From
the transcript of Trump talking to the NYT.
TRUMP: It’s just, no. In fact when I said America First, people said, “Oh, wait a minute, isn’t that a historical term?” And when they told me, I said: “Look, it’s America First. This is not ——”
SANGER: You were familiar with the history of the phrase.
TRUMP: I was familiar, but it wasn’t used for that reason. It was used as a brand-new, very modern term.
HABERMAN: What does it mean to you?
TRUMP: Meaning we are going to take care of this country first before we worry about everybody else in the world.
Much more at the link.
Here's some background on the Charles Lindbergh use of the phrase "America First," including the famous Des Moines speech of September 11, 1941, which I'm reading in full for the first time. Excerpt:
When this war started in Europe, it was clear that the American people were solidly opposed to entering it. Why shouldn't we be? We had the best defensive position in the world; we had a tradition of independence from Europe; and the one time we did take part in a European war left European problems unsolved, and debts to America unpaid....
The three most important groups who have been pressing this country toward war are the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt administration...
First, the British: It is obvious and perfectly understandable that Great Britain wants the United States in the war on her side..... Her geographical position is such that she cannot win the war by the use of aviation alone, regardless of how many planes we send her. Even if America entered the war, it is improbable that the Allied armies could invade Europe and overwhelm the Axis powers. But one thing is certain. If England can draw this country into the war, she can shift to our shoulders a large portion of the responsibility for waging it and for paying its cost....
The second major group I mentioned is the Jewish. It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race. No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences.
Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastations. A few far-sighted Jewish people realize this and stand opposed to intervention. But the majority still do not.
Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government.
I am not attacking either the Jewish or the British people. Both races, I admire. But I am saying that the leaders of both the British and the Jewish races, for reasons which are as understandable from their viewpoint as they are inadvisable from ours, for reasons which are not American, wish to involve us in the war.
We cannot blame them for looking out for what they believe to be their own interests, but we also must look out for ours. We cannot allow the natural passions and prejudices of other peoples to lead our country to destruction.
The Roosevelt administration is the third powerful group which has been carrying this country toward war. Its members have used the war emergency to obtain a third presidential term for the first time in American history. They have used the war to add unlimited billions to a debt which was already the highest we have ever known....
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130 comments:
Yeah, I agree that the Charles Lindbergh noninterventionist/isolationist thing isn't what Trump's talking about exactly.
Precisely the point I raised in comments on this blog more than a week ago.
I expect the national press to renew a national discussion on 1930's American isolationism.
People are welcome to all sorts of differing views on Lundbergh, "America First," and the history if isolationism. But the simple fact is that the Trump campaign will be inviting a rear-guard action in that subject for the duration.
As someone who believes that history should not be judged retrospectively based on current worldviews, I'd rather not try to compare. Lindbergh's view became very unpopular but his many accomplishments and can-do attitude cannot be denied and should define his place in history. America First means, to Trump, that our nation is more important to us than it is in its global context.
The purpose of the false equivalence is quite obvious. Wasn't Lindbergh opposed to fighting Hitler? Didn't that make him in some vague way pro-Hitler? And if Trump uses a phrase that Lindbergh used then can't we characterize Trump as being in some way pro-Hitler, or in favor of some of the things Hitler might well have been in favor of?
That this is historically illiterate is not the point, of course. The point is make Trump a Nazi.
Empires get stretched thin and eventually collapse. I think it safe to say a majority of the country recognizes how thin the US is now spread trying to control events overseas. Hell, Obama ran on this theme himself in 2008, and yet nothing changed- we are still fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now in Syria. Trump gets this, even if D.C. pundits don't.
Look for my post from last month:
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2016/06/the-political-system-thats-rigged-says.html?m=1
The syllogism simply doesn't apply, though the media will play it for all it's worth.
Lindbergh It is not difficult to understand why Jewish people desire the overthrow of Nazi Germany. The persecution they suffered in Germany would be sufficient to make bitter enemies of any race. No person with a sense of the dignity of mankind can condone the persecution of the Jewish race in Germany. But no person of honesty and vision can look on their pro-war policy here today without seeing the dangers involved in such a policy both for us and for them. Instead of agitating for war, the Jewish groups in this country should be opposing it in every possible way for they will be among the first to feel its consequences.
Tolerance is a virtue that depends upon peace and strength. History shows that it cannot survive war and devastations.
A very sound analysis, except that it was too late for the strength part of peace and strength. Weakness had already invited Hitler to be aggressive. It was probably too late for peace and strength.
And then a paragraph later he starts going on about the Jewish "control" of the media.
Lindy tried to redeem himself by enlisting in the air force and had a distinguished record in the Pacific. He did not do milk runs. But it was not enough to salvage his reputation.
"America First" meant and means "We the People" and "Posterity" (before the former was disenfranchised with anti-native policies and the latter was excised through the invention of abortion rights and resumption of abortion rites). It's also a reference to the traditional perspective of people individually and as a community reconciling moral and natural imperatives.
That's a much less inflammatory speech than I expected given the certitude with which history paints him as a pro-Nazi anti-Semite.
If the US President isn't going to put America first, I'd wonder what those who object would offer in it's place?
Passing the international test?
Citizenship of the World?
Global Warming?
At some point you really should just cut these people off and start using new media.
The purpose of the NYT is to take any interview of a Republican and then distort their words as much as possible.
You have to be a reporter, an intellectual, or a Democrat to think Trump was trying to be Lindbergh with saying America First.
I'm disappointed this thread is not about plagiarism, Margaret Higgins Sanger or the carbon footprint of Trump's airplane.
And didn't McCain run on the slogan "Country First", and isn't he held up by the left as the "decent" kind of Republican.
Country First or America First... the difference is... what?
Trump should come up with a different slogan. But the idea that America has more responsibility to Americans than others will be extraordinarily popular. It should be completely obvious but unfortunately it isn't.
Agree, media will use this to make Trump look ignorant and sloppy. But for better or worse Trump is not Lindbergh. Of course I can't guess how an ahistorical public will process all this.
While Trump resembles Obama in recognizing "imperial overstretch," I think they differ in this. Obama would "lead from behind," essentially surrendering all our credibility and influence except where he undertakes a discrete action, hedged around with qualifications and disclaimers. Trump, I think, would pick his fights and then not quibble: go in hard, make the rubble bounce, and use events to create a zone of intimidation for our enemies and reassurance for our friends. "Strategic uncertainty" is an effective tool in business as well as diplomacy, and I imagine Trump knows a thing or two about it.
Nazi loving Lindbergh was calling out Jew Loving Americans and England loving Americans as enemies that should be politically rejected. His Nordic heritage expected us to enjoy being good German allies and maybe become rich with it. The Connecticut Bush Family of arms export financers was a big player in this effort. Joe Kennedy's Boston Irish/Mafia/Catholic family also wanted in on profiting from supporting Hitler.
What nobody counted on was a polio paralyzed Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who had been raised by a Calvinist Reform Protestant mother. He had an inner confidence and leadership talent that beat them all.
FDR promptly blackballed Lindbergh from government service, fired Ambassador Kennedy and prepared the USA for War. Then he baited the Japs into attacking us, and got lucky when Hitler also declared war on us.
Then FDR supported promoted real warriors like Marshall, King MacArthur and Nimitz who won the war faster than Hitler's scientists could produce their U-235 fission device.
That was putting America First.
TradGuy,
Go here:
http://www.mcmaster.com
I think you need a heavier gauge of tin foil for your hat.
Only the 'meanstream' media are concerned about this.
Nazi loving Lindbergh was calling out Jew Loving Americans and England loving Americans as enemies that should be politically rejected. His Nordic heritage expected us to enjoy being good German allies and maybe become rich with it. The Connecticut Bush Family of arms export financers was a big player in this effort. Joe Kennedy's Boston Irish/Mafia/Catholic family also wanted in on profiting from supporting Hitler.
Do you even realize how much this reads like the back of Dr. Bronner's soap bottle?
TraditionalGuy @ 2:26: "…That was putting America First." Thanks, my reading of history is limited but consistent with the points you make. I was disappointed to learn of Lindbergh's racist mindset but I guess he was not alone then (or now?). Joe Kennedy did a poor job as our Ambassador to the Court of St. James (and FDR humiliated him at the interview for the job, perhaps knowing that it was a political deal) but I guess Washington kept him from doing too much damage. Bottom line, we dawdled and denied our way through the Thirties and then had to sprint to catch up with tyranny and ultimately defeat at enormous cost. The story of FDR quietly organizing industrial America in the late Thirties for the war that is coming, with the help of Henry J. Kaiser and Bill Knudsen, is absolutely riveting ("Freedom's Forge" by Arthur Herman).
Another great book about individual discernment and courage that came to little or nothing, is "In the Garden of Beasts" by Erik Larsen, about our Berlin ambassador during the critical mid-Thirties.
Why doesn't Hillary ever have these issues?
Oh right, Hillary doesn't really talk to the press.
Take a poll and see how many voters think America First is problematic in the historical context of Charles Lindbergh.
The number will be at least 2x lower than Congress's approval ratings.
Trump is not intellectual. His supporters are not either. They understand the plain meaning of saying America First. Everything else works to his advantage and reinforces the public's view of elite media.
Even if America entered the war, it is improbable that the Allied armies could invade Europe and overwhelm the Axis powers.
At the time this was not an unreasonable analysis. In fact, it wasn't an unreasonable analysis until the day after D-day.
And compared to the Pacific Theater, Europe and Africa were a breeze.
There was a real concern that troops in Europe would mutiny if reassigned to the Pacific Theater after the war in Europe was won.
Take a poll and see how many voters think America First is problematic in the historical context of Charles Lindbergh.
I suspect, given the state of history education in the US, that the majority of people under 25 couldn't tell you who Charles Lindbergh was.
Lindbergh was right, up to a point, that being a lack of detailed knowledge of the balance of power. His stated objection amounts to that of a US intervention being unfeasible. He was in no position to be a judge of this.
As for the analysis of the interests of the British and the Jews, he was also leaving out the French, Belgians, Dutch, Poles, Czechs, and all these others, but for the sake of brevity I suppose that was an acceptable simplification.
In any case, Lindberghs point of view was identical to that of the Philippine government of the day, which was terrified of their country becoming a battlefield in a war between great powers. As they did. The Philippines "took one for the team", to say the least, without being consulted.
Ron Winkleheimer: "...There was a real concern that troops in Europe would mutiny if reassigned to the Pacific Theater after the war in Europe was won." My father-in-law can attest to that. He fought his way through Europe into Germany (Battle of the Bulge and Berlin occupation) and he had zero appetite for being shipped west to die on some beach in Japan. The A-bomb was an unmitigated blessing for him and his compatriots. I doubt Harry Truman would have survived politically if he had refused to use it.
"I suspect, given the state of history education in the US, that the majority of people under 25 couldn't tell you who Charles Lindbergh was."
I suspect that the majority of people under 25 couldn't tell you anything specific about WWII at all, other than that the Japanese residents of the US were somehow unjustly mistreated.
"Hell, Obama ran on this theme himself in 2008, and yet nothing changed- we are still fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and now in Syria. Trump gets this, even if D.C. pundits don't."
Well, except that Obama (1) added a new front to our middle eastern entanglement in Libya, (2) has been shrinking our armed forces so that they are less able to meet their global commitments, (3) spent years telegraphing weakness to Putin so that now we have to put ground troops back in Central Europe to try to reverse that perception, and (4) ignored Iraq until it blew up into a new round of war (it's still the same war) that has spilled over into Syria. I know that Obama's intention was to declare "peace in our time" and bring the troops home, but his ignorant, ham-handed execution has had the opposite effect.
Oh, Lord, what bullshit implied revisionist history by the NYT!
Everyone: In the election of 1940, every politician, including FDR was running on the platform of keeping us out of another European war. The only difference is that FDR was lying like a sonafabitch, & knew he was lying like a sonafabitch. His own eldest son berated him about it, asking him "Dad, how can you lie to the American people like that?"
Go listen to Wendell Willkie's (the Republican candidate in 1940) nomination speech. He calls out in an incredible act of prescience exactly what is coming down the pike with a Roosevelt administration & the "next European war", aka WWII.
I support the hard choices FDR had to make to defeat the Axis powers, including his pre-war political machinations in support of Great Britain, but there's no doubt about it: in the election of 1940, he lied to the American people.
Ron Winkleheimer said...
"Take a poll and see how many voters think America First is problematic in the historical context of Charles Lindbergh."
"I suspect, given the state of history education in the US, that the majority of people under 25 couldn't tell you who Charles Lindbergh was."
It is interesting that the people who do not know the history have a more accurate impression of what Trump means by America First than the people who do know it.
Besides Make America Great is his true call sign. America First is his foreign policy.
I checked my facts on Lindbergh in WW II. He was not in the air force. FDR blocked him from having his commission reinstated. But he did fly 50 combat missions as a "consultant." He got shot at and shot down one enemy plane himself. His best contribution was teaching the US pilots techniques for fuel conservation and flying techniques that they had not obtained in the hurried training that the war required.
Lindy was a complicated man, courageous, proud, self absorbed in many ways and muddle headed about politics. I do not believe that he was a Nazi but he was an anti semite both by the standards of the day and current standards. The prejudices he had were widely shared at the time, but he had a platform and voiced them while others were silent about it.
I read a lot about Lindbergh many years ago, before the revelations that he fathered 7 children by 3 European mistresses in the 1950s and 60s. I just discovered this in checking my wartime facts. Another evidence of his self absorption. A brilliant brave and flawed man was Lindy.
That Lindbergh had a second family in Germany might well have led him to have a peculiar attitude toward Nazism like some today say Obama appears to have a peculiar attitude toward Mohammedanism.
Otherwise I agree with pm317. "America First" is also a much simpler principle to understand and act on and thus more likely to be successful - collaterally for our allies and the unaligned as well as ourselves. The "globalists" tend to get themselves all confused in conflicting ideas and what if's, etc., and wind up failing abysmally at achieving the goals they most earnestly were aiming for.
Gabriel said...
The purpose of the false equivalence is quite obvious. Wasn't Lindbergh opposed to fighting Hitler? Didn't that make him in some vague way pro-Hitler?
A long time ago, I read several of the books Lindbergh wrote. The ones I remember reading include "We", "The Wartime Journals of Charles Lindbergh", "The Spirit of St. Louis", and "Autobiography of Values". I think there was one or two additional books that were publications of his personal journals but I'm not sure.
From what I recall, Lindbergh wasn't pro-Hitler. He as anti-losing. He'd visited Nazi Germany several times and had seen the war machine they were building. IIRC, he even got to fly some of their planes. As late as June of 1939, the US military was in extremely poor condition. Decades of neglect after WWI had the US Army in a state where it ranked 17th in the world. It was actually smaller than Portugal's army. The Marine Corps, Army Air Corps, and Navy were in similarly poor condition. From what I recall of Lindbergh's writings, he honestly believed we couldn't win against the might of Nazi Germany. Fortunately, he was wrong but I doubt anyone could've foreseen how rapidly the US mobilized for war and turned it's industrial machine into the Arsenal for Democracy, as FDR called it.
It's obviously a new term, effectively. It means what Trump expects the masses to think it means. And he's fleshed it out over time.
Wannabe nerd-gotcha by the press again. And they'll never learn, too. They think what makes them+colleagues chortle matters to anyone else.
I can't resist adding some fake classiness here. Real Latin: "Oderint dum metuant." "Let them hate us, so long as they fear us."
Everyone: In the election of 1940, every politician, including FDR was running on the platform of keeping us out of another European war. The only difference is that FDR was lying like a sonafabitch, & knew he was lying like a sonafabitch. His own eldest son berated him about it, asking him "Dad, how can you lie to the American people like that?"
Go listen to Wendell Willkie's (the Republican candidate in 1940) nomination speech. He calls out in an incredible act of prescience exactly what is coming down the pike with a Roosevelt administration & the "next European war", aka WWII.
I support the hard choices FDR had to make to defeat the Axis powers, including his pre-war political machinations in support of Great Britain, but there's no doubt about it: in the election of 1940, he lied to the American people.
Completely correct. Except I'm not sure Wilkie's prescience was incredible. Then, like now, there was a lot of wishful thinking. And lying. Wilkie engaged in neither of these, and just looked at the available facts, which were not that hard to understand if you actually looked.
Agree, media will use this to make Trump look ignorant and sloppy.
Trump is ignorant and sloppy. It should be the media's job to point that out/
I read a book with an unusual explanation of the Lindbergh kidnapping. The idea was that Charles Lindbergh returned home from a business trip, and he decided to play a prank on his wife Anne. The author provided various examples of Charles being mean to Anne.
Anyway, it was dark outside, and Charles used a ladder to climb up through the the baby's bedroom window on the second floor. Charles intended to remove the baby from the bedroom and hide it somewhere outside. Then Charles would go into the house and say that, having returned from his long trip, he wanted to see and kiss the baby. Then Charles and Anne would go up to the baby's bedroom and discover that the baby was missing. Then Anne would panic hysterically, and Charles would enjoy his mean laugh at her expense.
However, as Charles was stealing the baby out of the bedroom -- as he was climbing out of the window and back down the ladder -- he accidentally dropped the baby, who fell two stories and died when it hit the ground.
So, then Charles hid his dead baby and came into the house and greeted Anne as if nothing had happened. Eventually Anne found that the baby was missing, and Charles continued to pretend forever that he did not know anything about the disappearance.
The book was very well argued. The author had studied the case for many years and knew everything about it. I don't remember the names of the author or of his book.
Anyway, some responsibility for the disappearance of the Lindbergh baby could be laid onto Trump. Since Trump is being a sneak about using the "America First" slogan in order to emulate Lindbergh's appeasement of Adolf Hitler, Trump must be being a sneak likewise to cover up Charles' Lindbergh's reckless killing of the baby.
Life is lived forward and understood backward. Lindbergh didn't get it right. Neither did Kennedy, Neither, for that matter, did FDR. It is perhaps instructive and edifying in this context to make note of he fact that FDR welcomed a grand total of five hundred German Jewish refugees from Hitler's clutches prior to the onset of WWII. By way of contrast, Joseph Chamberlain, the British PM, took in 50,000.......It's a good thing to be a Democrat. History is not written by the winners, but rather by the Democrats.
does this mean he will have his crap apparel made in the US instead of china?
They think what makes them+colleagues chortle matters to anyone else.
They're never outside of that bubble.
Do you people know what ultimately won the War for America?
American manufacturing.
Transforming the steel plants (like those in East Chicago) into war production facilities.
Can we still do that, if needed, today?
Do we have the factories?
Trump is right... all the way.
We need a more diversified US economy, other than just reigning worldwide in the entertainment and the services sectors...
machine said...
does this mean he will have his crap apparel made in the US instead of china?
------------------
This is a big national problem, on your radar screen?
Boy, talk about First World problems needed to be addressed in the presidential race...
*snark off*
I suspect that the majority of people under 25 couldn't tell you anything specific about WWII at all, other than that the Japanese residents of the US were somehow unjustly mistreated.
----------------
I suspect they have learned something about the Holocaust too in their legislative-mandated history classes.
I grew up on Lindbergh Drive. The dude was so popular after 1927 that Roads were named for him.
He had a point that except for a few American Jew lovers, Anglophiles and that a strange man called FDR who seemed determined to support Churchill, no one wanted to fight. Why even Stalin's Communists loved Germany too, right up until June 22, 1941.
But FDR got a Leo Szlizard's letter signed by Einstein in October 1939, and immediately started the Manhattan Project race. It remained a race until April of 1945. The military operations were all to slow down Germany, and as an aside to teach the suicidal Bushido Japanese Emperor lovers how Americans love to fight.
Then, like now, there was a lot of wishful thinking. And lying.
Whatever the true wishes of Roosevelt, you seem to have forgotten that he did not take us into war. Japan attacked us and two days later Germany declared war on us.
At this late stage, I don't think there is any way we can put Americans back to work.
The middle-class is gone. The baby-boomers will suck social security dry.
The only way forward (and I will be dead so it doesn't matter to me) is to socialize the economy as fast as possible.
Do you people know what ultimately won the War for America?
American manufacturing.
Transforming the steel plants (like those in East Chicago) into war production facilities.
Can we still do that, if needed, today?
Do we have the factories?
This is much like people on the eve of WWII claiming the horseshoe factory would lead the Fatherland to victory.
"FDR welcomed a grand total of five hundred German Jewish refugees from Hitler's clutches prior to the onset of WWII."
President Quezon of the Philippines extended an open invitation to Jewish refugees, hundreds or thousands making their way there prior to the beginning of WWII, and at least 1200 officially after 1940. That was on the other side of the world, and hard to get to.
http://haruth.com/jw/QuezonsList.htm
The other side of the story is that these guests of the Philippines were, nearly all of them, caught up in the holocaust of Manila. Many killed by the Japanese, along with their hosts.
It remained a race until April of 1945.
It was never a race. Hitler (through Heisenberg) never even got close to a sustained chain reaction, let alone developing a weapon. We didn't know it at the time, but the German nuclear program was never a threat.
"I expect the national press to renew a national discussion on 1930's American isolationism."
Oh, yeah. That'll be a topic of burning concern among the LIV's. Probably the single most common complaint I hear from the apolitical is, "Why do we give/spend/waste money on aid/war-making in these foreign countries, when we have so many problems at home?". Charles Lindbergh, yeah, that's the ticket!
Interesting topic, despite the feeble attempt by the NYT to play "gotcha".
A few comments:
1. In general, many Mothers & Fathers who lost their sons in WW1 -- a pointless war -- were opposed to a second European intervention -- and rightfully so.
2. As for the hard-core, Pro-Soviet left, when Hitler-Stalin signed their non-aggression treaty in 1939, the Left followed the party line of opposing US intervention, (i.e., allowing Hitler to run wild) and for 2 years (1939-1941) called FDR a warmonger.
3. As for the hard-core, isolationist right (America First), they thought WWII was mostly unfolding into a European death-struggle between the Nazis and the Commies, and that it would be better to stay out, and let them kill each other off.
The bottom line was that, until Pearl Harbor, most factions in the US were against intervention, for different, but logical reasons.
None of this has a thing to do with Donald Trump's modern-day use of "American First."
WWII turned out to be the opening battles of the Cold War.
Did Roosevelt foresee this?
Who knows; Franklin Roosevelt was not a man to let his right hand know what his left was thinking.
@YH: "Oh, Lord, what bullshit implied revisionist history by the NYT!" Do they ever write any other kind?
"Everyone: In the election of 1940, every politician, including FDR was running on the platform of keeping us out of another European war. The only difference is that FDR was lying like a sonafabitch, & knew he was lying like a sonafabitch. His own eldest son berated him about it, asking him "Dad, how can you lie to the American people like that?"" No problem: just like Wilson.
The Germans were enamored of new super weapons on the way to win the war right up to the end.
They got the first Guided Missiles and first Jet Planes and the best tanks and best guns that had ever been made.
What stopped Hitler's nuclear fission program from also being the first was the decision to start constant Bombing of Germany by the Eighth Air Force continuing despite near kamikaze numbers of crewmen lost in the first two years. And then that Austrian Paperhanger idiot's over reach in starting Operation Barbarossa that made The Wermacht fight on two fronts, which was Hitler's self forced error a year after the 1940 election.
It was a race for the Atomic Bomb,all the way. And we cheated any way we could.
The globalizers have basically given the finger to the American citizens and also to the British, especially over the immigration issue. Globalizers go crazy talking about how terrible it is that ignorant yahoos have rejected the society and policies the globalizers want. But globalizers think that it is quite all right to insist on forcing countries to import vast numbers of people who have no sense at all of the host countries' traditions. Many of the migrants who come from the Mid-East are actually illiterate and many believe that hitting and groping women is or should be socially acceptable and even legal. The globalizers simply don't care what this kind of ignorant yahoo does to the existing social structures within which huge numbers of people live in. In that context, which is the current context, America First.
Lindbergh meant something different. Like the people who say that we should never have gone into Iraq or that we should lead from behind he said that Europe was far away and its problems could be ignored. Ignorance of Nazi realities is cheap and quite safe - he said and he called that blind, selfish ignorance - America First. It's real name was appeasement
And appeasement is the policy of Obama and Hillary. The Millennials, more than any group will pay for this. Regardless of who wins this election, soon and very soon, they'll have to put down their cocoa, get out of their jammies and fight like men. Yes, like men. Let's hope they do it when the time comes.
@rick
Anyone who knows anything about WWII knows that the United States industrial output is at least one of the major factors in the Allies victory, if not the factor.
In the wake of Pearl Harbor, the president set staggering goals for the nation’s factories: 60,000 aircraft in 1942 and 125,000 in 1943; 120,000 tanks in the same time period and 55,000 antiaircraft guns. In an attempt to coordinate government war agencies Roosevelt created the War Production Board in 1942 and later in 1943 the Office of War Mobilization. To raise money for defense, the government relied on a number of techniques — calling on the American people to ration certain commodities, generating more tax revenue by lowering the personal exemption and selling government war bonds to individuals and financial institutions. All of these methods served to provide the government with revenue and at the same time keep inflation under control.
War production profoundly changed American industry. Companies already engaged in defense work expanded. Others, like the automobile industry, were transformed completely. In 1941, more than three million cars were manufactured in the United States. Only 139 more were made during the entire war. Instead, Chrysler made fuselages. General Motors made airplane engines, guns, trucks and tanks. Packard made Rolls-Royce engines for the British air force. And at its vast Willow Run plant in Ypsilanti, Michigan, the Ford Motor Company performed something like a miracle 24-hours a day. The average Ford car had some 15,000 parts. The B-24 Liberator long-range bomber had 1,550,000. One came off the line every 63 minutes.
http://www.pbs.org/thewar/at_home_war_production.htm
Well, we all know that Hitler lost the war by invading Russia. And, while I don't like FDR, I do admire Churchill and am glad we joined the Brits in this endeavor. But Lindbergh, for all his moral shortcomings [not as egregious as FDR's] was a far greater asset than a liability to our nation.
traditional guy:
Totally contrary to your ethnicity-laced narrative, FDR ran for re-election in 1940 (with war raging in Europe) on the explicit, absolute promise that there would never again be an American expeditionary force fighting in Europe ever again.
OTOH, Lindbergh's wife was a real nut case. She also had affairs, BTW.
And the poor Japs were having all their Marus torpedoed and straffed faster than they could build new ones. But Henry Kaiser assembling pre-fab some 2400 Liberty ships in 24 days apiece. Then the fun of it, he had his shipyard make one ship in 4 days.
By 1944 sinking American Troop Carrier and Supply ships could not be a factor that would win, leaving the Japs no choice except the final suicidal Battle of Leyte.
I disagreed with a lot of what Trump said in the interview, especially about Turkey. But he's not president now, not getting briefings from the real experts now. Doesn't worry me.
It would be nice to have a president who thinks that countries that we defend should pay for it.
When was Hillary Clinton's last interview in an uncontrolled setting again?
It was explained long ago that Deutschland uber alles originally meant first in the heart but it came to a bad end.
If Trump means making deals that are to American's advantage but also to the counterparty's advantage, that's just a normal voluntary trade and is fine. America first means don't forget the former part, for a change.
Keep that distinction in mind as the MSM spins the phrase into something else.
Though it's not a stable idea because nobody does economics anymore.
Even if America entered the war, it is improbable that the Allied armies could invade Europe and overwhelm the Axis powers.
D-day, for all its glory, was only possible because the Russians busy taking 26 million dead in mortal combat with the Nazis
What went on in Manila -
http://malacanang.gov.ph/75102-manila-holocaust-massacre-and-rape/
These are just episodes. Benito Legarda has much, much more, and I highly recommend Aluit, "By Sword and Fire" for a general overview. My community was concentrated in precisely the most hard-hit spots, and never really recovered from the casualties.
And this itself was just an episode in what the country suffered as a whole.
We took one for the team, for Roosevelt. This was the cost of the US forcing its way into WWII. Lindbergh was entirely right to be concerned with this.
It was not that clear in 1941. It certainly was a great surprise to the Germans that the despised Russians could - and would - fight like they did.
The great fear in Washington by 1942 was that the war would end with another armistice and an exhausted Europe would go communist.
Thus, I think, FDR's "unconditional surrender." He made light of it as just a passing thought and a flashback to U. S. Grant,* but I think it was much thought about and a hard conclusion - no more armistices and uncertainties about who won!
* General Grant, by the way, after issuing his ringing demand, promptly sat down and negotiated the surrender of Ft. Donelson with lots of conditions.
"the final suicidal Battle of Leyte."
Leyte was suicidal, but not at all final. Manila, even more suicidal, was three months later.
And there were still @250,000 more Japanese yet to be killed by August 1945.
And there was no final battle, Yamashitas surviving main force of 80,000 lived to surrender.
This is much like people on the eve of WWII claiming the horseshoe factory would lead the Fatherland to victory.
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Manufacturing capacity also won the American Civil War.
Scoff all you like...
(I'm glad you are so confident in US intelligence and technology that you think we will never need manufactured machinery to help us "win". It's all in the electronics surveillance now, eh? That's what will "win" the next Big World War for us?)
At least it makes sense - after 8 years of putting Obama's anti-colonialism putting everyone else first. Crooked Hillary's "Better Together" does not. She is running the usual Dem divisive campaign to gin up the votes by minority groups to compensate for all the white votes she has lost. Maybe not as nakedly divisive as Obama, but her actions are telling us how empty her slogan is.
Mary A good point. Another good question is: can we win a war using only the gay and transgendered as troops? Given the importance the Obama administration attaches to them you would think so.
Manufacturing capacity also won the American Civil War.
Scoff all you like...
(I'm glad you are so confident in US intelligence and technology that you think we will never need manufactured machinery to help us "win". It's all in the electronics surveillance now, eh? That's what will "win" the next Big World War for us?)
Totally agree! Our electronic communications could be wiped out in one bold stroke and we could be caught holding our useless smart phones. Imagine the panic!
"Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government."
The antisemitic tell.
"And this itself was just an episode in what the country suffered as a whole."
I recently read The Crucible by Yay Panlilio recounting her experience as a guerrilla fighter in WWII. The downtown library had a copy and the last date stamp on the back pocket was from 1967.
Byways...You are correct about the USArmy fight with the Japanese who tried to kill all the Phillipinos as they slowly lost ground. Their barbarity was Nanking times 10. That alone earned the bastards several Atomic Bombs.
I was referring to the USN actions in San Bernadio and Surigao straight gunfights to the death. For two last glorious nights aircraft carriers were irrelevant again.
Freder Frederson @ 3:36: "...We didn't know it at the time, but the German nuclear program was never a threat." How could we know that? The only prudent assumption to make is that your enemy has both the intent and the means to conquer you. In the case of weapons under development, that he has funded them fully and solved every technical issue and is already scaling them up and training his forces in their use. To assume otherwise is suicide.
This is not rocket surgery.
This was the cost of the US forcing its way into WWII. Lindbergh was entirely right to be concerned with this.
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War is hell.
Lindbergh knew this.
The children and grandchildren of the winners (America's Greatest Generation) -- the boomers and milennials living now -- have either never had to learn this, or have forgotten.
The VietNam vets are dying out fast.
Hey chuck... FDR also started the Draft and started wartime production and the Manhattan Project while he said, " I hate war."in the 1940 election campaign...he apparently meant to say "I hate losing war"
Does that make you hate him more. At least we don' t speak German or Japanese to please our evil masters.
At least we don' t speak German or Japanese to please our evil masters.
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They say the coastal elites are teaching their children Mandarin Chinese these days...
voluntarily, of course! ;-)
"Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government."
The antisemitic tell.
There were a lot of Jewish communists at that time so antisemitism wasn't the only reason for bias, although I do believe Lindbergh was somewhat antisemitic.
I think with this NYT article we have another example of one class of Americans projecting their own received views onto the populace at large. Obviously, they think one merely has to whisper "Lindbergh" or "America First" and everyone will hiss at the villain. That this sort of thing isn't working as expected isn't necessarily a matter of the intended audience not knowing any history. I suspect that most informed people don't share such a view of Lindbergh, and didn't in the past, either.
Wonder if there are any extant polls on the matter. I'm curious - I'm getting on to 60, and grew up among well-read, politically-interested, and rather (by the standards of the day) liberal people. Lindbergh was never presented to me as a disreputable character, regardless of what the transmitting adult thought of his isolationist views. In fact I was pretty long in the tooth before I had personal acquaintance with people for whom Lindbergh rated with the Unclean.
Maybe isolated people can't really report all that well on "isolationists".
“There were a lot of Jewish communists at that time . . . “
As there were in Germany five years before. But do go on.
That's what I was referring to, Prole.
Ron Winkleheimer said...
Anyone who knows anything about WWII knows that the United States industrial output is at least one of the major factors in the Allies victory, if not the factor.
I don't think you followed my point. Manufacturing was the major factor in the last world war. It is very unlikely to be the major factor in the next world war. Someone once said something about generals always preparing for the last war instead of the next one.
I just want to say that had about given up on reading the comments on this blog until after the election. The last few days have been mostly "I know you are but what am I" stupidity.
Thanks I've learned a lot and had my memory jogged about things I'd forgotten. This is why I started coming here lo' these many years ago.
buwaya said...
What went on in Manila -
http://malacanang.gov.ph/75102-manila-holocaust-massacre-and-rape/
"Strange thing is they make such bloody good cameras."
Lindbergh was technically accomplished on many levels that really benefited aviation as well as medicine. He was a pioneer in airflight mail delivery. He was active in TWA's early development of consumer air transport. He helped to significantly advance heart surgery by inventing, with a (Nazi-ish?) colleague, a first-time way to keep the heart beating while being operated on.
On a personal level, he seems to have been deeply, deeply flawed. His father-in-law--who was a Morgan partner, ambassador to Mexico, a potential (but perhaps alcoholic) presidential candidate-- was said to have wondered during his daughter's engagement about 'how much do we really know about this young man'? The stories about the kidnapping and his potential involvement with it are, at the least, interesting. Supposedly, he had tried to pull such a prank a few weeks before the kidnapping. The ladder of the kidnapping was supposedly a far better ergonomic fit for him rather than Hauptmann. There were rumors that, due to his wife's reluctant trip with him to the Far East during her pregnancy, the long, (for then) high altitude flight, may have compromised the baby's cognitive function; that is, rumors said the baby may well have suffered brain damage...Not good for a person seemingly aligned with many other Nazi/ concepts. His wife's fascinating and incredibly well-written memoirs about their courtship and early marriage ended far too early. As a young teenage romantic, I was hungry for more and wondered about the lack of more books. She supposedly stopped writing these post-WWII because it was too painful.
" Lindbergh was never presented to me as a disreputable character, regardless of what the transmitting adult thought of his isolationist views. In fact I was pretty long in the tooth before I had personal acquaintance with people for whom Lindbergh rated with the Unclean."
He is now, when he is presented at all beyond a paragraph about the 1927 flight.
And then there are the stories that he killed his baby, wittingly or unwittingly. (See above.) Just like a Nazi to do that.
"...We didn't know it at the time, but the German nuclear program was never a threat."
Neither was ours, until the war with Germany was over. We really had no idea whether we could do it. It was an amazing accomplishment.
Lindberg was a great man, an honest man, and an American patriot. If he didn't like the Jews enough...well, everyone has their bad points.
1940 was the first modern election POTUS campaign. You had FDR lying about "keeping out of foreign wars". You had his liberal cabinet officers - like Ickes - screeching that anyone who opposed FDR was a Nazi or loved Hitler. You had Wilkie the first RINO, attacking FDR for supporting intervention while secretly supporting it himself.
You had the commies actually supporting "America First". You had a bunch of morons who believed FDR's lies, and a big bunch of Yellow Dog Democrats who would've voted for Stalin or Hitler if they had (D) after their name.
And of course NBC/CBS radio, the WaPo and NYT were just as biased as they are now. It was a very modern election.
Earnest Prole said...
"Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government."
The antisemitic tell.
You noticed, eh? Such insight. That kind of anti-semitism was mainstream in those days. Often quietly so but it was there. Less so now. In part, I think, because the Holocaust showed what the consequence could be. A lesson we seem to be forgetting currently.
Most people's comments are so historically illiterate its not worth rebutting them.
For example, no one, even FDR wanted to get into WW2 before the Fall of France. After June 1940, the isolationists made the point that even if we got involved a UK/USA alliance couldn't beat Hitler.
And they were right. As long as the USSR and Nazi Germany continued there Non-aggression pact no allied victory was possible. It was only Hitler's attack on Stalin and the unexpected ability of the Red Army to recover after its massive defeats in December 1941, that allowed the UK/USA a chance to win.
September 11, 1941, eh? Anyone else thinking that's a bit ... coincidental?
Ambiguity in the face of history: My high school German teacher, explaining the first verse of the Deutsche Nationalhymne. "No, no. When they say 'Deutschland ueber alles,' they mean, Germany must come first in our hearts. Germany BEFORE everything, not OVER everything."
Meanwhile, here's the Bonfire, football-oriented version of the third verse, the official national anthem.
He is now, when he is presented at all beyond a paragraph about the 1927 flight.
And then there are the stories that he killed his baby, wittingly or unwittingly. (See above.) Just like a Nazi to do that.
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Meh. You can't put much stock in "stories" like that...
People have axes to grind, resentments, the need to smack on labels like "anti-semite."
Btw, we should be teaching our schoolboys more about those solitary hours Lindbergh put in before spotting the Irish coast, rather than making them read about that girl stuck in the closet with her family and her period. Focusing too much on the Holocaust and victims takes away from teaching about humanity's great accomplishments
You don't stop teaching about the greatness of Thomas Jefferson and Charles Lindbergh just because you learn they both had "other" families, on the sly... Imho.
(Your mileage may vary, David.)
Clarification ADDED:
You don't stop teaching about the greatness of Thomas Jefferson and Charles Lindbergh'S ACHIEVEMENTS...
Exactly, Mary! Baby, bathwater, etc.
It was like Chiang Kai-Shek was reported to have said, "Sooner or later the Japanese are going to do something that will make the Americans really mad, and they will come over here and defeat the Japanese."
And the Japanese did and the Americans got really, really mad about it, and in fact so steamed that they were quite willing to go over and straighten out Europe too while they were at it anyway. Which they proceeded to do.
I think the moral of the story is: Don't make the Americans really, really mad at you. Then they won't just fight; they will fight dirty too.
I think the moral of the story is: Don't make the Americans really, really mad at you. Then they won't just fight; they will fight dirty too.
Didn't Yamamoto say, regarding the Pearl Harbor attack, "I fear we have awakened a sleeping giant and filled him with a terrible resolve."?
People just aren't ignorant about History, they've been been taught some much wrong shit, you'd have to talk to them for a month just to unlearn the garbage and get back to square 1.
I read a book with an unusual explanation of the Lindbergh kidnapping. The idea was that Charles Lindbergh returned home from a business trip, and he decided to play a prank on his wife Anne.
Following up my earlier comment at 3:19 PM ....
The book is titled Crime of the Century: The Lindbergh Kidnapping Hoax, and it was written by Gregory Ahlgren, a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania School of Law, a former criminal justice professor, criminal defense lawyer, and state legislator.
The Amazon webpage is here:
https://www.amazon.com/Crime-Century-Lindbergh-Kidnapping-Hoax/dp/0828319715/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8
Below is another website's list of some of Linbergh's pranks:
Lindbergh was known for cruel practical jokes.
He often filled bunkmates beds with lizards and other reptiles; on one occasion he put a snake in the bed of a man who was terrified of them. Asked if the snake had been venomous, Lindbergh replied "Yes, but not fatally."
He also filled a friend's canteen with kerosene and watched him drink it; the man was hospitalized for severe internal burns.
And, only two weeks prior to the reported kidnapping, Lindbergh hid the child in a closet then ran to his wife's room, claiming the child had been stolen. He let the joke go on for 20 terrifying minutes before confessing.
http://www.lindberghkidnappinghoax.com/wallace.html
Of course, this advise is only good when speaking to rational people. Unfortunately, in today's world there are several sets of lunatics that are wishing for "the end days" and quite willing to do something to get things going.
Yay Panlilio is about as forgotten an American heroine as can be. And thats in spite of ticking off all the modern fashionable boxes. Asian (mixed race) divorced single mom, a career newspaperwoman, married to a third world truck driver, a woman combat soldier (a colonel no less), leading a coed third world guerilla movement. Its quite a story. And yet ...
There is a long list of American heroes, mostly buried over there, created by the necessary misfortune of Roosevelts war. Most, or all by now, are forgotten.
Earnest Prole, 4:52:
"The antisemitic tell."
I'm way late to this thread, but I actually think the tell - and I don't think Lindbergh meant it maliciously; I think it was a planted, unexamined assumption - is the framing of British and Jewish interests as opposed to American interests. The British are by definition foreigners. The Jews, to anti-Semites, are foreigners to whatever country they happen to be living in, and this is the starting point to rallying "us" against "them."
As for "their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government" - this is cited without fail by anti-Semites but I do not think it is intrinsically anti-Semitic. It's the usually prompt transition to arguing that they only care about themselves, their own, or nowadays Israel; that we wouldn't be following whatever policy if it weren't for them, that generally is.
For a real slippery slope, try discussing why the Holocaust is so much better-known in America than some mass murders with considerably higher death tolls. It is possible to believe this is as it should be, without being a special pleader for Jews. It is also possible to believe, without disliking Jews, that the prominence of Jews in the American press and in Hollywood ensures this is so - but lots and lots of people who dislike Jews will make this point with relish.
___
buwaya: Thank you for your consistently fascinating comments.
@JPS,
For a real slippery slope, try discussing why the Holocaust is so much better-known in America than some mass murders with considerably higher death tolls.
You know what my theory is about why the Holocaust is better known than the other bloodbaths of the 20th C? Sure, it has something to do with the large numbers of Jews in the United States after the war, but I think the real reason lies with in the American character itself: we "fixed" the Holocaust. We & our allies shut down the Nazi war machine & ended the mass murder of European Jewry. In times that called for it, we, as a nation did the right thing. Americans love to know & take pride that they "fixed" something in this sad, broken world.
The other great killing fields --- the Ukrainian famine, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, Rwanda, Khmer Rouge Cambodia --- we did nothing. Indeed, what could we do? "Hey, Mao! Stop that shit, ya hear! Or we're gonna stop you from murdering tens of millions of yer own people by us blowing up millions of yer own people with a nuke or two or three". Yes, that's basically what it boiled down to.
Americans don't like to hear about great evils that happened that we could do nothing about. It's just not how we see the world, as basically a good place if only folks would realize just how easy it is to get along & get rich -- just like we all want to!
Oh, sure, the Jews wanted the world to never forget & the Lefties wanted the world to forget as soon as possible what they did, but those alone wouldn't shape post-war cultural history like it got shaped. The American soul was uniquely receptive to to those particular impressions.
Is saying that blacks dominate professional basketball racist? Is saying that Jews dominate the entertainment industry antisemitic? The issue with what Lindbergh said was the he saw this as a 'problem'.
Thanks for the mention of the sacrifice by the Filipinos. That story deserves to be more widely known.
I don't quite ken out Lindbergh's rep as a raging Jew-hater and unalloyed pro-Nazi, and while I generally like Philip Roth's fiction, his novel pushing that meme to the max was grossly misdirected, in my view. Indeed, the definitive biography of Lindberg, by A. Scott Berg (1999, paperback), who is/was a pretty out-front Jew, I would think generally exonerates/rehabilitates Lindbergh on the judenhaas front. (It was researched with the full cooperation of Lindbergh's family, including Anne Morrow Lindbergh who was then still alive.)
FDR utterly detested Lindbergh, although Roosevelt himself shared to a a large degree Lindbergh's if the US was perceived as entering WW2 on behalf of world Jewry, the Jews themselves would come to bear the brunt of any resultant downside. Thus his adamant refusal to deploy military assets against the Nazi death camp infrastructure while it was still raging full blast. (And the Nazis, for their part, often referred to Roosevelt as "Rosenfeld", casting him as a Jewish cat's paw.)
Accordingly, while Lindbergh held a reserve commission as a colonel in the Army Air Force ("AAF", as there was not a separate USAF branch of the military until after the end of WW2), FDR made absolutely and personally certain that after Pearl Harbor Lindbergh could not re-enter active duty under any circumstances. His legendary exploits flying P-38s in the Pacific were undertaken with Lindbergh as a civilian contractor! While he shot down one or more Japanese aircraft, mostly what he was doing then was instructing AAF pilots in maximizing fuel economy, thereby radically extending their range and tactical effectiveness.
That particular skill was built first on Lindbergh's flying airmail across the USA in the 1920s then on his nursing the Spirit of St. Louis from Roosevelt Field, Long Island (named after TR, not FDR!) across the Atlantic to Le Bourget; and in the 1930s, refined all the further when flying —often with Anne Morrow Lindbergh as his co-pilot— experimental trans-oceanic routes to develop the most fuel-efficient flight ways for his then-employer, Pan American Airways.
Jeyi, I read the same book. Very fair, I believe. Most people only know about Lindbergh's famous flight and not about the hard work and the many, many great accomplishments.
I think Trump's distinguishing characteristic is that he has no altruistic bone in his body. "Winning" is not compatible with either a Christian right or Marxist left attitude. It's why it was so howlingly hilarious when he ranked Jesus number one with a bullet on the bestseller list, and The Art of the Deal number two. The guy is... AMERICAN. In the history of the world, only Americans have ever acted this way. African Americans proudly "Show me the money!" and flash bling. Where else on Earth does that happen? Let me answer that: this does not happen ANYWHERE ELSE on planet Earth. Trump is from this culture.
FTR winning is 100% compatible with Calvinist Reformed Protestant Christianity. Winning is a good work prepared beforehand by God's Providence for us to walk in. To those guys the entire Bible in a nutshell says that by faith in God and hard work, We will Win, and we will keep winning and enjoy the fruits of our labor for so long as we do not shrink in fear from evil rulers.
Man, the son of Jerry Falwell, the racist Arizona sheriff, and an unhinged pastor. Up next, Fran Tarkenton? This is already a bizarre night and Trump probably isn't in the building yet.
Even if Lindbergh copyrighted the term "America First," surely the copyright has expired by now.
Coming in very late to this comment thread as I was on the road most of the day, held up by 3 accidents across Pennsylvania, and one of those annoying 'stopped for 20 minutes for no apparent reason' situations... My only real contribution is a familial one, when my Grandmother and infant father were detained in Chicago, as the authorities thought my father was the 'Lindbergh Baby', and my Swedish immigrant Grandmother some type of hired kidnap victim babysitter. For some perverse reason, the Swedish part of the family has the best stories, my Scottish side not so much. Seems like it should be reversed. Must be because the Swedes all ended up in California, while the Scots went to PA and Canada.
Coming to this late as well, but no discussion of Lindbergh's politics should be without a look at just how nativist and racist his stated views were. This is Lindbergh in the Nov. 1939 issue of Reader's Digest, in language that almost could have come from one of Dr. Goebbels' broadsheets --
"We, the heirs of European culture, are on the verge of a disastrous war, a war within our own family of nations, a war which will reduce the strength and destroy the treasures of the White race, a war which may even lead to the end of our civilization. And while we stand poised for battle, Oriental guns are turning westward. Asia presses towards us on the Russian border, all foreign races stir restlessly. It is time to turn from our quarrels and to build our White ramparts again. This alliance with foreign races means nothing but death to us. It is our turn to guard our heritage from Mongol and Persian and Moor, before we become engulfed in a limitless foreign sea. Our civilization depends on a united strength among ourselves; on strength too great for foreign armies to challenge; on a Western Wall of race and arms which can hold back either a Genghis Khan or the infiltration of inferior blood . . . ."
Minus the explicit racial elements of this statement, I don't think this is all that far from Trump's own nativism. To the extent that Trump has an ideology at all, it's an animosity toward "foreigners" of all kinds. Muslims are infiltrating us, Mexico is sending us rapists, our trade partners are cheating us, our allies are swindling us, we're not "winning" because our leaders are too beholden to foreign interests, and on and on.
It's all "America First," it's all nativism, and it all stinks to high heaven.
YoungHegelian, 9:51 PM:
"You know what my theory is about why the Holocaust is better known than the other bloodbaths of the 20th C? ... I think the real reason lies with in the American character itself: we "fixed" the Holocaust. We & our allies shut down the Nazi war machine & ended the mass murder of European Jewry."
That is a very interesting thought. It hadn't occurred to me but I think it's an important component.
"Americans don't like to hear about great evils that happened that we could do nothing about."
Yes, and people who don't like Americans (including some Americans) love to remind us of the great evils we did do nothing about, lest we take too much pride in the times we stepped up. Thanks for this.
Michael, 8:02 AM: That language [Lindbergh's] is a far cry from Dr. Goebbels' broadsheets. From my modern-day perch I deplore the racialism in these comments as much as you do, but I don't think it's right to condemn Lindbergh for it, let alone lump him in with Goebbels. A lot of the "good guys" talked that way too in those days.
JPS: I've read a lot of the periodical literature of the WWII era, so I'm familiar with the casual racism of the 30s & 40s mainstream press. This Lindbergh article is *nothing* like anything else I've found from that time in a major publication. It's definitely closer to fascism that anything that went on in mainstream American politics.
As Max Wallace wrote in his book "The American Axis" about this article, "All white people, then, appeared to have common cause with the Germans in the world that Lindbergh envisioned. This didn't sound like the everyday socialized racism of so many ordinary Americans, but rather the intellectualized racism of the Nazis, as his growing legions of media critics were quick to point out."
America first is in contrast to the anti-native policies of progressive wars, refugee crises, mass exodus, class diversity (e.g. racism), selective exclusion ("="), reproductive prostitution, abortion rites (i.e. "final solution"), and channeling Mengele (e.g. Planned Parenthood). Apparently, people have forgotten the atheist pleasures of the far left from times past.
Michael, 8:47: Thanks for that.
"I've read a lot of the periodical literature of the WWII era,"
I haven't. You are probably better versed than I am, and Lindbergh may well have placed himself outside the mainstream. I believe he was as wrong as one can be about staying out of WWII. I still think the Goebbels comparison is unfair.
Americans will associate Trump's use of "America First" with Lindbergh's use of the phrase in exactly the same proportion as Americans associate Obama's use of the word "race" with the KKK's use of the word, i.e., none.
Although Obama uses the word more like the KKK did than Obama uses the phrase like Lindy did.
Objecting to the concept of 'America First' is the equivalent to hoping your daughter flunks out of Harvard. Not that anyone actually flunks out.
http://rescueinthephilippines.com/ is about five Jewish brothers with a tobacco business in the Phillipines and their rescue of refugees. Eisenhower makes an appearance.
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