Let the campaign begin.
Here’s a test. When were the following said, and by whom?
“The greatest danger to this country lies in their (the Jews)
large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press,
our radio, and our Government.”
“The issue we are dealing with in the…administration is dual
loyalties-the double allegiance of those myriad officials at high
and middle levels who cannot separate U.S. Interests from Israeli
interests….they honestly do not know whether their own
passion…is motivated primarily by America-first patriotism or is
governed first by a desire to secure Israel’s safety…”
The first was said by a prominent member of the pre-World War II
“America First Committee,” an organization that was fanatically
dedicated to isolationism and keeping America out of any
involvement in European or Asian struggles. The date: September 11,
1941.
The second is a column posted
in the MoveOn.org “MoveOn Bulletin” of May 9, 2003. The piece was
entitled “A Rose by Another Name” and was written in 2002 by two
former CIA political analysts.
But it is not simply a couple of random quotes that cause the
two organizations, separated by over a half a century, to resemble
one another to such a startling degree. In their philosophy,
objectives and choice of language — not to mention their
supporters — it is increasingly clear that MoveOn.org is the 21st
century political descendant of the America First Committee.
Who were the American Firsters? The America First Committee came
to life on September 4, 1940 and quickly evolved into what one
historian called “the most powerful isolationist or
non-interventionist pressure group in the United States.” It grew
out of a Yale student organization led by a son of a Quaker Oats
Company vice president, and was headed by retired Army General
Robert E. Wood, who was the chairman of Sears Roebuck at the time.
The group’s national committee included such celebrities of the day
as the actress Lillian Gish, World War I flying ace General Eddie
Rickenbacker, Henry Ford, Alice Roosevelt Longworth (daughter of
Theodore) and, most prominently, “Lucky Lindy” himself — Colonel
Charles Lindbergh. It was Lindbergh who gets credit for the opening
quote above, said in a Des Moines, Iowa speech.
Their philosophy? The Franklin Roosevelt administration, Jews
and capitalists were dangerous “war agitators” who “comprise only a
small minority of our people; but they control a tremendous
influence.” This analysis about the sinister intent of “powerful
elements” in America was provided by Lindbergh, whose words and
sentiments seem as if they have been lifted verbatim into a MoveOn
screed about the Bush administration, Neo-cons, Connecticut Senator
Joe Lieberman and Halliburton.
In one speech Lindbergh warned that these three groups “planned,
first, to prepare the United States for foreign war under the guise
of American defense; second to involve us in the war step by step,
without our realization; third, to create a series of incidents
which would force us into the actual conflict.” How was this
diabolical plot to be carried out? They would be “covered and
assisted by the full power of their propaganda” over “the rising
opposition of the American people.”
The response from Roosevelt and his supporters was swift. With
the Nazis having successfully swallowed Czechoslovakia, Poland,
Austria, France, Belgium and the Netherlands, Secretary of the
Interior Harold Ickes went in front of a Jewish audience to brand
the America First Committee as “the America Next” Committee.
America First, said FDR’s lieutenant, attracted “antidemocrats,
appeasers…and anti-Semites,” adding that “Hitler was enthusiastic
about it.” When a rally featuring anti-war celebrity and novelist
Kathleen Norris, Massachusetts Senator David Walsh and Lindbergh
drew a crowd of 10,000 in Madison Square Garden, one FDR-loyalist
labeled it “the largest gathering of pro-Nazi and pro-Fascists of
both domestic and imported brands since the German American Bund
rallies in Madison Square Garden.” A second, larger anti-war rally
in the same place spurred gossip columnist Walter Winchell to snipe
that “every hate spreader they could find showed up for that
meeting.”
Compared to all of this, the recent and presumably forthcoming
speeches on the subject of appeasement by President Bush,
Secretaries Rice and Rumsfeld and a host of supporters of the war
on Islamic Fascism are little short of politely expressed
disagreements.
But make no mistake. America has been here before. Tragically,
it listened for too long to the celebrities, politicians and
retired generals who urged America First and blamed the Jews along
the way.
On December 7, 1941, America Firster Senator Gerald Nye of North
Dakota was getting ready to go onstage and address an America First
rally in Pittsburgh. The late Alistair Cooke records that shortly
before he started speaking, Nye was handed a scribbled note that
the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. Stricken, Nye “fumbled and
paused,” then muttered “I can’t somehow believe this…” before
going on with a “troubled brow” to deliver his anti-war harangue
anyway.
Four days later, on December 11, 1941, the national committee of
America First — the celebrities, the politicians, the retired
generals — quietly voted to disband. By 1942, America First and
its cause was a liability for candidates for the Senate, House and
even state governorships. Opponents went to great lengths to tie
the Committee to its once-favored candidates like cans to a dog’s
tail.
One of the first questions that will no doubt be asked in this
year’s fall campaign is just which candidates have the support of
America First’s political great-grandchild — MoveOn.Org? The time
has come for open discussions of the same issues that drove America
First and which are so vehemently articulated by MoveOn today —
anti-Semitism and anti-capitalism being but two. Are Senate
candidates currently accepting support from MoveOn — including
Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, West Virginia’s Robert Byrd, Florida’s Bill
Nelson and, particularly stunning in a state with both a sitting
Jewish Governor (Democrat Ed Rendell) and a sitting Jewish Senator
(Republican Arlen Specter), Pennsylvania’s Bob Casey, Jr. —
willing to stand up and disavow this group? Or do they privately
share beliefs with MoveOn, which in a style that harkens from
America First, has entertained references
to the Democratic Senator from Connecticut as “Jew Lieberman”? One
finds it difficult to believe that men like these would hesitate
for a political nano-second to cut the endorsement cord between
themselves and MoveOn. Are they truly willing to accept support
from the MoveOn crowd — and heed their voices if making American
foreign policy?
Then again, imagine the incredulity that caused Franklin D.
Roosevelt to say the following about one-time American hero Charles
Lindbergh to his (Jewish) Secretary of the Treasury, Henry
Morgenthau, Jr: “If I should die tomorrow, I want you to know this.
I am absolutely convinced that Lindbergh is a Nazi.”
