 Isolationism is deeply rooted in American history. As Selig Adler, the pro-interventionist historian once pointed out, quote, the American revolution was in itself an act of isolation for it cut the umbilical cord to the mother country, end quote. Prior to the annexation of Hawaii and the Spanish-American war, it simply did not occur to anyone that an American empire was either possible or desirable. There was no anti-interventionist movement in America before the late 1800s for the simple reason that a marked aversion to foreign adventurism was well nigh universal. The idea that we ought to keep aloof from the world was not just the political or ideological principle of held by all parties and factions. It was a cultural trait, part of what it meant to be an American. Isolationism was not the policy of a particular party or movement, the anti-imperialist movement, but the cultural consensus and deeply held conviction of Americans at every social level. We were different. Unlike the Europeans, we did not go marauding about in search of trouble, treasure, and trade concessions. Interventionism was a policy of kings and emperors, not of free Republican governments. Seemingly inoculated against the European vice of foreign adventurism, we were almost, almost never tempted to indulge until February 3, 1893. On that day, a curious delegation appeared in the city of San Francisco. Arriving on the steamer Claudine, the five-man delegation represented a conspiracy of white planters who would seize the island of Hawaii, depose Queen Lillio Colani, and now sought to incorporate the islands into the first American outpost of empire. What one congressional opponent of annexation would later call the bacillus of imperialism had finally touched US soil. Now, the annexationists pressed their case in terms of the alleged economic and military benefits to American business. Hawaii, it was said, is the gateway to the markets of the Orient. The opponents of annexation, southern Democrats and northern Mugwumps, saw the conquest of the Hawaiian Kingdom as the first breach in the walls of the American Republic, and so it was. The country in possession for the first time of a colonial empire would be no different from the imperial powers of Europe. Now, one such anti-imperialist was the Mugwump Carl Scherrs, editor of the influential Harper's Weekly. He made the same arguments against the annexation of Hawaii as he made against President Grant's ill-fated attempt to grab Santo Domingo. Scherrs had argued that we could not absorb Santo Domingo and survive as a republic. For the United States could never rule other peoples by sheer force without doing violence to itself and fundamentally altering its own nature. If Santo Domingo were to be annexed, it therefore followed that it must be admitted as a state, a full-fledged part of the Union, right up there with Massachusetts and Indiana. But this, he averred, was impossible, since no republic had ever flourished beneath a tropical sun. To annex, the American tropics would be to acquire no end of trouble. Quote, have you thought of what this means? He asked. Fancy 10 or 12 tropical states added to the southern states we already possess. Fancy the senators and representatives of 10 or 12 millions of tropical people. Fancy them sitting in the halls of Congress, throwing the weight of their intelligence, their morality, their political notions and habits, their prejudices and passions into the scale of the destinies of this republic. He goes on to denounce, quote, a singular delusion that has taken hold of the minds of otherwise clear-headed men. It is that our new friendship with England would serve firmly to secure the world's peace, end quote. Now, this suspicion of Britain's baneful influence is a theme that started in Jefferson's day and resurfaced again during the debate over what to do with the spoils of the Spanish-American war. Speaking against the annexation bill, Senator Bland of Georgia declared, quote, the secret reason for this bill, he said, was to, quote, pressure on the part of Great Britain. Isolated yet possessed of a vast empire, Great Britain needed allies, really subordinates, to do her bidding and had settled on the United States to play this role. Dependent on England to hold our Asiatic territory, the Democratic senator feared we would be pulled into a dispute over the division of a Chinese spoils. In the senator's opinion, he could not, quote, but regard annexation as a deeply laid scheme to enslave the American people under the present domination of plutocracy. The power of the Bank of England, the wealth of that country over the banks and moneyed institutions of this country has brought to bear the combined power of the capitalists of England and America to control our financial system. The next move is to put our army and navy at the service of England in the prosecution of Asiatic conquest, the end of which no man can see. And so, summing up this period, we have three major anti-imperialist themes, three arguments against the rise of empire. One, the ideological argument. In this view, imperialism is seen as a direct threat to Republican institutions. The idea that we could rule people without their consent violated our own anti-colonialist heritage. Furthermore, the decision to set up a course for empire would inevitably mean a huge standing army, huge public debts, and the threat to American liberties represented by both of these dire prospects. In the process of acquiring an empire, we would lose our distinctively American character and wind up just like the decadent empires of Europe. Now, the second argument is the cultural argument, which condemned imperialism as a threat to the cultural homogeneity of American society. We had already fought one civil war over the question of race. The addition of yet more cultural diversity would add the possibility of yet more racial strife. Apart from the ethnic angle, however, there was a more significant point to be made, that the policy of imperialism would so degrade and contaminate American culture that the very character of the people would be altered and corrupted almost beyond redemption. Three, the conspiratorial argument couched in populist rhetoric that imperialism was a policy of a plutocratic elite of the munitions makers and the bankers with their foreign loans, who made money off the human slaughter. Furthermore, so went the argument, this plutocracy was so enamored of Great Britain that it was willing to sacrifice our Republican heritage and the national interest in playing out the role assigned to us by London. Now, the isolationist reaction to expansionism included elements of both parties. Both major factions of a democratic party, Brianites and Cleveland Democrats, were generally opposed to the policy of imperialism. On the Republican side, the Taft Republicans as in William Howard Taft, as in William Howard Taft, excuse me, and the Roosevelt bull moosters were pro expansionist, while the so-called Mugwumps, many of whom were among the founders of the Republican party, made up an important part of the emerging anti-imperialist coalition. The fight over the annexation issue also brought out regional divisions and these were exacerbated by the debate. Opposition to imperialism was centered in the south and the Midwest, with important pockets of organized anti-imperialist activity throughout New England, that bastion of Mugwumpery. In the Midwest, this regionalism was associated with a healthy Jeffersonian hatred of the Eastern financial establishment. Now, in a broad sense, what made possible the victory of the empire builders and the overthrow of the old isolationist mindset, at least among the urban intellectuals in the policymaking league, was the political culture of progressivism. This included a wide variety of cultural uplifters, abolitionists, feminists, prohibitionists, millenarian fundamentalists, as Murray pointed out in his excellent talk last night, militant vegetarians, and of course, professional intellectuals of every size, shape, and description, eager to try out their endless schemes for the improvement and uplifting of mankind. It was only natural that these people, having set their sights on saving the nation, would feel compelled to take on the rest of the world. This crusading spirit and America's acquisition of overseas colonial empire planted the seeds that would sprout a crop of myrmidons on the eve of the First World War. Now, the coming of the Great War gave birth to an anti-interventionist movement colored with the traditional themes of American anti-imperialism. As Europe sank into a chaos of blood-drenched darkness, Teddy Roosevelt, Henry Cabot Lodge, and former Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson, launched a campaign to reunite the Republicans and the progressives over the preparedness issue. President Wilson soon came up with his own proposals to increase military appropriations as he inched closer to a decision to go to war. The anti-interventionists struck back when the House of Representatives nearly succeeded in eliminating the ambitious proposal of a Navy to increase the number of battleships. An amendment to cut the naval appropriation in half failed by a mere 16 votes, and the battle lines were drawn. Of the 155 votes cast in favor, the majority were Southern and Midwestern Democrats. Now, the agrarian Jeffersonian wing of a Democratic Party abhorred the rise of a professional military cast, fearing that it would threaten democracy and pressionize the Republic. Midwestern Democrats like Representative Clyde Taverner of Illinois denounced the war trust, quote unquote, which had cornered the market in international strife. Georgia populous Tom Watson declared that the real enemy was not abroad, but here at home in the class legislation of, quote, overgrown and insolent monopolies. Now, traditional Democratic opposition to militarism and big military budgets was muted, however, by the fact that they were, after all, the party in power and thus reluctant to oppose President Wilson's armaments program. While there was a hardcore of anti-preparedness Democrats in the House and Senate, their numbers dwindled as the pressures of party politics were brought to bear. On the Republican side, 15 voted for the cut in naval appropriations, including 13 Midwesterners, most of whom were progressives. This Republican insurgency represented a significant shift. For years, many of these same people had gone along with imperialism and voted for a greatly enhanced Army and Navy, especially during the era of Teddy Roosevelt. Under the pressure of events, however, many leading progressive Republican legislators came around to the opposite point of view and you see this happening today and you see it happening over and over in history and we'll get to that. Representative James L. Sladen, a Texas Democrat, declared, but he suspected, quote, a conspiracy to force our country into war with Germany. He attacks a great and influential lobby operating about the halls of Congress and the press, whose purpose is not only to feed the maw of the munitions makers, but also to deploy our enlarged forces in Europe. The people he contended must be mobilized against, quote, the majority of the newspapers and great commercial interests, end quote. So we see that nothing ever really changes. Here Sladen is expressing the main theme of anti-imperialism, first raised in the battle against annexation of Hawaii and the Philippines and now amplified and applied to Wilson's military buildup and his handling of the submarine crisis, a war-mongering and profiteering elite motivated by greed and a treasonous devotion to Great Britain was conspiring to involve us in the intrigues of Europe and get us into the war. This concept, first articulated by the anti-imperialist movement of the 1890s, was a favorite populist theme that developed and grew stronger with the years, carrying over into the isolationist resistance to World War I and World War II and permeating the rhetoric of non-interventionist factions within both parties. Now, at about this time, there came into existence the first internationalist organization in American history with the rather ominous name of the League to Enforce Peace. President Howard Taft, William Howard Taft, served as chairman and the League was the creature of the internationally-minded Taft Republicans, that is the party of Eastern finance capital. It was not some fringe group of fuzzy-minded radical pacifists but the big business establishment itself that was sponsoring and propagandizing the most wide-ranging scheme of international organization yet devised. The League wanted to set up an international council of conciliation, which would hear all disputes between nations and force would be used against so-called outlaw nations who refused to submit. William Jennings Bryan denounced the League plan and Randolph Bourne, the young hunchback radical and literary avenging angel of pre-war liberalism, described it as, quote, an alliance of all against each that practically ensures that every war within the system would be a world war. This debate over the merits of internationalism had no effect on the 1916 election. As happened so often in US history, it was a bipartisan internationalism that faced the voters that fateful presidential election year. The Republican nominee was Charles Evans Hughes, sounding very much like his friends in the League to enforce peace and foreign policy played almost no role in the campaign. It wasn't until after Wilson's election victory but the controversy started to heat up again. At a banquet given by the Democratic National Committee in honor of William Jennings Bryan, the guest of honor denounced any thought of, quote, our being an international policeman, unquote, and called for a constitutional amendment requiring the submission of every declaration of war to a referendum of the people, except in case of actual invasion of our country. Now, this is a theme that recurs over and over again. During the Second World War, there was the Ludlow Amendment, the Heroic Ludlow Amendment, and even today there is now a movement, though I guess it's mostly on the left, to do the same thing. Senator William E. Bora, Republican of Idaho, who had sometimes gone along with the preparedness campaign, charged with the president's League of Nations, represented a scheme that would drag this country into endless foreign wars. We were headed, warned the senator, into the storm center of European politics. The League of Nations proposal solidified the progressive Republican response to Wilsonian internationalism, and pretended a shift in the alignment of the two parties in the realm of foreign policy. From this time until the Cold War, the Republicans moved toward isolationism and the Democrats moved increasingly toward interventionism, reversing their historic roles. Now, there were, of course, exceptions, Taft and his followers remained internationalists, and Teddy Roosevelt and Lodge also were in favor of maintaining our international alliances, but these leaders came more and more to be in a minority in their own parties. As a new republic editorial put it, what had been the party of jingoism and imperial overstretch was now proposing, quote, to crouch at its own fireside, build a high tariff wall, arm against the whole world, cultivate no friendships, take no steps to forestall another great war, and then let things rip. The party, which was once inspired by the American Union, is becoming the party of secession and state's rights as against world union, quote, unquote, and I'm in favor of it. Among the Democrats, the party regulars were forsaking their traditional fealty to the foreign policy of Thomas Jefferson and uniting around President Wilson's internationalist program. While some Democrats spoke out in defense of the old program, opposition from the Brian wing was muted as was Brian himself. Now, the vote in the House of Representatives on the war resolution reflected the politics of the emerging isolationist coalition, which would retain its essential character for the next 40 years. During that debate, isolationist themes were reiterated with renewed vigor. In entering the war, we would hand the victory to the money-mad profiteers who trafficked in arms. In spreading democracy and peace abroad, we would lose it at home. In saving the Europeans, we would lose our own souls. 54 congressmen voted against Wilson's war, 35 Republicans, 18 Democrats, and one socialist. Although there were a few conservative Republicans who voted no, most were left-wing populists of the Lafayette variety, midwesterners who hated bigness, the Eastern establishment, and the government business partnership that was the basis of the state capitalist order. Virtually all the Democrats who voted no were Southern Brianites who remembered their party's historical antipathy to war, militarism, and overseas adventurism. Now, in the opposition to the First World War, the three themes of the anti-interventionist movement were amplified and developed. The ideological argument was reflected in the progressive critique of war as the policy of a ruthless elite that profits from a slaughter. The Republic had been overthrown by such men and the populist progressives meant to take it back. After the Great War, the cultural and conspiratorial themes tended to merge into a single argument that foreign lobbyists and government and the media exert a decisive influence in the councils of power. Now, historical revisionism played a key role. Harry Elmer Barn's books, The Agenesis of the World War and In Quests of Truth and Justice gave voice to the universal mood of disillusionment. Barn's critique of US intervention in the Great War was preceded by and thematically quite similar to the work of Judge Frederick Bausman, author of Led France Explained. Bausman had retired from the Washington State Supreme Court and devoted himself to writing the first American book to expose the myth of German war guilt. Writing in H. L. Menken's American Mercury, Bausman asked, was ever a country so bedeviled as ours? Has there ever been one in all history in which the class most powerful and controlling government and public opinion was determinedly bent on giving away enormous sums of the country's money to nations already heavily armed and openly expressing contempt for our sacrifice, which they would accept only as their due. It is an actual fact, but in many circles of wealth and fashion in this country, one who takes his country's side in these debates is put to shame at dinner tables, end quote. Well, it all depended on whose dinner table you ate at. In the East among maturi-loving would-be aristocrats of American society, this was no doubt true. But in the Midwest, a new Americanism was brewing. The general disillusionment that follows any war combined with popular resentment against British wartime propaganda and their attempt to get out of paying their war debts to the United States reached the boiling point in the late 20s. A wave of anti-British feeling swept the country and a coalition of groups, such as the Veterans of Foreign Wars and the Patriotic League for the Preservation of American History joined forces to get rid of the anglophilic bias in the nation's schoolbooks. The Veterans of Foreign Wars declared at that time that quote, the heroic history of a nation is the drum and fife music to which it marches. It makes a mighty difference whether America continues to quick-step to Yankee Doodle or takes the marking time to God save the king. Now, this was a mass movement. Of course, today this is almost inconceivable, but perhaps not. In October 1927, Bausman testified in the celebrated case of William McAndrew, the superintendent of schools in Chicago, who had been suspended for authorizing blatantly pro-British textbooks with an explicitly internationalist bias. Initiated by Chicago mayor, Big Bill Thompson and his advisor pro-American journalist and author, Charles Grant Miller, the campaign to decolonize and reclaim the history of his country was given voice in Bausman's testimony. England, he said, had quote, beguiled us into war, took all the spoils of it and did not want to pay her debts, end quote. The inculcation of American youth with a treasonous reverence for the so-called mother country was the work of quote, financiers of England who seek first the full cancellation of England's war debt to the United States and second the placing of the Union Jack wherever now flies the stars and stripes, end quote. Now, the trumpet of this mid-western isolationism of the right was Colonel Robert Rutherford McCormick's Chicago Tribune newspaper, the flagship newspaper of the McCormick Medal and Patterson newspaper chain. McCormick regularly excoriated our deadbeat so-called allies for welching on their war debts and castigated the State Department for toting up to the British. Another editorial voice raised against internationalism was that of George Horace Lorimer, founding editor of a Saturday Evening Post. Liberals disillusioned by the Treaty of Versailles Midwestern progressives wary of a foreign interventionism and economic centralism and conservative Republicans who hated FDR and all his works. This was the broad-based coalition that coalesced into the movement we know today as the old right. Forge in the battle against the New Deal and Franklin Delano Roosevelt's drive to war, the old right coalition transformed the Midwestern progressive Republicans who had initially supported the New Deal into the bitterest Roosevelt haters in the country and principled opponents eventually of big government. Their evolution is encapsulated in the career of the writer and publicist, John T. Flynn who started out as a new republic liberal and opponent of big business monopolism and became the outstanding organizer and spokesman for the America First Committee and the old right conservatives. In Flynn's mind, opposition to centralism and militarism were the main targets, were the main tenants of the liberal creed. And in his campaign against the New Deal and the war, he was merely being consistent. But in fact, there was a change in the analysis of the old fashioned liberals, a clarification of their previously confused economic views. They became opponents of big government. Yesterday's critics of capitalism were transformed like Flynn into advocates of free enterprise and strictly limited government. In the old right, in the America First Committee, all the main currents of anti-interventionism, populism, progressivism, nationalism, libertarianism merged into a single movement in opposition to the New Deal and the war. Out of this popular front, the modern conservative movement was born. Now, I've already dealt with this subject in my book, Reclaiming the American Right, the Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement. And since I hate to repeat myself, I'm not gonna go into a big analysis of it here. And I refer you to that work for an extensive treatment of the subject. Suffice to say that the old right is sort of hovering over this room, watching us. And they are intellectual ancestors. They are a heritage. And I encourage you to investigate the history of the old right. Now, those who oppose the transformation of our American Republic into an empire hailed from both ends of the political spectrum, from far right to far left and virtually all points in between. From the free silver populism of William Jennings Bryan to the old right laissez-faire-ism of Garrett Garrett, the various strands of non-interventionist thought are made of distinct and diverse fibers. The history of the anti-interventionist movement is the story of how those disparate threads have been slowly woven together over time. It is the story of a developing Americanism, of an American ideology that encompasses not only foreign but domestic policy, of a libertarian nationalism that extols America as the fatherland of liberty. The evolution of this ideology is an ongoing process of which this historic conference is a vitally important part. Thank you.