Thursday, September 04, 2008

'Country First?' Why not 'America First?'

The America First Committee was founded by Nazi collaborator John Foster Dulles with the intent of keeping the U.S. out of WW II, and allowing Hitler to overrun Europe and the Soviet empire. "Country First" is a fascist inside joke, code words that would infuriate anyone with patriotic feelings - if the population weren't kept ignorant of actual American history by the military-media complex. - AC

Posted by Paul Mulshine
blog.nj.com
September 03, 2008

Have you noticed all of those "Country First" signs and banners at the Republican National Convention? I found myself wondering: Why the generic "Country First" instead of the more specific "America First?"

I soon realized why. That term's already taken ...

The America First Committee was founded in 1940 with the goal of keeping the United States out of World War II. Its membership was generally right-wing and Republican. Members included Gerald Ford as well as a number of prominent businessmen.

The group also had some left-wingers as well and even some true wing nuts on both sides of the spectrum, as nicely summarized in this Wikipedia article. There were Marxists on the left and anti-Semites on the right. But the great mass of the members were simply Americans who saw the mess that the Europeans made in World War I and wanted to stay out of the next one.

To that end its goals were the following:

• The United States must build an impregnable defense for America.
• No foreign power, nor group of powers, can successfully attack a prepared America.
• American democracy can be preserved only by keeping out of the European war.
• "Aid short of war" weakens national defense at home and threatens to involve America in war abroad.


The group disbanded as soon as Pearl Harbor was attacked, at which point the U.S. had no choice but to enter the war. But till that attack occurred, the prevailing sentiment on the right wing of American politics was against the Wilsonian views of the Democrats. Contrary to the distorted views of history being put forth by the Bush administration, it was the liberal Democrats, not the conservative Republicans, who were eager for the United States to become the world's policeman.

That sentiment, which is termed "non-interventionist" by those who endorse it and "isolationist" by those who don't, remains the core view of right-wingers in America. That's the reason that Bush had to leave out a key bit of information about Sen. William Borah in a speech a few months ago in which Bush tarred the former Idaho senator's memory by attacking him as an appeaser. And that key bit of information is that Borah was a Republican. So was the other leading opponent of U.S. entry into World War II, Robert A. Taft.

The true conservative position against internationalist nation-building exercises has been scrubbed from history by the so-called "neo" conservatives. And they sure don't want people thinking about it.

So that's why those signs say "Country First" instead of "America First."

http://blog.nj.com/njv_paul_mulshine/2008/09/country_first_why_not_america.html