Ain't My America

I just finished Bill Kauffman's Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism (New York: Metropolitan, 2008).

I didn't like Kauffman's book at first, for he initially struck me as a Pat Buchanan wannabe with a bizarre writing style. He also turned me off when he mentioned all these historical figures I did not know. But I quickly found myself warming up to him, for he soon emerged as a unique person, one who doesn't fit easily into the usual political categories of "left" and "right."

Kauffman's premise is that war is not a conservative concept. It leads to higher taxes (or, in Bush II's case, more deficit spending), greater government control of the economy, government suppression of civil liberties, family disintegration, deaths, and a host of other ills. For Kauffman, war is the antithesis of family values and keeping government out of people's lives, which are key conservative ideas.

Kauffman does well to draw on the wisdom of the founding fathers and the old-style, anti-war conservatives. He quotes John Mason, James Madison, and George Washington, who criticized the idea of sending American troops into far-off regions. He refers to Robert Taft, Mr. Republican himself, who opposed American participation in World War II, NATO, and the Korean War. He discusses Herbert Hoover's criticism of America's involvement in Korea. As Kauffman documents, isolationism is a long-standing American tradition as well as a conservative view.

But Kauffman is also unique. Although he is a conservative, he admires Eugene McCarthy, socialist Norman Thomas, and George McGovern. McGovern even praises the book on the back cover, saying, "Bill Kauffman is a conservative of the highest order, unlike the false brand now conducting our foreign affairs." When I first read that, I scoffed. "Like George McGovern has any business defining conservatism," I thought. But Kauffman presented a side to McGovern that I didn't know much about. McGovern was a devout churchgoer, a hunter, and a lover of the rural landscape of America. I already knew he was a World War II bomber pilot, since he came to Cincinnati a few years ago for a World War II symposium. (I didn't attend that, since, well, it was McGovern, the guy who lost so badly in the 1972 election. I now regret my choice.) But McGovern didn't play up his war experience in the 1972 campaign.

McGovern also reached out to George Wallace. Kaufmann explains:

"Unlike the bilious Ed Muskie, who dismissed George Wallace's Florida primary victory as a triumph of racism, McGovern credited Wallace's appeal to 'a sense of powerlessness in the face of big government, big corporations, and big labor unions.' He asked Wallace for his endorsement, though as he recalls with a smile, [Wallace] said, 'Sen-a-tah, if I endorsed you I'd lose about half of my following and you'd lose half of yours.'

"'It is not prejudice to fear for your family's safety or to resent tax inequities...It is time to recognize this and to stop labeling people 'racist' or 'militant,' to stop putting people in different camps, to stop inciting one American against another,' said McGovern, who called the Wallace vote 'an angry cry from the guts of ordinary Americans against a system which doesn't seem to give a damn about what is really bothering people in this country today.'"

Maybe it's not McGovern whom I dislike, but his supporters. (Still, even Kauffman acknowledges McGovern's liberalism, which is why I probably wouldn't have voted for him had I been alive and voting in 1972.)

What's also interesting about Kauffman's book is that it asks about the politicians who voted in the minority, the ones who are usually the most interesting. Who voted against the Louisiana Purchase, and why? There were some Republican Congressmen who voted against authorizing the Iraq War (including one who represented my own hometown, John Hostettler of Indiana). What was their rationale?

Overall, I got a sense of how broad-based the anti-war movement was throughout America's history. It's included free traders and protectionists, segregationists and integrationists, Republicans and Democrats, libertarians and socialists. And many anti-war politicians lost their careers because of their opposition to war.

Kauffman also does a good job in clearing the name of the America First Committee, an organization that opposed American involvement in World War II. Critics have labeled the group anti-Semitic and pro-Nazi, but it wasn't those things at all. It included a broad range of liberals and conservatives, including Gerald Ford, Norman Thomas, Sargent Shriver, and Joseph Kennedy. And it feared fascism at home, which it considered an unfortunate outcome of war.

I guess my problem with Kauffman's book is that he doesn't deal adequately with the pro-war side. We go to war because we believe there is a threat. We feared that Hitler would invade the United States. We thought that Communism wanted to conquer the world. Today, we're afraid of Al-Qaeda and its sponsors. If we don't go to war, how can we deal with such threats?

Kauffman touches on this somewhat. Sometimes, he acts as if politicians lie to get us into war. They did that with our war against Mexico in the 1800's, for example, as all sorts of justifications were used to support Manifest Destiny! At other times, he doesn't see the threats as real problems. Hitler and Stalin could have destroyed one another without our intervention, he argues. Plus, there was no way that Hitler could have conquered America, which was protected by two vast oceans! And, when CNN camera crews went to Iraq during the first Gulf War, Saddam's troops surrendered to them! And we call Iraq a threat?

Kauffman also quotes Robert Taft, who said that Communists were kooks but not really a threat. I disagree. They had a vast military, and they were swallowing up more and more countries as time went on. That threat had to be stopped!

After finishing Kauffman's book, what I walk away with is this: It is not un-patriotic to oppose war. People have done so since America's founding! And pro-war people have often impugned their opponents' patriotism. What is going on now has occurred for a long time. It is nothing new.