Quotes of the day

Ah, Woodrow Wilson the great believer in Internationalism:

President Wilson warned the people against these agitators who were trying hard * to rock the boat. And later, on April 20, in an address to the Associated Press of New York, he took the occasion at a most critical time to remind the people of the United States once more that our whole duty for the present is to place “America First” and to think of her position in the world. So many people were thinking of Europe and the war that there was danger of America s safety following the thought of the people and falling into the hands of the belligerents. “I want to talk to you as to my fellow citizens of the United States, ” he said. “For there are serious things, which as fellow citizens we ought to consider. The times behind us, gentlemen, have been difficult, because whatever may be said about the present condition of the world’s affairs, it is clear that they are drawing rapidly to a climax, and at the climax the test will come, not only of the nations engaged in the present colossal struggle it will come for them, of course but the test will come to us particularly. ”

He then emphasized more forcibly than ever before the important position that this nation holds in the world today. The American people were living from moment to moment. They were enraged first at the conduct of England in seizing our vessels, and then at the acts of Germany in sinking our merchantmen. The President, however, was looking forward to a time when this nation, because of its neutral position, would be called upon to help bring order out of chaos, and thus lead the world back to paths of peace and honor.

“We shall some day have to assist in reconstructing the processes of peace,” he continued. “Our resources are untouched. We are more and more becoming, by the force of circumstances, the mediating nation of the world in respect of its finances. We must make up our minds what are the best things to do and what are the best ways to do them. We must put our money, our energy, our enthusiasm, our sympathy into these things, and we must have our judgments prepared and our spirits chastened against the coming of that day. So that I am not speaking in a selfish spirit when I say that our whole duty for the present, at any rate, is summed up in this motto, America first. Let us think of America before we think of Europe, in order that America may be fit to be Europe’s friend when the day of tested friendship comes. The test of friendship is not now sympathy with the one side or the other, but getting ready to help both sides when the struggle is over.“

-Woodrow Wilson as President, ed. Eugene Clyde Brooks

Such a brave multi-culti guy, no? Can’t be bothered with the affairs of other countries, and we will tell them how to rebuild their sorry little Nations after their little spat as that is what FRIENDS DO: let them kill each other. And he was, most emphatically, putting America First in that speech. He would, later, pick up on the League of Nations concept that had been discarded by Teddy Roosevelt as completely unworkable, but that is Progressivism for you – taking unworkable ideas and showing just how unworkable they are by putting them into practice.

Mind you President Wilson would then become very flexible on his beliefs within a few years, but when push came to shove he would name the problem, finally, after years of sunk ships, imprisoned crews and otherwise finding out what being a ‘Neutral’ meant:

When I addressed the Congress on the twenty-sixth of February last I thought that it would suffice to assert our neutral rights with arms, our right to use the seas against unlawful interference, our right to keep our people safe against unlawful violence.

But armed neutrality, it now appears, is impracticable. Because submarines are in effect outlaws when used as the German submarines have been used against merchant shipping, it is impossible to defend ships against their attacks as the law of nations has assumed that merchantmen would defend themselves against privateers or cruisers, visible craft giving chase upon the open sea. It is common prudence in such circumstances, grim necessity indeed, to endeavour to destroy them before they have shown their own intention.

They must be dealt with upon sight, if dealt with at all. The German Government denies the right of neutrals to use arms at all within the areas of the sea which it has proscribed, even in the defence of rights which no modern publicist has ever before questioned their right to defend.

The intimation is conveyed that the armed guards which we have placed on our merchant ships will be treated as beyond the pale of law and subject to be dealt with as pirates would be. Armed neutrality is ineffectual enough at best; in such circumstances and in the face of such pretensions it is worse than ineffectual: it is likely only to produce what it was meant to prevent; it is practically certain to draw us into the war without either the rights or the effectiveness of belligerents.

There is one choice we cannot make, we are incapable of making: we will not choose the path of submission and suffer the most sacred rights of our Nation and our people to be ignored or violated. The wrongs against which we now array ourselves are no common wrongs; they cut to the very roots of human life.

- Excerpt from Woodrow Wilson’s Declaration of War

Notice first excerpted paragraph? He describes unlawful enemy combatants as those from a Nation not respecting the rights of other Nations. Now what do you do with those under the control of no Nation threatening Nations? That has got to be far worse than mere National hostilities as individuals take up arms to reclaim all their liberties against everyone: they no longer recognize National sovereignty. Woodrow Wilson was not the first nor last President to face unlawful combatants, but he, at least, had no sympathy for them.

He then goes to invoke Law of Nations which has at its basis the Nation State as the highest organizing level of society. He advocated for a free and independent Poland and for free and independent Nations in the Middle East to which he was given great assurances while other diplomats worked out how to carve the place up after the war. Thus Wilson can, at best, be seen as subscribing to Nation States as the protector of culture, not multi-culti concepts, in which all Nations are equal… although he likes some to be more equal than others as he demonstrated with ‘America First’.

Back to those illegal enemy combatants: deal with them onsight if at all. That, too, is allowable under the Hague Conventions of that era and via precedent with the orders Lincoln gave to the forces of the Union in 1863, especially note Article 82. So for those caught fighting as illegal enemy combatants the order is? Kill them. Pretty simple, upholds understandings going back to the first recorded conflicts of mankind and is about the only option you get when those who attack Nations illegally are found fighting the Nation. That goes with the Law of Nations view of things… the League of Nations would, thus, be a talkfest treaty organization of the sort that Theodore Roosevelt found useless after first advocating for such, because he got to experience a couple of them first-hand. Wilson then, as Lincoln did for all such forces wherever found, described such unlawful combatants as Pirates.

Woodrow Wilson was willing to go to war to fight for American human rights, but when presented with the Armenian Genocide in 1915 by his own Ambassador he did… nothing. What was that about adoring multi-culti Wilson? Great defender of human rights who didn’t want to do anything to the Ottoman’s because of US business interests there? He would go on to purposefully NOT fight an ally of Germany… one that supported Germany directly and indirectly during the war which was the Ottoman Empire. And the Austro-Hungarian Empire, too. He was unclear on the concept of ‘allies’ to one’s enemy. But it would help US business interests there, no end and not endanger them one bit.

I have deep problems with the supposed multi-culti, ever so PC views of Woodrow Wilson. First the man was a weather vane, on the one hand saying the Declaration of Independence only addressed problems of that time and did not state fundamental human rights… then going on to cite fundamental human rights it invoked a few years down the road. The generous hand of exceptionalism was to be a bludgeon to bash civilization into the heads of others with our sublime neutrality, which works in every instance, save those where it doesn’t because the last thing anyone wants while fighting a war is a damned kibbitzer.

He can’t be BOTH a great ‘internationalist’ and a staunch defender of Law of Nations…. oh, wait… he could. Stake not any arguments on what Woodrow Wilson actually believed as that evolved at a mind numbing pace in the period of exactly 3 years. Very Progressive of him to have no fixed set of public beliefs… private morals, yes. Do not confuse those with public policy.

Plus the man created the federal reserve, the same institution that got its lending and finance practices wrong in the 1920′s all the way through the Depression, and again in the 1990′s through to today causing untold problems and deepening a minor recession by creating systemic faults in the financial system. I can only blame Wilson for bringing this institution into existance, others were able to corrupt it in an incredibly short period of time. That’s Progressivism for you!

ajacksonian on March 4, 2010 at 8:25 AM