Great example of how misguided conservatives can be on war.
Believing that limited government is good for them, the nativism of the America first movement understood that it was just too bad if Hitler wanted to impose his particular view of statism on the entire world. America First conservatives would have fought Hitler if he had landed on American shores after that global triumph. But until that day, America firsters were prepared to sit the global war out.
In so doing, they were willing to be passive participants in the Holocaust— aware of the inherent tragedies of radical statism but being careful to do nothing about it.
That quandary infects us today. We will not use statist solutions [the american war machine] to stop radical statism [Afghan Talibanism, Liberian Taylorism, Sudanese Bashirsm or Iraqi Saddamism]. We must sit and wait— and perhaps read a few more tomes from Pat Buchannan.
Its rather sad. Hopefully, we have Left that past behind.
And now, friends and countrymen, if the wise and learned philosophers of the elder world, the first observers of nutation and aberration, the discoverers of maddening ether and invisible planets, the inventors of Congreve rockets and Shrapnel shells, should find their hearts disposed to enquire what has America done for the benefit of mankind?
Let our answer be this: America, with the same voice which spoke herself into existence as a nation, proclaimed to mankind the inextinguishable rights of human nature, and the only lawful foundations of government. America, in the assembly of nations, since her admission among them, has invariably, though often fruitlessly, held forth to them the hand of honest friendship, of equal freedom, of generous reciprocity.
She has uniformly spoken among them, though often to heedless and often to disdainful ears, the language of equal liberty, of equal justice, and of equal rights.
She has, in the lapse of nearly half a century, without a single exception, respected the independence of other nations while asserting and maintaining her own.
She has abstained from interference in the concerns of others, even when conflict has been for principles to which she clings, as to the last vital drop that visits the heart.
She has seen that probably for centuries to come, all the contests of that Aceldama the European world, will be contests of inveterate power, and emerging right.
Wherever the standard of freedom and Independence has been or shall be unfurled, there will her heart, her benedictions and her prayers be.
But she goes not abroad, in search of monsters to destroy.
She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all.
She is the champion and vindicator only of her own.
She will commend the general cause by the countenance of her voice, and the benignant sympathy of her example.
She well knows that by once enlisting under other banners than her own, were they even the banners of foreign independence, she would involve herself beyond the power of extrication, in all the wars of interest and intrigue, of individual avarice, envy, and ambition, which assume the colors and usurp the standard of freedom.
The fundamental maxims of her policy would insensibly change from liberty to force....
She might become the dictatress of the world. She would be no longer the ruler of her own spirit....
[America’s] glory is not dominion, but liberty. Her march is the march of the mind. She has a spear and a shield: but the motto upon her shield is, Freedom, Independence, Peace. This has been her Declaration: this has been, as far as her necessary intercourse with the rest of mankind would permit, her practice.
When John Quincy Adams served as U. S. Secretary of State, he delivered this speech to the U.S. House of Representatives on July 4, 1821, in celebration of American Independence Day. I think his words speak for themselves, and bear out what America has become.
The America Firsters to blame for the Holocaust? Nonsense. That is a monstrous libel. If you want to blame anyone (other than Hitler, of course) for the Holocaust (which didn't begin until late 1941) blame FDR. FDR failed to use his influence to give refuge to the Jews either the United States or a third country. In fact, it was his administration which turned the ill fated ship, "St. Lous" from American shores.
By contrast, H.L. Mencken, a conservative/libertarian opponent of U.S. intervention, was writing editorials beginning in the late 1930s urging FDR to let in Jewish refugees. Hamilton Fish also urged that something be done ot help them.
Furthermore, later in the war FDR REFUSED to bomb the death camps or aid the Jews who rebelled in the Warsaw ghetto. Had we listened to Mencken, instead of FDR, the mass murder of the Jews could have been prevented.
I thought his rediscovery of some 19th century political figures from Upstate New York in an earlier book was interesting. It's a part of our history we could know more about, but I wouldn't trust Bill to decide how we should conduct our relations with other countries.
That's outside his area of expertise, and probably he should inform himself more before he offers advice. He likes to paint in broad strokes when a more precise hand is needed.
I wouldn't entirely write off Kauffman's contribution to the political conversation, though. A stopped clock is still right twice a day, and in two hundred and twenty years his heroes can't have been wrong about everything.
No injury, no cause, in this case. Bringing the Holocaust in to the argument is a Strawman at the point of time you are talking about. Until the Japs attacked us most of my family could have cared less about the War. You have to remember that Germany declared war on us, 12/22/41.
Though the results are the same, there are different attitudes behind conservative and liberal isolationism:
Conservative isolationism = America is too good for the world.
Liberal isolationism = The world is too good for America.