Mr Foy, your opening sentence is a breath of fresh air blowing at gale force.

Bill Moyers is one of the most eloquent opponents of the neocons.  And he’s a professed Baptist, no friend of the Cultural Marxists.  Yet he is also an admirer of FDR, the bete noire of Libertarians and vulgar nationalists, whose (admittedly very flawed) legacy has been hijacked by the neocons, who are vulgar nationalists of a different kind, whose policies have very little to do with FDR’s; just for starters, consider the neocons’ determination to dismantle whatever remains of the New Deal.

So, let that be a reminder to us all, that simply disagreeing with some of the ideological canons of some self-identified paleoconservatives (eg, that America should have remained neutral in WW II), or Libertarians (perhaps FDR saved American capitalism from total collapse), does not necessarily place one in the neocon camp.  What Professor Gottfried collectively calls “our” side, is besieged, and for paleoconservatives to begin to posit our own ideological canons in opposition to the neocons would be collective suicide, as a betrayal of what we ought to represent:  no ideology at all.

In praising Moyers, Foy has also forgotten Waco, the then Attorney General’s own deception. He has forgotten The Great Society, LBJ, and LBJ’s right hand, Moyers.  We will get come 20. Jan. 2009 The Great Society and Waco, in spades.

I told ya so.

Cassandra, do you blame Moyers for the Great Society
or for civil rights?  That I am ashamed to say is the
one sticking point for too many conservatives.

One does not know how many thoughtful people who would
have been conservatives would not join out of disgust
with those who were seen to support a lunatic and
unjust system, in name of conservative principles -
which is funny, since segregation, as racism, was an
artifact of modernity. There is nothing in the Western
Christian tradition that supports it, rather it opposes
it. I know, I come from the Hispanic tradition, and
we always thought that the Southern system was crazy,
and maybe due to Protestantism.

In any case, it may well be that civil right caused
conservatism to lose potential bright stars like Bill
Moyers who would not be associated with an inmoral
lunacy.

Adriana,

You are a true prophet, and like our mutual friend John Lukacs, you and I and he will not be understood for many centuries to come.

But let’s keep trying.

Ugh.  UGH!  Oh, God.  Increasingly, I perceive all too many (well, maybe around 20 percent of our commmenters here) self-described American “paleoconservatives” (the operative term is “self-described") to be kindred spirits of the bloody Nazis, whose real purposes had (and still have) more to do with yearning for licentious freedom to hate, than with defending Christendom or Western civilisation.  And an ideological belief in American exceptionalism or SO-CALLED “isolationism”, is irreconcilable with any belief in the primacy of Christendom above all nations.

I think that it doesn’t matter, like Mr. Foy said above, if Bill Moyers is liberal or conservative. All that matters is that the report was objective and that it did not have an ulterior motive behind it. I watched the report and is was very objective and it showed liberal and conservatives that fell for the propaganda in the run up to the war. Bill Moyers also spotlighted several people who were right all along about the war and who do not get much credit.

So, blaming segregation in the South on “Protestantism” as Adriana does is somehow not a sign of “hate”?  And I guess those abolitionists in the North weren’t Protestants?  Meanwhile John Ball calls a number of people “Nazis”, which is always a reasonable approach, at least for those with nothing of substance to say.  And by the way, Moyers has been disapproved of by all mainstream conservatives ever since he came on the national stage with LBJ back in the 1960s.  That was at a time when 90 percent of Republicans voted for the Civil Rights laws passed under President LBJ (who had been an ardent segregationist) while only 50 percent of Democrats did.  On this one issue of the Iraq war Moyers seems to have done some good work for once.

Sam Spade:

I did not say that Protestantism was to blame for
segregation, only that the conservatives where I
grew up looked upon it as “the kind of thing that
you can expect from Protestants” Actually, I think
that they used the term “heretics”. 

They had their own prejudices, as you can imagine.

Adriana:  The Moyers I blame is not the one who supported the Civil Rights bills of 1964 and 1965, but the one who supported the Neo New Deal.

It has been forgotten that it was Senator Everett Dirkson who got these bills past.  He was no “liberal” (i.e. Socialist or Cultural Marxist). Bob Taft also would have been on board for Civil Rights.  Ike sent troops to Little Rock. T. Roosevelt spoke at Tuskeegee while president, and integrated NY schools while governor—acts that got him called a N****r lover by Wilson the Worst, a man more Bourbon Dimmykrat and Klansman than “progressive”—a fact conveniently forgotten by his present idolaters.

Barry G and Sam Ervin redeemed themselves by being the two men chiefly responsible for getting rid of The Keynesian special (dial M for Milhous). 

There is nothing in your post that disagree with, Adriana, save maybe your remark on Protestantism.

John Ball has caught on that a lot of Paleoconservatism is a facade for Brown Shirts.

In 1967, we all thought that by 2007, we all would be together, judging “by the content of character, not the color of skin”.  It didn’t turn out that way.  Cultural Marxism (and the Great Society social welfare plantation) is chiefly to blame, along with Black Racists such as Leonard Jeffries, Frances Cress Welsing, and Calypso Louie. That certain Paleocons effectively have joined such black racists is not a pretty sight. And I don’t see things getting better for the next eight years under Nurse Ratched.

I told ya so.

I see, Adriana, that you have modified your view on Protestantism while I was typing.

John Ball:  Thanks for your comment. Yes, I discovered
John Lukacs about eight years ago, and I swear by him
since. He has a way of saying things that sound
astounding until you look at them, and realize that
they are obvious, and that you should have paid more
attention.

Cassandra, I did not change my views on Protestantism,
but trying to repeat, verbatim, comments from Catholic
conservatives (the ones in Argentina were nowhere as
though as the Irish ones, to tell the truth… Like
that preacher that explained to his parishioners that
Socialists were worse than Communists, since Socialism
was an heresy of Communist, so that Socialists were
Communist Protestants).

From all the talk about Lukacs among the Neocon fellow travelers posting comments, I wonder how many have actually read what Lukacs has written.  In his book New Republic Lukacs devotes a section to condemning the mass immigration that has transformed parts of the United States into parts of the third world, especially from the southern part of the Western Hemisphere.  Here for example is a comment Lukacs made in an interview with Newsweek magazine just after the 911 attack.  Note that Lukacs complains about the open border with Mexico. I would also suggest some of you read Lukacs’ essay Cold Comfort, published in the book Destinations Past, in which Lukacs complains about quote “black and white n*ggers of MTV” unquote and expletive almost deleted. From the Lukacs Newsweek interview: Mayor Giuliani may be inspired by how Winston Churchill and the people of London reacted during World War II. But author John Lukacs says comparisons to the current crisis end there. Newsweek Web Exclusive Updated: 1:47 p.m. CT Sept 21, 2001Sept. 21 - During one of his many press conferences held following the attack on the World Trade Center, New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani told the crowd that he had been reading historian John Lukacs’s book “Five Days in London,” which delves into Winston Churchill’s decisions during what the author considers a critical moment in the history of World War II. NEWSWEEK’s Laura Fording asked Lukacs whether there were any major parallels between the two events.What about the threat of chemical and biological warfare? LUKACS: That could happen. That is what technology has brought about. And that is something about which we have been very weak, in guarding our frontiers. I don’t think unlimited immigration from Mexico is a very bright idea. And I don’t think that Star Wars rockets are a bright idea when terrorists can come in with a suitcase and blow up the Lincoln Tunnel. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3067666

By the way, just this week the UK Daily Mail published this story about Lukacs hero Churchill, who of course is lionized by Lukacs for resisting Hitler and Nazism. Here is the article:
Churchill called for quotas on influx of ‘coloured people’
Winston Churchill expressed alarm about an influx of ‘coloured people’ in 1950s Britain and considered imposing a quota on numbers, secret Cabinet papers revealed yesterday.
The Prime Minister feared a public backlash if too many migrants were allowed to settle, and believed the country was storing up problems for the future. Churchill’s Home Secretary, David Maxwell-Fyfe, even said there was a case for excluding ‘riffraff’ migrants from the country. But his Government, worried about upsetting the ‘liberal’ vote, backed away from taking such controversial action. The papers, released yesterday by the National Archives in Kew, west London, show that the debate over what has become one of the nation’s hottest political issues actually began half a century ago. At the time, large numbers of immigrants from Commonwealth countries such as the West Indies, India and Pakistan were heading to Britain to find work as the country struggled with the the post-war labour shortage. Churchill’s Cabinet papers gave a figure of 40,000 immigrants living in Britain in 1954, compared with 7,000 before the Second World War. Today, around 6million people living in Britain were born overseas, or one in ten. They include more than 600,000 migrants from Eastern Europe alone. On February 3, 1954, under the Cabinet agenda item ‘Coloured Workers’, Churchill is quoted as saying: “Problems will arise if many coloured people settle here. “Are we to saddle ourselves with colour problems in UK? Attracted by Welfare State. Public opinion in UK won’t tolerate it once it gets beyond certain limits.’ Mr Maxwell-Fyfe raised the possibility of immigration control. He said: “There is a case on merits for excluding riff- raff. But politically it would be represented and discussed on basis of colour limitation.” He added: “The colonial populations are resented in Liverpool, Paddington and other areas by those who come into contact with them. But those who don’t are apt to take a more liberal view.”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=473368&in_page_id=1770

Sam Spade:

I am not a neocon fellow traveler. I do admire
John Lukacs, though I disagree with him on certain
matters (no one agrees with anyone on everything). I
consider him as someone to taught me to “see” when
looking at History.

As for Churchill, need I say that there is a great
deal of difference between admiring someone for his
deeds without endorsing each and every one of his
actions (since I am a “fan” of Eamon de Valera, you can
imagine where I find Churchill’s actions less than
admirable).

I never said that I approved of unrestricted
inmigration, so I do not see why you should bring it
up, though I say that the problem is that most of them
seem uneducated, poorly prepared but for the most
menial labor, and inmmersed on a peasant culture based on
mere surviva. That as a source of cheap labor
they produce two deleterious effects: driving down
wages for everyone and preventing industries from
modernizing and automating processes. But that is not
their fault but their employers who thing nothing of
pocketing the profits and letting the costs be passed
along the community, who ends up subsidizing the
cheap labor by either taxes or private charity.

Now, do you really want to pick up a fight?

Liberals and respectable conservatives say there is this RACE problem. Everybody says this RACE problem will be solved when the third world pours into EVERY white country and ONLY into white countries.  The Netherlands and Belgium are more crowded than Japan or Taiwan, but nobody says Japan or Taiwan will solve this RACE problem by bringing in millions of third worlders and quote assimilating unquote with them. Everybody says the final solution to this RACE problem is for EVERY white country and ONLY white countries to “assimilate,” i.e., intermarry, with all those non-whites. What if I said there was this RACE problem and this RACE problem would be solved only if hundreds of millions of non-blacks were brought into EVERY black country and ONLY into black countries? How long would it take anyone to realize I’m not talking about a RACE problem? I am talking about the final solution to the BLACK problem? And how long would it take any sane black man to notice this and what kind of psycho black man wouldn’t object to this? Respectable conservatives say they are anti-racist. What they are is anti-white. Anti-racist is a code word for anti-white.

I find it distressing that those of us who do not buy into the state religion of Nazi fearmongering which I liken to the present day of whitewashing of our current unjust war, are villainized as Nazi sympathizers.  Nothing could be farther from the truth.  Being from Catholic background it would have been my people who might have been interred in camps for harboring fugitives.  I believe that the founder of this site would agree that in the interests of expanding the powers of the executive branch propaganda has always been the best weapon.  Let’s try to keep it out of our writings here shall we?

The media was only slightly less biased in forties than it is now so you can well imagine the distortions and though our national memory is very short, there were many who knew then how badly we were lied to.
Let’s all see how time and years of public school education spin our current jingoistic venture. 

Because some of us with an historical perspective see a link to what is happening today with the past does not imply any sympathies both pro or anti Nazi, but rather a reticence at being conditioned to have a knee jerk reaction against one group or the other.  This site can remain a haven for true freethinkers or it can become dominated by name callers and dissent silencers.  It really is up to us.

If you watch the last chapter of the video you learn—surprise!—there has been practically zero consequences for most of these people. And Bush was elected to a second term. Maybe the most concrete outcome is that Colin Powell’s political goose is cooked (I thought so as I watched the UN presentation)—that guy has practically disappeared from the public radar, and his name is never mentioned for any elective office, despite a rather weak field of Republican presidential hopefuls. Good riddance.

Robert wrote:
“I think that it doesn’t matter, like Mr. Foy said above, if Bill Moyers is liberal or conservative. All that matters is that the report was objective and that it did not have an ulterior motive behind it.”

===============

Yes, yes!  Why not appreciate Moyers for whatever good he accomplishes, instead of whining about his past record or his basic beliefs.  I’ve had lots of beefs with his overall philosophy, but, so what? Let’s evaluate the work he’s doing now on his “Journal,” instead of sweating over what he thinks about FDR and the New Deal.

And who cares if Moyers did have an agenda with his current anti-war report.  We’re intelligent enough to sift out the subjective stuff, aren’t we?

By the way, what do most of the comments in this section have to do with the main topic, that is, Bill Moyers Journal on the Iraqi fiasco?

By the way, what do most of the comments in this section have to do with the main topic, that is, Bill Moyers Journal on the Iraqi fiasco? Not much.  But it isn’t much fun admitting you were duped.  It will be a long time before I vote for anyone even remotely resembling a neocon.

@ Nucci:

“...the state religion of Nazi fearmongering which I liken to the present day of whitewashing of our current unjust war...”

Two big lies in just one phrase.  First of all, to oppose Nazism, and to remember why it was right to oppose it and to wage war against it, is no more “fearmongering” than raising alarms about the still possible collapse of civilisation - which the war against Hitler delayed for at least around 50 years.  Second of all - and even more dishonestly - you are agreeing with the neocon bastards and their propaganda in equating the war against Hitler with the idiotic and unjust war against Saddam, who has been accurately likened to a cross between Stalin and Daffy Duck, but without any weapons or soldiers worth a damn.

By equating WW II with this idiotic war/occupation in Iraq, you’re just feeding the neocon propaganda through the back door.

And as for this bit of rubbish:  “Being from Catholic background it would have been my people who might have been interred in camps for harboring fugitives”, well, being “from Catholic Background” didn’t inspire Hitler or Rudolf Hoess (the Commander at Auschwitz)
to harbor fugitives.  Get real.  Many German Catholics DID harbor fugitives, but many more of them supported Hitler, to the extent of joining the SS and running the gas chambers.  As Satan of all creatures believes in Christ (his belief in, and hatred of Christ is what consumes him), you could say Satan is a real Catholic - an evil one of course, but a believer all the same.

PS, as for S Spade designating anyone who doesn’t wear a virtual Brownshirt as a “neocon fellow traveler”, well, that’s just SO like the original Brownshirts who labeled as “international Jewish Bolsheviks” anyone who objected to their vulgarian hate-mongering.

Now we see the same ingredients in the SA/Brownshirt faction hovering around the margins of paleoconservatism.  He who does not countenance apologetics for Hitler must be a fellow traveler of Stalin and/or the Jews (oxymoronic as the notion of a “Stalinist Judeophile” is, but any accusation will do for determined hatemongers.) But then, Hitler was Stalin’s most powerful fellow-traveler in 1939.

John Ball is a liar.

Sam Spade:  Prove it or forever hold your peace.

As there are no facts in the rantings of John Ball or Adriana for that matter, the proof is in the pudding. No one compared WW2 to Iraq, that is all in the imagination of Ball.  Ball just smears and defames with no facts.  By the “standards” put forth by the Neocon fellow travelers, both John Lukacs and Winston Churchill were Nazis. But here is an example of the kind of thing Ball would be attacking if he was serious, Neocon mafia king Norman Podhoretz making the case for war with Iran: The Case for Bombing Iran: I hope and pray that President Bush will do it.
BY NORMAN PODHORETZ
Wednesday, May 30, 2007 12:01 a.m. EDT Not so George W. Bush, a man who knows evil when he sees it and who has demonstrated an unfailingly courageous willingness to endure vilification and contumely in setting his face against it. It now remains to be seen whether this president, battered more mercilessly and with less justification than any other in living memory, and weakened politically by the enemies of his policy in the Middle East in general and Iraq in particular, will find it possible to take the only action that can stop Iran from following through on its evil intentions both toward us and toward Israel. As an American and as a Jew, I pray with all my heart that he will. Mr. Podhoretz is editor-at-large of Commentary. His new book, “World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism,” will be released by Doubleday on Sept. 11. This essay, in somewhat different form, was delivered as an address at a conference, “Is It 1938 Again?,” held by the Center for Jewish Studies at Queens College, City University of New York, in April. http://www.opinionjournal.com/federation/feature/?id=110010139

S Spade:

I enjoy it whenever I’m defamed by people like you who are too cowardly to post under their real names.  (And your choice of moniker, “Sam Spade”, a caricature of
vulgarian American-style “toughness”, indicates your attraction to vulgar thuggishness and a bully’s idea of what masculinity means.) Being attacked by cowards indicates that I must be doing something right.

“No one compared WW2 to Iraq, that is all in the imagination of Ball.”

M. Nucci, above, equated “Nazi fearmongering” with “the present day whitewashing of our current unjust war.”
That’s positing - impliedly - a “comparison” between those two conflicts.

“By the “standards” put forth by the Neocon fellow travelers, both John Lukacs and Winston Churchill were Nazis”

First of all, you, not I, use the word “standards”, dishonestly putting it into quotation marks as if I had used it.  I have no idea what the hell “standards” you’re talking about (and neither do you.) But what you SEEM to be implying is that Lukacs (here I will interject, “my dear friend Lukacs”, and if he commented here I am 100 percent certain that he would acknowledge my friendship proudly and defend my reputation for honesty and integrity) - as I was saying, you SEEM to be implying - stupidly - that Lukacs’ objection to hordes of illegal immigrants (with which I agree) makes him the moral equivalent of a Nazi.

Bullshit.  Objecting to an invasion of hostile, illegal immigrants has absolutely no similarity to bloody Auschwitz or to any other barbarities of the Nazis.

And as for this:  “here is an example of the kind of thing Ball would be attacking if he was serious, Neocon mafia king Norman Podhoretz...”

...well, I would like to see Podhoretz deported to Gaza.  Satisfied now?  But the fact the Podhoretz is a creep and an enemy of the US Constitution, has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that there are a considerable number of thuggish, nationalist-populist hatemongers hovering around the margins of paleoconservatism, or with the fact that any and all apologetics for Hitler and the neo-barbarianism which he personified must be nipped in the bud.

@ Adriana:  S Spade has not “proved it”, but you can’t expect him or his kind to “hold their peace.” All we can do is to expose them for the thuggish, dishonest cowards and bullies that they are, and welcome their grunting slanders in order to expose them all the more, so that they’ll ultimately crawl back under the rocks from under which they emerged.

It really isn’t possible to make much sense of the hate filled ranting of John Ball, except to say that if it quacks like a Neocon, walks like a Neocon and smells like a Neocon than it’s a Neocon.  Ball doesn’t think the Neocon push for war with Iran is a big deal, but he is willing to smear and defame anyone opposed to the Neocon agenda.  I repeat that nobody compared WW2 to the Iraq war.  In fact, the thing Ball quotes is a refutation of Ball’s own “Nazi fear mongering” or as I would put it his smear mongering. It wasn’t a comment about WW2, it was a comment about how Neocons invoke “Nazis” to push their agenda.  Note how Norman Podhoretz invokes “1938” and Hitler etc., just as Ball does, because of course, Ball’s agenda is that of a Neocon.  But just further for Ball’s information, all of the Old Right opposed FDR and found the conduct of WW2 by the Allies, even just the Western Allies, often immoral (e.g, fire bombing civilians, carpet bombing non-military targets in what Churchill himself termed a “terror” campaign).  That includes Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, Henry Regnery etc.  So when Ball claims that anyone who doesn’t like FDR is a “Nazi” etc., he includes the entire conservative movement as it existed until the Neocons took over.  And further, John Lukacs isn’t just opposed to ILLEGAL immigration, he is opposed to mass LEGAL immigration as well.

@Sam Spade:

Your argument falls apart when you consider whether
John Ball believes WWII and the Iraq war to be on the
same level, and whether or not he adheres to a principle
to which some wars are unavoidable and which ones.

Mr. Ball believes as I do, and others do, too, that the
Iraq war was avoidable, that Saddam did not pose a
danger which could not be contained by regular means,
and that it was foolish to invate and build up a
parliamentary democracy where there was none.

But, and it is most important, he believes that WWII
was unavoidable, since Hitler represented a very
serious danger, thanks to the economic juggernaut that
Bismarck had built in the nineteenth century (and which
Bismarck would have been horrified to see it squandered
so), and who could not, would not be contained. The
only question was hot to convince the American people
that it was so.

I do not know enough of the old isolationist wing of
the conservative movement, so I cannot comment on them.
Given the times, they probably were naive about the
nature of the threat that Hitler represented, and too
optimistic as to the outlook for Amercia if Hitler
dominated all of Europe.

But today, knowing what we know, to attack Roosevelt and
Churchill,- who for all their faults and errors, gave
us fifty years in which to set things right, and if
we did not do so, it is our fault - is to be a Hitler
apologist.

FYI, I didn’t attack Churchill who I rather like and am sure his heart was in the right place for the most part.  FDR is another matter for many reasons.

“...knowing what we know, to attack Roosevelt and Churchill ... is to be a Hitler apologist” What vile slander from Adriana.  What exactly do we know now?  That without US intervention, Hitler would have won the war?  That can’t be known, nor can it be known that would have been a worse outcome.  What is known is that the war of Churchill, FDR, Hitler, Stalin and the Japanese militarists left the Eurasian land mass and western civilization in ruins.  Not sure whom Adriana means to include when she says it’s “our fault” that we didn’t “set things right” in the next 50 years, but people who use terms like “our fault” generally mean to exclude themselves from the fault.  No one in these forums has stated that the US or Britain should have gone to war on the side of Hitler.  But it is strange that those of us who oppose war, militarism, statism, great leader hero worship, and global imperial ambitions are the one condemned by Adriana as fascists and Hitler apologists.

@S. Spade

You may distinguish between Roosevelt and Churchill,
but in the forties, Roosevelt was the only one willing
to go to bat for Churchill, while people to whom you
feel more akin ideologically were quite willing to
abandon him.

That is the only test that matters, you know, whether
you can trust somebody to guard your back, and
Roosevelt came through for Churchill. You can’t
separate one from the other.

@Kirt HIngdon

Kirt, the moment you undestand that there was no
third option in World War II, that while war is a
horrible thing to be avoided if possible the results
of not being willing to fight it would be more horrible
yet, then, to badmouth Chuchill and Roosevelt is either
making political action contingent on miracles, or
abeing nostalgic for little Adolph.

Maybe you prefer the first option, and that’s OK with
me.

But again

THERE WAS NO REALISTIC THIRD OPTION

There was the realistic third option of the US staying out of the war until FDR effectively closed off that option by his military support of Britain and his encitement of the Japanese.  The fallback excuse for all leaders who take their nations into wars of choice is that they really had no choice.  Since I believe in free will, I don’t accept that excuse, but if it is valid, they deserve no credit and their enemies, who presumably also had no choice, deserve no blame.

You want the option of an isolated US face to a Nazi
dominated Europe which had inherited the Asian and
African colonies, and which was pushing into Latin
America?

How much future would you see for democracy in those
circumstances?

Adriana, don’t you know?  American nationalists believe America is categorically different from the “Old World”, as if it were another planet.

Oh, well, that is, except where the cosmic struggle against Communism is concerned.  THERE, the so-called “America Firsters” were willing and eager to entangle America in the affairs of the jungle-warlord feuds of Viet Nam and Cambodia, even while they were ready and eager to see Britain and European civilisation go down in flames in 1940.

The creed of American so-called “isolationists”:  “America:  It’s not a country, it’s an anti-communist IDEA!”

PS, I feel impelled to make a digressive comment here about Senator Robert Taft, one of the icons/idols of many American paleoconservatives, and there are good reasons to admire him - but not without some reservations:

Taft considered Communism to be a greater threat to America than Nazism, because, in his words, “fascism appeals but to a few, and Communism to the many.” Absolute nonsense.  Communism is now dead - it was stillborn in the cradle in 1917, and hardly any Russians, let alone Europeans, ever really believed in it - while Hitler’s kind of nationalism really DID appeal to “the many”, and it still has great and terrible appeal all over the world, to this day - including in bloody “Communist” China (really “nationalist” China) in which I have personally spent the past five years.
I’ve never met a single Chinese Communist Party member who cares more about Marxism than about Chinese national glory - and “national glory” is 100 percent opposed to Marxist doctrine.

AND - how many of you Taft fans know this? - in 1951, Taft advocated American intervention in so-called “Communist” China. 

This is not to say Taft had no noble qualities.  I believe he did, according to his own limited lights.  But very limited lights they were, and so are those of many his willfully blind admirers. 

All that said, I admire Taft as one of the greatest patriots in all of American history.  But please don’t fool yourselves about his inconsistencies, or about the inconsistencies of the so-called “isolationists” whose (well, not for Taft, but for all to many of them) abstract and ideological hatred for the chimera of “Communism” ran deeper than their love for America, or for Western civilisation.

The Nazis lost the strategic initiative when they failed to take Moscow, and the US, just barely entering the war, had nothing to do with that.  Far from being on the verge of taking Britain’s colonies, they were having difficulty hanging on to Italy’s and would have already been driven from Africa before the US entered the war were it not for the genius of Rommel.  At best, they might have eked out a costly victory in a war of attrition.  They could never have beaten the US on its own home turf.

I am not an American nationalist or any other kind of nationalist.  Nationalism, including its more extreme fascist variations and its “racial” Nazi variation is just another form of collectivism.  It is less dangerous than Communism, not because it is less popular, but because it is particularized rather than universal.  Since the drive of nationalism is domination of one’s own nation over all others, any alliance among nationalists is intrinsically opportunistic.  Another weakness of fascism and Nazism is the over-reliance on one great leader.  While liberal democracies and Communists states also promote this sort of blind obedience to the leader (Churchill, FDR, Stalin, Mao), they are much less dependent on it.

Mr Higdon, I disagree with your interpretation of history, but I am 100 percent convinced that you are an honourable man and a true American patriot.
Let us agree to disagree about our interpretations of WW II - meanwhile, as far as I’m concerned, I believe you are an honourable man and a true patriot.  I hope you will/would respect my honour in the same way.