Who Was Garet Garrett?

[Kitty Hawk 0]

I'm currently reading Garrett's book Defend America First, actually a collection of editorials from The Saturday Evening Post. It is fascinating to read the views of someone who opposed America's entry into WWII. Garrett makes a lot of good points in his editorials. Ultimately I disagree with the idea that we should have waited for Hitler (or Hirohito) to attack us before entering the war. Nevertheless, Garrett gives many reasons for not doing things the way Roosevelt did them. Along the way, he exposes Roosevelt's steady erosion of the Constitution. It's a great book, and I'm looking forward to reading his other collection of editorials, Salvos Against the New Deal.

[ewv 0]

I'm currently reading Garrett's book Defend America First, actually a collection of editorials from The Saturday Evening Post. It is fascinating to read the views of someone who opposed America's entry into WWII. Garrett makes a lot of good points in his editorials. Ultimately I disagree with the idea that we should have waited for Hitler (or Hirohito) to attack us before entering the war.

Is that really what you meant to say? The 'America Firsters' didn't advocate waiting for the Axis powers to attack; they thought that if we had a credible defense then they would not attack the US in north America. They saw the war as a continuation of endless feuding between European countries that we should stay out of. Roosevelt gave us the worst of the possibilities: he deliberately provoked both Germany and Japan in an effort to get us into the war at a time when over 75% of the American public opposed it (even while being sympathetic with the British against Hitler), then when he succeeded he pretended surprise at the attack, and even worse, he had left us totally unprepared for the war and the attack at Pearl Harbor in particular. Then he unnecessarily gave away the final victory in 1944 to Stalin, leaving the world in worse shape than when he started. Yet he is now regarded as a hero and one of the greatest presidents of all time.

Nevertheless, Garrett gives many reasons for not doing things the way Roosevelt did them. Along the way, he exposes Roosevelt's steady erosion of the Constitution. It's a great book, and I'm looking forward to reading his other collection of editorials, Salvos Against the New Deal.

I have not read Garrett's editorial anthologies, but did read his famous The People's Pottage a long time ago. I found John T Flynn's books much more substantive. Have you read his The Roosevelt Myth?

If you are interested in what the 'America Firsters' thought and did in opposing American entry into WWII (before Pearl Harbor) you should read An American First: John T. Flynn and the America First Committee by Michele Flynn Stenehjem, 1976. The America First Committee was the major organization standing up to Roosevelt's attempts to get us into the war. It was a national organization, but the New York City chapter (incorporating the northeast), which was headed by Flynn, was by far the most prominent. The book shows what a hero Flynn was in opposing Roosevelt's foreign and domestic policies through both his writing and his extremely competent political organizing and activism, and how he was punished for it. He was a prominent, top journalist of national stature who had been a liberal of the pre-New Deal type, had originally supported Roosevelt in the 1932 election against Hoover, and then became appalled at what Roosevelt and his New Deals actually did as they adopted fascist principles in Roosevelt's ad hoc, incompetent, pragmatic floundering and appointments of political power seekers and ideological radicals to run his administration. This is also documented in Flynn's As We Go Marching (on fascism in Italy, Germany and the US) and While You Slept (on internal communist influence on American foreign policy).

Flynn was all but driven out of his profession for his views. In 1941 he said that as a result of his views and his AFC-NYC activism, "I have sacrificed all of my own personal income and even the connections out of which I made that income." In 1951 he learned that in 1939 Roosevelt himself had privately written to the editor of the Yale Review following a Flynn article on Roosevelt and Hopkins:

John Flynn ... should be barred hereafter from the columns of any presentable daily paper, monthly magazine, or national quarterly.

(Rush Limbaugh is not the first private citizen to be threatened by the government with censorship.) Whatever the personal role of Roosevelt in enforcing that may have been, both the administration and the media were thoroughly stacked with Roosevelt supporters with connections in the administration, including communists with a conscious agenda to dominate the media and blacklist their opponents.

Roosevelt's political manipulations and destruction, and the national Myth constructed about him, make Clinton look like a rank amateur. People who lived through that era are still in the dark about what actually happened, remembering only how bad the Depression was, dreamily recalling the Roosevelt image, and saying that "something" had to be done, not realizing that he made it much worse. Flynn has left us an enormous wealth of research and detailed analysis of the New Deal era and Roosevelt's destruction. But it is being ignored today by the official history, which perpetuates the myth that Roosevelt "saved" us both domestically and internationally instead of his actual history of making the depression and the war (and its results) much worse by means that have also done major permanent damage to the nature of American government. Flynn's The Roosevelt Myth, especially, is one of those books that should be priority reading for all Forum members and required in school history.

Incidentally, the chapter on films in Flynn's While You Slept is consistent with Ayn Rand's identification of communist propaganda in Song of Russia (mentioned explicitly by Flynn), which is the movie she testified on before a Congressional committee in 1947.

[Kitty Hawk 0]

I'm currently reading Garrett's book Defend America First, actually a collection of editorials from The Saturday Evening Post. It is fascinating to read the views of someone who opposed America's entry into WWII. Garrett makes a lot of good points in his editorials. Ultimately I disagree with the idea that we should have waited for Hitler (or Hirohito) to attack us before entering the war.

Is that really what you meant to say? The 'America Firsters' didn't advocate waiting for the Axis powers to attack; they thought that if we had a credible defense then they would not attack the US in north America. They saw the war as a continuation of endless feuding between European countries that we should stay out of. Roosevelt gave us the worst of the possibilities: he deliberately provoked both Germany and Japan in an effort to get us into the war at a time when over 75% of the American public opposed it (even while being sympathetic with the British against Hitler), then when he succeeded he pretended surprise at the attack, and even worse, he had left us totally unprepared for the war and the attack at Pearl Harbor in particular. Then he unnecessarily gave away the final victory in 1944 to Stalin, leaving the world in worse shape than when he started. Yet he is now regarded as a hero and one of the greatest presidents of all time.

Garrett did also advocate a very strong navy for self defense as you mention. But he allowed for the possibility that Germany might still attack, in which case he would support a war against them.

As for Roosevelt, I don't need any convincing on his being the biggest disaster to ever strike America. You're preaching to the choir on that issue.

[ewv 0]

Garrett did also advocate a very strong navy for self defense as you mention. But he allowed for the possibility that Germany might still attack, in which case he would support a war against them.

So did the America First Committee, which was the dominant anti-war force at the time. And when Pearl Harbor was attacked AFC disbanded and urged support for the war. What a contrast, in all respects, between them and the 'anti-war' crowd today. John Flynn continued his research and writing on the Roosevelt administration and on the causes of the war, but he never questioned the need to fully support the war effort once we were in it.

As for Roosevelt, I don't need any convincing on his being the biggest disaster to ever strike America. You're preaching to the choir on that issue.

I know, I wanted to emphasize to the Forum the enormous value of John Flynn. He was a real hero in both his actions and his thinking, and left us with an enormous wealth of information in scope and in detail that is being largely ignored today while the Roosevelt myth itself perpetuates.