Posted on 12/29/2001 12:08:16 AM PST by NoCurrentFreeperByThatName
Sixty years after Pearl Harbor, we are at war again, and comparisons with 1941 are inevitable. Some people think the country ain’t what it used to be. And they’re right: it ain’t. But there are interesting parallels.
Writing in The Weekly Standard, David Brooks notes that America in 1941 was far more upbeat than today:
"Everybody had a patriotic duty, it seems, to be optimistic. Being happy was a sign of success. It wasn’t yet cool be thoughtfully gloomy or alienated." This spirit was reflected in the American press, which was much more eager for war then than now.
Brooks supports this portrait of 1941 with many citations from the press of that time. Unfortunately, he overlooks a crucial fact: many of those "patriots" who boosted war were driven by foreign sympathies.
Brooks quotes disproportionately from two magazines:
The Nation and Life. The Nation was hardly a mainstream publication: it was the leading pro-Soviet magazine of its day. Even before Pearl Harbor, it had called for U.S. intervention into World War II on the Soviet side. No wonder it rejoiced when the United States was pulled into the war. As one of its writers exulted, "Here is the time when a man can be what an American means, can fight for what America has always meant – an audacious, adventurous seeking for a decent earth."
But Brooks fails to mention that Joseph Stalin had a substantial "amen corner" in this country, and especially in the press. It was hardly pure patriotism that made such people pro-war; when Stalin turned openly anti-American after the war, they became anti-American too.
Life magazine was the creature of Henry Luce, a globalist who had his own reasons for supporting war. Born in China, the son of Protestant missionaries, Luce deeply loved China and hated its Japanese conquerors. He hoped America would rescue China and establish a benign hegemony over the whole world.
Another foreign country had its partisans here:
Great Britain. Many Americans, especially people of English stock in the East, wanted the United States to save the "mother country" from Germany. But this too was a minority sentiment. Before Pearl Harbor, most Americans strongly opposed going to war, especially if it meant sacrificing their sons to foreign interests. Arthur Schlesinger (again The Nation) argued that the Republican Party must, in Brooks’s words, "jettison its heartland isolationism and embrace the East Coast establishment’s internationalism."
As Brooks notes, "The belligerent voices were on the left; the doves were on the far right, and Pearl Harbor delivered a crushing blow to those isolationists." Well, it was hardly "the far right." It was indeed the "heartland" of the United States. At least 80 per cent of the country had been "isolationists," if that’s what you call wanting to spare your sons’ lives. The shock of Pearl Harbor changed everything in a flash.
Since World War I, American enthusiasts for war have featured "amen corners" for several foreign countries:
Britain, the Soviet Union, China, and, today, Israel. All these groups have agitated for war and, through the press and other media, deluged the public with propaganda. Britain even produced movies designed to influence American opinion its way; Winston Churchill himself helped write the script for That Hamilton Woman, starring Laurence Olivier as Lord Nelson and Vivien Leigh as his mistress. It portrayed Nelson’s heroism against Napoleon, in implied analogy to Britain’s struggle against Hitler.
So the relation between America in 1941 and America in 2001 is a little more complicated, the contrast less stark, than Brooks would have us believe. In fact The Weekly Standard illustrates the point. Just as the earlier pro-war press wanted America to fight the enemies of Britain, China, and the Soviet Union, the Standard wants America to fight the enemies of Israel. It won’t settle for defeating Osama bin Laden and his Taliban allies; it insists that America must also make war on Iraq and other countries opposed to Israel.
So when we hear patriotic-sounding voices calling for war, we ought to ask who really wants war, who stands to benefit from it, and why. Time and again the most genuinely patriotic people – derided by the elites as "heartland isolationists" – have had the real interests of America at heart.
Copyright (c) 2001 by Griffin Internet Syndicate. All rights reserved.
"But Brooks fails to mention that Joseph Stalin had a substantial "amen corner" in this country, and especially in the press. It was hardly pure patriotism that made such people pro-war; when Stalin turned openly anti-American after the war, they became anti-American too."
Hey, somebody tell 'the Nation' that Stalin is dead already....as well as a few million Russians under his reign.
It's just to bad that his ideas didn't die with him.
You can't repudiate the fact that these "amen corners" don't still exist.
I'm not quite sure of the meaning of "amen corner", but I agree that there's various lobbyists in the u.s., especially those with foreign ties which makes isolationism even less practical...i.e. Cuban exiles, etc.
Let's see, practically every poll taken since 9/11 says that a majority of Americans support (i.e. want) war and if I'm remembering right, polls also indicate that a majority of Americans want us to take out Saddam Hussein. Who stands to benefit from it: American citizens.
If Mr. Rockwell were to have his way, we would lose several thousand MORE American citizens at the hands of Saddam Hussein and his thugs before taking out America's enemies in Iraq and elsewhere. How many American citizens would have to die before we would act according to Mr. Rockwell's isolationist standards?
-penny
Different points of view, perhaps? The source link for articles posted on FR is at the top. If you don't like, don't read it.
I don't think that the lobbyists for foreign countries make isolationism less practical. I think that they apply pressure to elected individuals to almost shame them in to supporting thier causes.
How many would have died if we were staying home to begin with?
I'm not a member of Mr. Rockwell's "crew". I posted the article for discussion purposes. Thanks for bringing your enlightening point of view to the thread.
Joseph Sobran is routinely featured in The Conservative Chronicles. I suppose you consider that publication to be garbage also then?
redrock--Constitutional Terrorist
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