America First

Last updated on: May 11, 2016 at 1:29 pm by D. G. Hart

America First 2016-05-11T13:29:59-04:00 D. G. Hart

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Don’t let all that prejudice against Donald Trump get in the way of understanding an important debate about U.S. foreign policy before the nation became “great.” Michael Brendan Dougherty explains:

America First was a young, politically diverse, and surprisingly well-lettered movement that wanted to keep America neutral (like Switzerland or Ireland) as Europe descended into World War II. Though it started on the East Coast, it was concentrated in the Midwest and had over two million members nationwide. It counted major American political figures, Democrat and Republican, in its ranks, as well as many men of letters.

You probably remember the Clinton years. The America Firsters remembered World War I. Members of the AFC over 30 would recall that the last European bloodbath had some deforming effects on liberty at home. These included America’s experiments in mass wartime censorship, stirred up-hatred of German-Americans, and the legal suppression of the German language that was used commonly in the Midwest and Great Plains. The governor of Iowa told reporters, “There is no use in anyone wasting his time praying in other languages than English. God is listening only to the English tongue.”

America Firsters also remembered British intelligence planting false and insane stories in the American press during World War I, accusing the German army of marching with Belgian babies impaled on their bayonets. They remembered that Woodrow Wilson’s government had employed a small army of government-licensed demagogues, the Four Minute Men, who got their speeches from the proto-fascist Committee on Public Information. They also recalled that the peace imposed at Versailles had been vengeful and its reparation schemes so entangled that they contributed to a global economic depression just a few years earlier. Naturally, some of them wanted to restore America’s foreign policy of maintaining the Monroe Doctrine in our hemisphere and not intervening in others.

The modern charge against America First is that it was made up of people obsessed with Jews. In her denunciation at CNN, Susan Dunn says that Charles Lindbergh, a famous pilot, anti-Semite, and popular AFC speaker, “put American Jews on notice that America’s ‘tolerance’ for them rested upon a fragile foundation.'” McManus says that Lindbergh’s “followers included more than a few pro-Nazis and anti-Semites.”

This has been rebuffed by historians Wayne S. Cole and Justus Doenecke. The AFC, understanding that it was in tension with the Anglophile elite on the East Coast, tried to police anti-Semitism in its ranks. General Robert Wood, a distinguished veteran of America’s war in the Philippines and the First World War, told the followers of the openly anti-Semitic radio priest Father Coughlin, “We don’t want you people.” The powerful industrialist Henry Ford was ejected from the board of America First for his anti-Semitic views. And when Lindbergh included, for the first time, anti-Semitic lines in his infamous Des Moines speech, he was drowned out by boos and catcalls. The AFC had Jewish staffers like James Lipsig and Sidney Hertzberg. All in all, the America First Committee put considerably more effort in removing the anti-Semites from its ranks than the Roosevelt administration did in ejecting Stalin’s agents from its own.

The Roosevelt White House’s case against America First is barely repeatable in polite circles today. Roosevelt aide Harold Ickes was smearing America First as Nazi sympathizers and Japanese lovers. Whatever the imagined dangers of Lindberg’s Des Moines speech, it was the war effort — not the pacifists and beatniks — that revealed the “fragile foundation” of America’s tolerance. Roosevelt set up 10 interment camps to hold 110,000 Japanese-Americans. No trials, no charges. Just internment based on ethnicity.

For those who think that political conservatives are people who listen to Rush Limbaugh and watch Fox News, Dougherty represents a different brand of conservatism, one that has been ambivalent about U.S. foreign policy for a long time and one that distinguishes patriotism from support for the U.S. military. For those conservatives, America is great when it minds its own business and lives contentedly with the footprint of a modest republic. For evangelicals who want a nation as great as their God, that version of America is shabby and uninspired. But if you can live with churches that aren’t flashy — as if — why not a nation of similar proportions?

Image

2016 Presidential Election

Michael Brendan Dougherty

Previous Post

May 6, 2016

Marriage and the End of Moral Outrage

Next Post

May 13, 2016 Why The Bible is Only a Good Book not a Great One

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 2016 Presidential Election 2020 Presidential Election Apocalypse Bible in American Life Biblical authority Books and culture Calvinism Church Life Civil Religion Culture Wars Doctrine evangelicalism Gullibility Heaven and Hell Intellectual life Jesus Ministry modernity moralism Nationalism New Testament Old Testament Otherworldiness Otherworldliness Paul Peter Piety Popular culture Protestantism Psalms Puritans Race Roman Catholicism sacred/secular distinction Sex Shameless Self Promotion Sports Ten Commandments U.S. politics Uncategorized vulgarity worship

Select a Month January 2022 October 2021 August 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz