Once Again, America First

[nightperson]

Very interesting and readable new NYT article on "antiwar conservatives" past and present:

On May 4, American conservatism took an unexpected turn. That morning, George Will -- the movement's most influential columnist, one of its icons -- slapped George W. Bush with a tart reprimand. For a year, Will had obliquely hinted of his grave misgivings about the Iraq war and the push to democratize the Middle East. But with the insurgency escalating, he now felt obliged to state his frustration bluntly. ''This administration cannot be trusted to govern if it cannot be counted on to think and, having thought, to have second thoughts,'' he wrote.

From the war's start, a few stray conservatives have criticized it. The columnist Patrick J. Buchanan vociferously opposed Bush's campaign against Saddam Hussein, just as he had opposed the one waged by Bush's father. Other opponents resided in heterodox corners of the movement like the libertarian Cato Institute and the traditionalist Chronicles magazine. But Will's migration toward the antiwar camp represented a significant shift: full-fledged members of the conservative establishment were now expressing doubts about the prospects for American success in Iraq. Indeed, Will has been joined by a small legion, from the powerful Representative Henry Hyde to the influential lobbyist Stephen Moore. ''I supported the war and now I feel foolish,'' the conservative commentator Tucker Carlson confessed to The New York Times...

While the greatest generation has become deeply etched into the national mythology, only a smattering of scholarly monographs, like Wayne S. Cole's ''Roosevelt and the Isolationists, 1932-1945,'' have dwelt on the opposition to World War II. But the America First Committee achieved a significant following in the late 30's. At its pre-Pearl Harbor peak, it claimed approximately 800,000 members -- and not just angry farmers and protofascists. Its Yale Law School chapter included Gerald Ford and Potter Stewart, the future Supreme Court justice; John F. Kennedy sent the organization a $100 check...

Without a home in the conservative movement, the isolationists had no choice but to search for allies in unlikely quarters. During the late 60's, they often teamed up with the New Left, becoming stalwarts of the antiwar movement. Karl Hess, a speechwriter for Barry Goldwater's 1964 campaign and the author of the memoir-cum-political tract ''Dear America,'' argued, ''Vietnam should remind conservatives that whenever you put your faith in big government for any reason, sooner or later you wind up an apologist for mass murder.'' In 1969, Hess joined with a libertarian antiwar faction that quit the Young Americans for Freedom (Y.A.F.), the campus conservative group. And a few on the New Left returned the favor, heartily embracing the apostates. In 1975, the historian Ronald Radosh (then a man of the left) published ''Prophets on the Right,'' a book championing the prescience of Robert A. Taft and other ''conservative critics of American globalism.''

Yes, Buchanan is already cackling about the article.