settled on the United States to play this role. 56 00:05:16.300 --> 00:05:21.900 Dependent on England to hold our Asiatic territory, the Democratic senator feared we would be 57 00:05:21.900 --> 00:05:27.100 be pulled into the dispute over the division of a Chinese spoils. 58 00:05:27.100 --> 00:05:33.700 In the Senator's opinion, he could not quote, but regard annexation as a deeply laid scheme 59 00:05:33.700 --> 00:05:39.260 to enslave the American people under the present domination of plutocracy. 60 00:05:39.260 --> 00:05:44.660 The power of the Bank of England, the wealth of that country over the banks and money institutions 61 00:05:44.660 --> 00:05:50.940 of this country has brought to bear the combined power of the capitalists of England and America 62 00:05:50.940 --> 00:05:57.560 to control our financial system. The next move is to put our army and navy at the service 63 00:05:57.560 --> 00:06:06.020 of England in the prosecution of Asiatic conquest, the end of which no man can see. 64 00:06:06.020 --> 00:06:13.620 And so, summing up this period, we have three major anti-imperialist themes, three arguments 65 00:06:13.620 --> 00:06:20.620 Against the Rise of Empire 1. The ideological argument. In this view, imperialism 66 00:06:20.620 --> 00:06:26.940 is seen as a direct threat to republican institutions. The idea that we could rule a people without 67 00:06:26.940 --> 00:06:33.820 their consent violated our own anti-colonialist heritage. Furthermore, the decision to set 68 00:06:33.820 --> 00:06:41.220 up a course for empire would inevitably mean a huge standing army, huge public debts and 69 00:06:41.220 --> 00:06:47.460 and the threat to American liberties represented by both of these dire prospects. 70 00:06:47.460 --> 00:06:53.140 In the process of acquiring an empire, we would lose our distinctively American character 71 00:06:53.140 --> 00:06:57.500 and wind up just like the decadent empires of Europe. 72 00:06:57.500 --> 00:07:03.340 Now the second argument is the cultural argument, which condemned imperialism as a threat to 73 00:07:03.340 --> 00:07:07.240 the cultural homogeneity of American society. 74 00:07:07.240 --> 00:07:11.320 We had already fought one civil war over the question of race. 75 00:07:11.320 --> 00:07:16.920 The addition of yet more cultural diversity would add the possibility of yet more racial 76 00:07:16.920 --> 00:07:17.920 strife. 77 00:07:17.920 --> 00:07:23.720 Apart from the ethnic angle, however, there was a more significant point to be made, that 78 00:07:23.720 --> 00:07:29.600 the policy of imperialism would so degrade and contaminate American culture that the very 79 00:07:29.600 --> 00:07:35.560 character of the people would be altered and corrupted almost beyond redemption. 80 00:07:35.560 --> 00:07:43.620 3. The conspiratorial argument, couched in populist rhetoric that imperialism was a policy 81 00:07:43.620 --> 00:07:49.920 of a plutocratic elite of the munitions makers and the bankers with their foreign loans who 82 00:07:49.920 --> 00:07:56.340 made money off the human slaughter. Furthermore, so went the argument, this plutocracy was so 83 00:07:56.340 --> 00:08:01.980 enamored of Great Britain that it was willing to sacrifice our republican heritage and the 84 00:08:01.980 --> 00:08:08.540 and the national interest in playing out the role assigned to us by London. 85 00:08:08.540 --> 00:08:13.520 Now the isolationist reaction to expansionism included elements of both parties. 86 00:08:13.520 --> 00:08:19.080 Both major factions of a democratic party, Brianites and Cleveland Democrats, were generally 87 00:08:19.080 --> 00:08:22.380 opposed to the policy of imperialism. 88 00:08:22.380 --> 00:08:30.180 On the republican side, the Taft Republicans, as in William Howard Taft, excuse me, and 89 00:08:30.180 --> 00:08:36.740 The Roosevelt Bull Moosers were pro-expansionists, while the so-called Mug Wumps, many of whom 90 00:08:36.740 --> 00:08:42.620 were among the founders of the Republican Party, made up an important part of the emerging 91 00:08:42.620 --> 00:08:46.820 anti-imperialist coalition. 92 00:08:46.820 --> 00:08:53.060 The fight over the annexation issue also brought out regional divisions, and these were exacerbated 93 00:08:53.060 --> 00:08:54.840 by the debate. 94 00:08:54.840 --> 00:09:00.240 Revision to imperialism was centered in the South and the Midwest, with important pockets 95 00:09:00.240 --> 00:09:06.900 of organized anti-imperialist activity throughout New England, that bastion of mugwumpery. 96 00:09:06.900 --> 00:09:12.520 In the Midwest, this regionalism was associated with the healthy Jeffersonian hatred of the 97 00:09:12.520 --> 00:09:16.960 Eastern Financial Establishment. 98 00:09:16.960 --> 00:09:22.440 In a broad sense, what made possible the victory of the empire builders and the overthrow of 99 00:09:22.440 --> 00:09:27.800 and the old isolationist mindset, at least among the urban intellectuals and the policymaking 100 00:09:27.800 --> 00:09:35.800 elite, was the political culture of progressivism. This included a wide variety of cultural uplifters, 101 00:09:35.800 --> 00:09:46.320 abolitionists, feminists, prohibitionists, millenarian fundamentalists, militant vegetarians, 102 00:09:46.320 --> 00:09:55.880 And of course, professional intellectuals of every size, shape and description, eager 103 00:09:55.880 --> 00:10:01.320 to try out their endless schemes for the improvement and uplifting of mankind. 104 00:10:01.320 --> 00:10:07.200 It was only natural that these people, having set their sights on saving the nation, would 105 00:10:07.200 --> 00:10:10.600 feel compelled to take on the rest of the world. 106 00:10:10.600 --> 00:10:18.040 This crusading spirit and America's acquisition of overseas colonial empire planted the seeds 107 00:10:18.040 --> 00:10:25.640 that would sprout a crop of myrmidons on the eve of the First World War. 108 00:10:25.640 --> 00:10:32.960 The coming of the Great War gave birth to an anti-interventionist movement colored with 109 00:10:32.960 --> 00:10:36.720 the traditional themes of American anti-imperialism. 110 00:10:36.720 --> 00:10:43.000 As Europe sank into a chaos of blood-drenched darkness, Haiti Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge 111 00:10:43.000 --> 00:10:49.360 and former Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson launched a campaign to reunite the Republicans 112 00:10:49.360 --> 00:10:53.440 and the progressives over the preparedness issue. 113 00:10:53.440 --> 00:10:58.880 President Wilson soon came up with his own proposals to increase military appropriations 114 00:10:58.880 --> 00:11:03.840 as he inched closer to a decision to go to war. 115 00:11:03.840 --> 00:11:08.680 The anti-interventionists struck back when the House of Representatives nearly succeeded 116 00:11:08.680 --> 00:11:14.240 in eliminating the ambitious proposal of a Navy to increase the number of battleships. 117 00:11:14.240 --> 00:11:20.080 An amendment to cut the naval appropriation in half failed by a mere 16 votes and the 118 00:11:20.080 --> 00:11:22.200 battle lines were drawn. 119 00:11:22.200 --> 00:11:31.080 Of the 155 votes cast in favor, the majority were southern and midwestern Democrats. 120 00:11:31.080 --> 00:11:36.320 The agrarian Jeffersonian wing of a democratic party abhorred the rise of a professional 121 00:11:36.320 --> 00:11:42.400 military caste, fearing that it would threaten democracy and pressurize the republic. 122 00:11:42.400 --> 00:11:49.160 Midwestern democrats like Representative Clyde Taverner of Illinois denounced the war trust, 123 00:11:49.160 --> 00:11:52.880 which had cornered the market in international strife. 124 00:11:52.880 --> 00:11:58.640 Georgia populist Tom Watson declared that the real enemy was not abroad, but here at 125 00:11:58.640 --> 00:12:06.720 at Home, in the class legislation of quote, overgrown and insolent monopolies. 126 00:12:06.720 --> 00:12:12.840 Now traditional democratic opposition to militarism and big military budgets was muted, however, 127 00:12:12.840 --> 00:12:18.240 by the fact that they were, after all, the party in power and thus reluctant to oppose 128 00:12:18.240 --> 00:12:21.400 President Wilson's armaments program. 129 00:12:21.400 --> 00:12:27.040 While there was a hard core of anti-preparedness democrats in the House and Senate, their numbers 130 00:12:27.040 --> 00:12:32.400 was dwindled as the pressures of party politics were brought to bear. 131 00:12:32.400 --> 00:12:39.760 On the Republican side, 15 voted for the cut in naval appropriations, including 13 Midwesterners, 132 00:12:39.760 --> 00:12:42.800 most of whom were progressives. 133 00:12:42.800 --> 00:12:46.680 This Republican insurgency represented a significant shift. 134 00:12:46.680 --> 00:12:52.720 For years, many of these same people had gone along with imperialism and voted for a greatly 135 00:12:52.720 --> 00:13:19.160 Representative James L. Sladen, a Texas Democrat, declared, but he suspected, quote, a conspiracy 136 00:13:19.160 --> 00:13:25.900 to force our country into war with Germany. He attacked the great and influential lobby 137 00:13:25.900 --> 00:13:30.960 operating about the halls of Congress and the press, whose purpose is not only to feed 138 00:13:30.960 --> 00:13:37.640 the maw of the munitions makers but also to deploy our large forces in Europe. The people, 139 00:13:37.640 --> 00:13:44.440 he contended, must be mobilized against, quote, the majority of the newspapers and great commercial 140 00:13:44.440 --> 00:13:55.880 Here Slayden is expressing the main theme of anti-imperialism, first raised in the battle 141 00:13:55.880 --> 00:14:02.320 against annexation of Hawaii and the Philippines and now amplified and applied to Wilson's 142 00:14:02.320 --> 00:14:09.880 military buildup and his handling of the submarine crisis, a warmongering and profiteering elite 143 00:14:09.880 --> 00:14:16.040 Motivated by greed and a treasonous devotion to Great Britain was conspiring to involve 144 00:14:16.040 --> 00:14:20.060 us in the intrigues of Europe and get us into the war. 145 00:14:20.060 --> 00:14:26.920 This concept, first articulated by the anti-imperialist movement of the 1890s, was a favorite populist 146 00:14:26.920 --> 00:14:32.080 theme that developed and grew stronger with the years, carrying over into the isolationist 147 00:14:32.080 --> 00:14:38.360 resistance to World War I and World War II and permeating the rhetoric of non-interventionist 148 00:14:38.360 --> 00:14:48.440 Now, at about this time, there came into existence the first internationalist organization in 149 00:14:48.440 --> 00:14:59.600 American history with the rather ominous name of the League to Enforce Peace. 150 00:14:59.600 --> 00:15:06.900 President William Howard Taft served as chairman, and the League was the creature of the internationally 151 00:15:06.900 --> 00:15:19.060 It was not some fringe group of fuzzy-minded radical pacifists, but the big business establishment 152 00:15:19.060 --> 00:15:25.060 itself that was sponsoring and propagandizing the most wide-ranging scheme of international 153 00:15:25.060 --> 00:15:27.820 organization yet devised. 154 00:15:27.820 --> 00:15:33.240 The League wanted to set up an International Council of Conciliation, which would hear 155 00:15:33.240 --> 00:15:39.680 were all disputes between nations and force would be used against so-called outlaw nations 156 00:15:39.680 --> 00:15:43.120 who refused to submit. 157 00:15:43.120 --> 00:15:48.160 William Jennings Bryan denounced the League Plan and Randolph Bourne, the young hunchback 158 00:15:48.160 --> 00:15:54.720 radical and literary avenging angel of pre-war liberalism, described it as, quote, an alliance 159 00:15:54.720 --> 00:16:03.000 of all against each that practically ensures that every war within the system would be 160 00:16:03.000 --> 00:16:05.920 a World War. 161 00:16:05.920 --> 00:16:12.320 This debate over the merits of internationalism had no effect on the 1916 election. 162 00:16:12.320 --> 00:16:17.560 As happened so often in U.S. history, it was a bipartisan internationalism that faced the 163 00:16:17.560 --> 00:16:21.520 voters that fateful presidential election year. 164 00:16:21.520 --> 00:16:26.720 The Republican nominee was Charles Evans Hughes, sounding very much like his friends in the 165 00:16:26.720 --> 00:16:33.220 and the need to enforce peace and foreign policy played almost no role in the campaign. 166 00:16:33.220 --> 00:16:39.840 It wasn't until after Wilson's election victory that the controversy started to heat up again. 167 00:16:39.840 --> 00:16:45.280 At a banquet given by the Democratic National Committee in honor of William Jennings Bryan, 168 00:16:45.280 --> 00:16:50.520 the guest of honor denounced any thought of, quote, our being an international policeman, 169 00:16:50.520 --> 00:16:55.860 end quote, and called for a constitutional amendment requiring the submission of every 170 00:16:55.860 --> 00:17:03.780 Declaration of War to a Referendum of the People except in case of actual invasion of 171 00:17:03.780 --> 00:17:04.780 our country. 172 00:17:04.780 --> 00:17:07.980 Now, this is a theme that recurs over and over again. 173 00:17:07.980 --> 00:17:13.460 During the Second World War, there was the Ludlow Amendment, the heroic Ludlow Amendment, 174 00:17:13.460 --> 00:17:17.940 and even today, there is now a movement, though I guess it's mostly on the left, to do the 175 00:17:17.940 --> 00:17:20.780 same thing. 176 00:17:20.780 --> 00:17:25.400 Senator William E. Borah, a Republican of Idaho who had sometimes gone along with the 177 00:17:25.400 --> 00:17:31.240 preparedness campaign, charged that the President's League of Nations represented a scheme that 178 00:17:31.240 --> 00:17:34.760 would drag this country into endless foreign wars. 179 00:17:34.760 --> 00:17:41.980 We were headed, warned the Senator, into the storm center of European politics. 180 00:17:41.980 --> 00:17:48.460 The League of Nations proposal solidified the progressive Republican response to Wilsonian 181 00:17:48.460 --> 00:17:56.100 and Internationalism, and pretended a shift in the alignment of the two parties in the 182 00:17:56.100 --> 00:17:58.580 realm of foreign policy. 183 00:17:58.580 --> 00:18:05.540 From this time until the Cold War, the Republicans moved toward isolationism and the Democrats 184 00:18:05.540 --> 00:18:11.340 moved increasingly toward interventionism, reversing their historic roles. 185 00:18:11.340 --> 00:18:16.980 Now there were, of course, exceptions, Taft and his followers remained internationalists 186 00:18:16.980 --> 00:18:23.060 and Teddy Roosevelt and Lodge also were in favor of maintaining our international alliances, 187 00:18:23.060 --> 00:18:28.340 but these leaders came more and more to be in a minority in their own parties. 188 00:18:28.340 --> 00:18:34.140 As a New Republic editorial put it, what had been the party of jingoism and imperial overstretch 189 00:18:34.140 --> 00:18:41.260 was now proposing, quote, to crouch at its own fireside, build a high tariff wall, arm 190 00:18:41.260 --> 00:18:47.080 Firm against the whole world, cultivate no friendships, take no steps to forestall another 191 00:18:47.080 --> 00:18:50.600 great war, and then let things rip. 192 00:18:50.600 --> 00:18:56.400 The party which was once inspired by the American Union is becoming the party of secession and 193 00:18:56.400 --> 00:19:05.600 states' rights as against world union, quote unquote, and I'm in favor of it. 194 00:19:05.600 --> 00:19:10.360 Among the Democrats, the party regulars were forsaking their traditional fealty to the 195 00:19:10.360 --> 00:19:17.360 and the Foreign Policy of Thomas Jefferson and uniting around President Wilson's internationalist program. 196 00:19:17.360 --> 00:19:27.360 While some Democrats spoke out in defense of the old program, opposition from the Brian wing was muted, as was Brian himself. 197 00:19:27.360 --> 00:19:47.360 The vote in the House of Representatives on the war resolution reflected the politics of the emerging isolationist coalition, which would retain its essential character for the next 40 years. 198 00:19:47.360 --> 00:19:56.360 During that debate, isolationist themes were reiterated with renewed vigor. 199 00:19:56.360 --> 00:20:02.440 In entering the war, we would hand the victory to the money-mad profiteers who trafficked 200 00:20:02.440 --> 00:20:03.600 in arms. 201 00:20:03.600 --> 00:20:07.800 In spreading democracy and peace abroad, we would lose it at home. 202 00:20:07.800 --> 00:20:12.280 In saving the Europeans, we would lose our own souls. 203 00:20:12.280 --> 00:20:16.080 Fifty-four congressmen voted against Wilson's war. 204 00:20:16.080 --> 00:20:21.560 Thirty-five Republicans, eighteen Democrats, and one Socialist. 205 00:20:21.560 --> 00:20:27.320 Although there were a few conservative Republicans who voted no, most were left-wing populists 206 00:20:27.320 --> 00:20:33.740 of the Lafollette variety, mid-westerners who hated bigness, the eastern establishment 207 00:20:33.740 --> 00:20:40.920 and the government-business partnership that was the basis of the state capitalist order. 208 00:20:40.920 --> 00:20:47.760 Virtually all the Democrats who voted no were southern brianites who remembered their party's 209 00:20:47.760 --> 00:21:02.720 Now, in the opposition to the First World War, the three themes of the anti-interventionist 210 00:21:02.720 --> 00:21:05.800 movement were amplified and developed. 211 00:21:05.800 --> 00:21:11.800 The ideological argument was reflected in the progressive critique of war as the policy 212 00:21:11.800 --> 00:21:16.720 of a ruthless elite that profits from the slaughter. 213 00:21:16.720 --> 00:21:21.880 The Republic had been overthrown by such men and the populist progressives meant to take 214 00:21:21.880 --> 00:21:23.720 it back. 215 00:21:23.720 --> 00:21:31.040 After the Great War, the cultural and conspiratorial themes tended to merge into a single argument, 216 00:21:31.040 --> 00:21:37.520 that foreign lobbyists in government and the media exert a decisive influence in the councils 217 00:21:37.520 --> 00:21:40.280 of power. 218 00:21:40.280 --> 00:21:43.720 Universal Revisionism played a key role. 219 00:21:43.720 --> 00:21:52.800 Harry Elmer Barnes' books, The Genesis of the World War and In Quest of Truth and Justice 220 00:21:52.800 --> 00:21:56.720 gave voice to the universal mood of disillusionment. 221 00:21:56.720 --> 00:22:01.660 Barnes' critique of U.S. intervention in the Great War was preceded by, and thematically 222 00:22:01.660 --> 00:22:17.740 Bowsman had retired from the Washington State Supreme Court and devoted himself to writing 223 00:22:17.740 --> 00:22:23.100 the first American book to expose the myth of German war guilt. 224 00:22:23.100 --> 00:22:29.860 Writing in H. L. Mencken's American Mercury, Bowsman asked, Was ever a country so bedeviled 225 00:22:29.860 --> 00:22:36.020 Has there ever been one in all history in which the class most powerful in controlling 226 00:22:36.020 --> 00:22:42.820 government and public opinion was determinedly bent on giving away enormous sums of the country's 227 00:22:42.820 --> 00:22:51.620 money to nations already heavily armed and openly expressing contempt for our sacrifice, 228 00:22:51.620 --> 00:22:53.700 which they would accept only as their due? 229 00:22:53.700 --> 00:23:00.020 It is an actual fact that in many circles of wealth and fashion in this country, one 230 00:23:00.020 --> 00:23:05.740 who takes his country's side in these debates is put to shame at dinner tables." 231 00:23:05.740 --> 00:23:12.300 Well, it all depended on whose dinner table you ate at. 232 00:23:12.300 --> 00:23:17.760 In the East, among the Tory-loving would-be aristocrats of American society, this was 233 00:23:17.760 --> 00:23:18.760 no doubt true. 234 00:23:18.760 --> 00:23:25.600 But in the Midwest, a new Americanism was brewing. The general disillusionment that 235 00:23:25.600 --> 00:23:32.320 follows any war, combined with popular resentment against British wartime propaganda and their 236 00:23:32.320 --> 00:23:37.800 attempt to get out of paying their war debts to the United States, reached a boiling point 237 00:23:37.800 --> 00:23:46.280 in the late 20s. A wave of anti-British feeling swept the country, and a coalition of groups 238 00:23:46.280 --> 00:23:51.760 such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Patriotic League for the Preservation of American 239 00:23:51.760 --> 00:23:59.960 History joined forces to get rid of the Anglophilic bias in the nation's school books. 240 00:23:59.960 --> 00:24:05.440 The Veterans of Foreign Wars declared at that time that, quote, the heroic history of a 241 00:24:05.440 --> 00:24:10.080 nation is the drum and pipe music to which it marches. 242 00:24:10.080 --> 00:24:15.440 It makes a mighty difference whether America continues to quick-step to Yankee doodle or 243 00:24:15.440 --> 00:24:18.440 or takes the marking time to God Save the King. 244 00:24:18.440 --> 00:24:20.440 Now this is a mass movement. 245 00:24:20.440 --> 00:24:27.440 Of course today this is almost inconceivable, but perhaps not. 246 00:24:27.440 --> 00:24:35.440 In October 1927, Bausman testified in the celebrated case of William McAndrew, the superintendent of schools in Chicago, 247 00:24:35.440 --> 00:24:43.440 who had been suspended for authorizing blatantly pro-British textbooks with an explicitly internationalist bias. 248 00:24:43.440 --> 00:25:00.440 Initiated by Chicago Mayor Big Bill Thompson and his advisor, pro-American journalist and author, Charles Grant Miller, the campaign to decolonize and reclaim the history of this country was given voice in Bousman's testimony. 249 00:25:00.440 --> 00:25:10.440 England, he said, had, quote, beguiled us into war, took all the spoils of it and did not want to pay her debts, end quote. 250 00:25:10.440 --> 00:25:16.040 The inculcation of American use with a treasonous reverence for the so-called mother country 251 00:25:16.040 --> 00:25:22.720 was the work of, quote, financiers of England who seek, first, the full cancellation of 252 00:25:22.720 --> 00:25:28.360 England's war debt to the United States and, second, the placing of the Union Jack wherever 253 00:25:28.360 --> 00:25:34.560 now flies the stars and stripes, end quote. 254 00:25:34.560 --> 00:25:40.120 Now the trumpet of this Midwestern isolationism of the right was Colonel Robert Rutherford 255 00:25:40.120 --> 00:25:47.360 McCormick's Chicago Tribune newspaper, the flagship newspaper of the McCormick Medal 256 00:25:47.360 --> 00:25:50.480 Patterson newspaper chain. 257 00:25:50.480 --> 00:25:55.880 McCormick regularly excoriated our deadbeat so-called allies for welching on their war 258 00:25:55.880 --> 00:26:02.700 deaths and castigating the State Department for toting up to the British. 259 00:26:02.700 --> 00:26:08.740 Another editorial voice raised against internationalism was that of George Horace Lorimer, founding 260 00:26:08.740 --> 00:26:35.740 Liberals disillusioned by the Treaty of Versailles, Midwestern progressives wary of a foreign interventionism and economic centralism, and conservative republicans who hated FDR and all his works, this was the broad-based coalition that coalesced into the movement we know today as the old right. 261 00:26:35.740 --> 00:26:43.940 Forge in the battle against the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's drive to war, 262 00:26:43.940 --> 00:26:50.060 the old right coalition transformed the Midwestern progressive republicans who had initially 263 00:26:50.060 --> 00:26:57.980 supported the New Deal into the bitterest Roosevelt haters in the country and principled 264 00:26:57.980 --> 00:27:03.020 opponents eventually of big government. 265 00:27:03.020 --> 00:27:09.060 Our evolution is encapsulated in the career of the writer and publicist John T. Flynn, 266 00:27:09.060 --> 00:27:14.980 who started out as a New Republic liberal and opponent of big business monopolism and 267 00:27:14.980 --> 00:27:21.260 became the outstanding organizer and spokesman for the America First Committee and the old 268 00:27:21.260 --> 00:27:23.820 right conservatives. 269 00:27:23.820 --> 00:27:30.060 In Flynn's mind, opposition to centralism and militarism were the main targets, were 270 00:27:30.060 --> 00:27:35.420 He was the main tenet of the liberal creed, and in his campaign against the New Deal and 271 00:27:35.420 --> 00:27:38.940 the war, he was merely being consistent. 272 00:27:38.940 --> 00:27:46.780 But in fact, there was a change in the analysis of the old-fashioned liberals, a clarification 273 00:27:46.780 --> 00:27:50.580 of their previously confused economic views. 274 00:27:50.580 --> 00:27:53.100 They became opponents of big government. 275 00:27:53.100 --> 00:28:02.100 Yesterday's critics of capitalism were transformed, like Flynn, into advocates of free enterprise 276 00:28:02.100 --> 00:28:08.180 and strictly limited government. 277 00:28:08.180 --> 00:28:14.740 In the old right, in the America First Committee, all the main currents of anti-interventionism, 278 00:28:14.740 --> 00:28:26.740 Populism, Progressivism, Nationalism, Libertarianism merged into a single movement in opposition to the New Deal and the war. 279 00:28:26.740 --> 00:28:32.740 Out of this popular front, the modern conservative movement was born. 280 00:28:32.740 --> 00:28:39.740 Now, I've already dealt with this subject in my book, 281 00:28:39.740 --> 00:28:43.380 Reclaiming the American right, the lost legacy of the conservative movement. 282 00:28:43.380 --> 00:28:48.040 And since I hate to repeat myself, I'm not going to go into a big analysis of it here. 283 00:28:48.040 --> 00:28:51.600 And I refer you to that work 284 00:28:51.600 --> 00:28:55.340 for an extensive treatment of the subject. 285 00:28:55.340 --> 00:28:59.860 Suffice to say that the old right is 286 00:28:59.860 --> 00:29:04.180 sort of hovering over this room, watching us. 287 00:29:04.180 --> 00:29:08.660 And they are intellectual ancestors, 288 00:29:08.660 --> 00:29:21.180 Now, those who oppose the transformation of our American Republic into an empire hailed 289 00:29:21.180 --> 00:29:27.420 from both ends of the political spectrum, from far right to far left and virtually all 290 00:29:27.420 --> 00:29:29.940 points in between. 291 00:29:29.940 --> 00:29:35.940 From the free silver populism of William Jennings Bryan to the old right laissez-faireism 292 00:29:35.940 --> 00:29:41.980 of Garrett Gouret. The various strands of non-interventionist thought are made of distinct 293 00:29:41.980 --> 00:29:49.580 and diverse fibers. The history of the anti-interventionist movement is the story of how those disparate 294 00:29:49.580 --> 00:29:58.660 threads have been slowly woven together over time. It is the story of a developing Americanism, 295 00:29:58.660 --> 00:30:05.460 of an American ideology that encompasses not only foreign but domestic policy, of a libertarian 296 00:30:05.460 --> 00:30:11.020 and Nationalism that extols America as the fatherland of liberty. 297 00:30:11.020 --> 00:30:17.300 The evolution of this ideology is an ongoing process of which this historic conference 298 00:30:17.300 --> 00:30:19.900 is a vitally important part.