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Bob Whitaker's Weekly Articles – October 23, 1999
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October 23, 1999 –
MCCAIN WAVES THE BLOODY SHIRT AT BUCHANAN
October 23, 1999 –
WORSHIPPING THE MILITARY MACHINE
MCCAIN WAVES THE BLOODY SHIRT AT BUCHANAN
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The South suffered from the "Bloody Shirt" policy of Northern Republicans for many years. After the Civil War, New England
steadily proceeded with their program of making the South a colony of New England. Higher and higher tariffs were imposed, forcing the South to buy industrial goods from New England rather than in cheaper foreign markets.
Industry was kept in New England by the simple device of charging several times as much to ship industrial goods north as for shipping them south. This was an internal tariff, preventing industry from moving south. Two sets of tariffs, one internal and one external, kept the East rich and the South poor.
All these policies favored New England and impoverished the south. It was not until AFTER WORLD WAR II that the last discriminatory rail rate ended. The South remained a New England colony until after 1945!
New England ruined the South economically all this time by controlling the Republican Party. The rest of the country did not benefit from these policies. So how did Republicans push policies favorable to only one section of the country and still get a consistent majority?
They did it by waving the "Bloody Shirt." Every four years, the Republican candidate would go to the Midwest and remind everyone about how the Republicans were the Party of Lincoln, and how the South deserved anything that happened to it for slavery and secession. The Bloody Shirt kept us economically enslaved for three generations.
McCain has pulled out the Bloody Shirt again.
Pat Buchanan was worried about the United States trying to guarantee union and freedom and so forth around the world. Liberals, as always, justified intervention around the world in the name of - what else? - Hitler. Anybody who opposed intervention in Kosovo was anaziwhowantedtokillsixmillionjews. So Buchanan did some research into how the world dealt with the real Hitler, and came up with a piece of heresy: He said England did it wrong!
Buchanan said that the guarantee Neville Chamberlain gave Poland in March 1939 was a bad idea. He said that, had Chamberlain not agreed to go to war with Germany if Hitler attacked Poland, Germany would have attacked the Soviet Union next. Instead, Hitler fought England and France and conquered Europe. The result was a catastrophe for Europe.
In any case, Buchanan points out, the guarantee did Poland no good at all. Hitler and Stalin divided Poland up between them. Buchanan points out that the European invasion and the European Holocaust were a direct result of Chamberlain's policy.
Harry Truman said much the same thing before World War II that Buchanan is saying today. He wanted Hitler and Stalin to fight each other, and wanted to find some way to arrange that, rather than a war in Europe. Would things be better or worse had Chamberlain not made that guarantee at that time? No one actually knows.
But that is not the point. The point is that Buchanan is criticizing the Clinton-McCain foreign policy. So they do what they always do when someone hits them with criticism they can't answer. They scream HITLER!
And how do they justify screaming at Buchanan? They wave the good old reliable Bloody Shirt. If you criticize Neville Chamberlain's policy and all it led to, you are insulting and attacking all of the American troops who died in World War II. That is what McCain is actually shouting. He has read Pat Buchanan out of the Republican Party for daring to criticize Neville Chamberlain, because Neville Chamberlain's policy represents all American veterans!
New England's Bloody Shirt Policy said that Union soldiers all died for policies that would benefit New England. McCain says that all those Americans died for the foreign policy advocated by him and Clinton.
Oddly enough, McCain never says that the critics of the Vietnam War should be excluded from the political process the way Buchanan should. He would never say that Vietnam War critics are desecrating the memory of tens of thousands of Americans who died over there. That would insult liberals, and that is the last thing John McCain will ever do.
WORSHIPPING THE MILITARY MACHINE
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As I pointed out on June 12, in "Busing By Bomber," General Wesley Clark pointed out that it was the US main military objective in Europe to make sure that there were no ethnically pure European states! Ethnic balance, like racial balance, is the purpose of our armed forces there.
Not one single conservative objected.
This guy is a general, and conservatives worship generals. Listen to any professional conservative, and you will hear that the main item in his political wish list is that there be more generals, more soldiers. It doesn't matter to him what they are used for.
One thing that the Founding Fathers had no use for was a huge standing army. Nothing could be more alien to the mentality of the Founders than the endless, mindless demands of conservatives for a bigger army, navy and air force. But every time you hear a professional conservative set out his policy goals, one of the first things he mentions is a bigger, more expensive military.
No conservative ever says WHY he wants this military expansion. If anybody ever asks him for a reason, his eyes go glassy and he begins to talk vaguely about "America's place in the world."
A vague comment about "America's place in the world" was NOT what the Founding Fathers considered a reason for expanding the military. As a matter of fact, that was EXACTLY the kind of cant the Founders intended to leave in Europe. It was fine for Prussians to talk about "Germany's rightful place in the world" or for Russians to say they were following Russia's World Mission. But that was for Europeans, not for free born Americans.
How is it that we now have twenty-first century American conservatives talking like eighteenth century Czarists?
The only reason for a big military, according to those who wrote the Constitution, was for a very specific, very short-term need. Unlike any professional conservative, a real American would say, "World War II is over."
The Cold War is over. What are all those troops FOR?"
No conservative ever asks.
This reveals something very basic about today's conservative. Nobody could be further from the Founding Fathers than the modern so-called conservative. The Founding Fathers were, first and foremost, makers of policy. They demanded a reason for anything the government did. Respectable conservatives are not guided by reasons. Modern conservative policy is purely a matter of blind worship.
Today's so-called conservative worships liberals. Liberals make policy, define the question, and then conservatives debate the question strictly within the guidelines set by liberals. They want respectability, and for them respectability is defined by liberals. Above all, they need to avoid liberal labels like "racist" or anaziwhowantstokillsixmillionjews.
Conservatives also worship institutions. In fact, a blind worship of the military is, to today's "conservatives," the basis of their claim to the title.
Blind loyalty to institutions like the military is EUROPEAN conservatism. As stated above, mouthing phrases about wanting a big military to ensure "America's place in the world" is good PRUSSIAN conservatism. It doesn't belong HERE.
The only proper, historical American attitude toward the armed forces is that they are a necessary evil. Americans have always kept the standing military as small as possible. We have just had a period of national emergency lasting from 1939 to the present day, when World War II and the Cold War required our expanding the military and our worldwide commitments to previously unimaginable levels.
One could say that, after two generations in which the military has been expanded and bloated beyond previous imaginings, it is natural that we have forgotten the traditional place of the military in our society.
The problem with that logic is that it ignores what conservatism is all about. How can someone who forgets our basic tradition be called a conservative? Who is going to remind us of what our proper traditions are if not the conservatives in our society?
Conservatives talk about paying for more soldiers for foreign adventures, but our own borders are completely unprotected. Illegal immigrants pour in. According to the Constitution, the purpose of the United States is to provide for "OURSELVES and OUR Posterity." The first purpose of our armed forces is to protect OUR borders.
We spend a lot more to defend Israel's borders than we do to protect our own. And conservatives want more troops to protect other people's borders. Until OUR borders are defended, no more troops should be provided for our politicians to play with abroad.
Until the Vietnam War, it was truly said that, "The United States has never lost a war or won a peace." After Vietnam, the first rule was broken, but the second rule holds firm. The Gulf War demonstrates, once again, that the United States never wins a peace.
Since the Gulf War, American troops have been used for Wesley Clark's ethnic balancing and for disasters like Somalia. Since the Cold War, our military has never been used for anything a conservative could defend. Yet conservatives keep up their knee jerk demands for more troops.
What has the United States done with its military since the end of the Cold War? The only thing that was semi-defensible that we have done was the Gulf War. That, at least, was fought to save oil rather than for some liberal objective. But it was fought to save EUROPE'S oil supply. There is plenty of oil for America's needs in the Western Hemisphere.
If we keep doing that, Europe will never grow up and provide for its own defense. Like every other kind of unnecessary welfare, military welfare is destructive.
It is time to cut the umbilical cord and let Europe grow up.
It is also time to stop giving our politicians American lives to play with.
If we give our politicians troops, they use them horribly. Politicians will only be careful with using American troops if their numbers are very, very limited. It is time to put them on a starvation diet. Cut the military, and cut it hard.
We will give them back their soldiers if and when they give us a good reason why they are needed. That is the way the Founding Fathers set it up.
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