Remember that time Democrats hated a whistle-blower so much they turned him over to a foreign government to be imprisoned on an island? Think Gilligan’s Island but without the laugh track. There was a millionaire, however…a cuddly cripple with a fondness for war and a penchant for collusion. I speak, of course, of that most “problematic” Democrat icon, Franklin Roosevelt.
Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…
In April 2016, when then candidate Trump dared to utter the words “America First” during a foreign-policy speech, FDR acolytes clutched their collective pearls. Susan Dunn, a professor of humanities at Williams College, took to CNN to explain why Trump’s new catchphrase was the most Hitlery thing a Hitler could holler. “‘America First’ was the name of the isolationist, defeatist, anti-Semitic national organization that urged the United States to appease Adolf Hitler,” explained the FDR author and historian. According to Dunn, the only thing standing in the way of Roosevelt’s coveted war against European fascism was the backwoods hootin’ of America’s hicks and hillbillies: “There would soon be several hundred America First Committee chapters and almost a million members, two-thirds of whom resided in the Midwest,” fumed Dunn.
Damned Midwesterners! Why can’t they just grow our crops and milk our cows and shut the hell up about matters that are intellectually beyond their ken? According to Dunn, America First was powered by anti-Semites in states like Iowa and Kansas, Neanderthalic nose-pickers whose petty hatreds blinded them to the wisdom of FDR’s crusade.
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I wrote Professor Dunn an email, and I’ll confess that I sent it pseudonymously, as I wanted her to think I was one of those ignorant Midwestern lummoxes. In between grunts of “gluurp” and “braaak” and whatever other sounds I assume Kansans make when they’re attempting to cogitate, my uneducated avatar pounded out the following missive:
I once read that during a campaign stop in Boston on October 30, 1940, President Roosevelt, at the time running for reelection, said, “And while I am talking to you mothers and fathers, I give you one more assurance. I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again: Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” Is this a genuine quote, or an urban legend?
Five minutes later, Professor Dunn replied:
Hi! It’s definitely a real quote. He wanted to win the election and was willing to make that promise. In his mind, he thought that if the US is attacked, it’s not a “foreign” war. But he shouldn’t have made that promise.
Naughty Roosevelt, he shouldn’t have lied like that just to win the election! But all is forgiven, because in his mind he thought it’s not a foreign war if we’re attacked (fun fact: Nazi Germany never attacked us).
Of course, my low-IQ Kansan’s first email was just the lure on the line. Time to reel the flounder in with a second one:
One quick follow-up: If FDR felt the need to make that statement in Boston, in other words, if he believed that doing so IN BOSTON would assist his reelection bid, then surely the desire to keep the U.S. out of war in 1940 was not limited to the Midwest. Is that accurate?
And I never heard from Professor Dunn again!
