Macron’s Faux Pas on Nationalism

“I said that Britain needed “Brexit” in 1914.”

You nailed that! I’ve never heard it put that way. And the Brits acted as an enemy of the USA before we were involved. We were neutral and had a legal right to trade with anyone we pleased. The Brits put up a quarantine around Germany and told us they would attack any US ship that traded with the Germans. Germany responded with submarine blockaids and the Brits made a stink about this (as they packed the Lusitania full of ammo)

With the royal navy, and with the brand new central bank the foisted upon us, the Brits essentially cajoled the USA into joining into yet another of europe’s idiotic wars. At gunpoint they demanded we only trade with them, even to the point of demanding the right to inspect cargoes here in America. Soon they were our only trading partner. At the point they owed us a massive debt, we had to join that side as we were financially bound and could not let our debtor get defeated.
The Brits cut the undersea cable to the continent, so all news had to go through them. This allowed non-stop british war news and propaganda to go to America and made it impossible for Americans to hear anything but the British viewpoint.

Another fun idea, their plan to involve us was for us to contribute soldiers to be under the meatgrinder command of the incompetent British generals.
Pershing saved countless lives by his refusal to allow that.

Everyone crows about how the Brits were our friends in WWI. But look at the story of the naval limitations treaty negotiations in the 1920s. Britain still viewed the USA as a potential adversary and insisted on a heavy superior naval position to the USA.

Another little factoid. In WWI the all German men had the right to vote since the 1860s. The Brits did not get this right until 1918 (because of the war). Before the war only property owners could vote. That was at best 1 out of 7 British men.
So in the war to make the world safe for democracy, we joined the British side which could vote, and the Russian side which was an absolute Monarchy... to defeat the German side which had full voting rights.

The more you look at WWI the more depraved all the leaders were, including our own.

I think it’s worse than that. I think a lot of European countries are strongly, strongly Nationalist but they are all strongly, strongly concerned with how they look to the rest of the world. This week “Nationalist” is a dirty word, so they pretend they aren’t, while smugly being being exactly that!

The countries that were under the Soviet Union (Except East Germany) are too happy with their relatively new way of life to care enough to pretend.

There still probably would have been something like the FBI even if Wilson had never been elected & we had never participated in WWI.

There was something like an American INTERPOL formed in 1896 called National Bureau of Criminal Identification. Formed originally by the National Police Chiefs Union so sort of a private organization! Originally in Chicago, Pinkerton shared his files with the organization. In 1902 it moved to Washington DC, where it functioned as a quasi-government agency that shared criminal ID information across state lines.

The McKinley assassination and assassination of government leaders - Empress Elizabeth of Austro-Hungary, the Italian PM, others in Europe pointed to a rising threat of anarchism, etc. The violence in the US labor movement all rightly or wrongly contributed to this fear. It was certainly international in scope as well as for the US interstate. It was strongly felt there was a need to coordinate LE & investigate at the national level. The FBI’s forerunner, the Bureau of Investigation (BOI) was created on July 26, 1908. First director was a guy named Stanley W. Finch. Its first official task was enforcing the Mann Act. It actually had to catalog “houses of prostitution” - I guess nation wide! (Now that would be a “Wild Wild West - James West/Artemis Gordon episode to write home about!). The two organizations were later merged. Then Wilson & WWI, Palmer Raids, etc., then Prohibition - the crime associated with it, the Osage murders, all drive the BOI to move from just doing investigations to full police powers - weapons & have arrest powers - i.e., the FBI.

Again I would have to say the desire for a national federal level police agency was already there due to the times & circumstances that originally had little to do with Wilson & WWI. I still think you would have ended up with some form of a federal police force.

Now I am NOT absolving Wilson of his arrogant progressive nuttiness. I just don’t think it applies here.

Yeah, I doubt that. If you think following Pierre Joseph Proudhon or Bakunin is somehow following the Founding Fathers, that’s where you’re wrong. Even Benjamin Franklin denounced the French Revolution and democracy as being “a couple of wolves debating a lamb regarding the supper menu.” And let’s face it, based on your remark promoting the Jacobins earlier, you probably would have preferred that America die by people slaughtering their neighbors September Massacres style for a sheer laugh.

Heck, Thomas Jefferson actually enacted loyalty oaths going by Christopher A. Ferrara, and may have rivaled Obama as a big government ogre. And don’t get me started on his cheerleading the Jacobins even while they were massacring everyone, while the other Founding Fathers were rightfully disgusted with it (heck, John Adams predicted from the start it would end very badly and he never even set foot in the country.). You might as well denounce the Founding Fathers for stopping America from resembling anything they gave us if we go by that train of thought.

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