Taft and the New Isolationism

...And he saw the "internationalism" of the postwar period as an even greater threat to freedom, because it would require that the central government retain for an indefinite period the same powers it had exercised during the war...

...Taft worked for Herbert Hoover at the Food Administration during World War I, and this experience led him to believe that the "war to end all wars" had been a tragic error...

...The Alternative: An American Spectator October 1975 17 freedom to others across the globe...

...perhaps they convince the fat man in Dubuque that they care about him, that if he were in the right place they would be available, eating their apples and pouring their water over themselves...

...The Taft Record In 1821, Secretary of State John Quincy Adams outlined in a a July 4th oration his view of the United States' proper role in world affairs: "She goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy...

...It was not until Taft led the attack on ratification of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization that he really emerged as the leading conservative critic of the Administration's foreign policy...

...It assumes that we are always right and that anyone who disagrees with us is wrong...

...Before Pearl Harbor, he waged a vigorous campaign to keep the United States out of World War II...

...could not avoid that responsibility without even graver consequences...

...Above all, he knew that such a policy would carry a heavy price in tension, dollars (through both taxes and inflation), and lives, and that the price would lead eventually to domestic turmoil...

...It was precisely in order to prevent the ascendancy of those who advocate a "socialist solution" to America's problems that he was willing to tolerate a Nazi Britain and even risk a Communist Europe...

...One thing that our experiments with domestic reform have made clear is the importance of the unplanned effects of government policies...

...It was clear that for Robert Taftthere would be no foreign policy "Era of Good Feelings" in the postwar period...

...In the long run, Taft expected that the struggle between Communism and liberal democracy would not be a military one, but rather a battle for men's minds...

...It is merely "tasteless...

...And considering his fierce insistence on an independent American course in world affairs, it is unlikely that he thought that the United States should commit itself in advance to war for the purpose of enforcing such a court's decisions...

...In addition, Taft simply was never much interested in foreign policy...

...It is startling to find the cautious, pragmatic Taft making such a matchlessly impractical and idealistic proposal...

...After our recent failures and a torrent of books, articles, and sermons on the limits of foreign policy, and the risks inherent in Congressional abdication of responsibility, confusion more accurately describes the national mood than hubris...

...Other people simply do not like to be dominated, and we would be in the same position of suppressing rebellions by force in which the British found themselves during the nineteenth century...

...I do not want to imply that by itself Penthouse is a major threat to Western civilization...

...While Taft was always influential within his own party, he was frustrated in all of his attempts to gain real political power...

...Robert MeTiernan Taft and the New Isolationism • • One of the fascinating side-effects of the widespread disenchantment with America's postwar foreign policy has been a revival of interest in the foreign policy views of Senator Robert A. Taft, especially among New Left critics of our Vietnam involvement...

...Containment, he said, was only a "negative program...

...Beware of counterfeits...

...But theredoes seem to be a force other than mere aesthetic blindness operating here...

...Buy a Penthouse—and make it your last...

...He wavered on many of the crucial issues of the day...

...He strenuously opposed the creation of an Export-Import Bank and the subsequent $3.5 billion American contribution to the Bank, warning that the enterprise would create resentment in other countries and lead to the charge that the project was merely economic exploitation by the U.S...

...Guccione and the other photographers of consciously making homely girls look ridiculous...

...Nor did Taft like alliance politics or the balance of power concept...

...There was no messianic note in his speeches...

...Box 877, Bloomington, Indiana 47401, U.S.A...

...No one was more adamantly anti-Communist or more determined to thwart Communist success in Asia than Robert A. Taft...

...If we are in danger of paralyzing the executive or turning our back on international responsibilities we have voluntarily assumed, then perhaps we can benefit more from the example of Taft's willingness to stand against the common wisdom than from his policy views...

...Yet especially in its attitude toward women and its portrayal of them Penthouse reinforces a dangerous tendency prevalent in our century...

...On the eve of the Cold War in 1945, Taft was again wary of American involvement in Europe...

...These concerns put Taft in the sad position of preaching a vehement anti-Communism while shrinking from a leadership role for the United States...

...In order to resist Communist pressure in Greece and Turkey, President Truman requested $400 million in aid to those countries and stated that the policy of the United States should be "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures...

...And the strongest case for American policy, in Europe especially, was rooted not in Wilsonian ambitions but in the balance of power and national security...

...continued on page 29) His most basic reason for resisting activism in foreign affairs was his belief that it would lead inevitably to an increase of government power over the individual...

...A female colleague of mine at the University of Georgia mentioned that she had recently looked at a few of the girlies...

...Only America's persuasiveness and example would spread freedom...

...Nevertheless, this fashionable regard for Taft is ironic in several respects...

...A recent book by Ronald Radosh, Prophets on the Right: Profiles of Conservative Critics of American Globalism, contains sympathetic portraits of Taft and four other right-wing opponents of U.S...

...but today, statesmen usually think of foreign and domestic politics as separate matters except for efforts to muster domestic political support for a certain foreign policy...

...In the first place, Taft was a nationalist in the best sense of that word...

...It reminds me of the idealism of the bureaucrats in Washington who want to regulate the lives of every American along the lines that the bureaucrats think best for them...

...Although he warned of the pitfalls of a land war in Asia, he was utterly unrealistic in his belief that airpower alone would give us great leverage in foreign affairs...

...Note well the awkward poses: the girls teetering on one leg, or nearly toppling off a hard chair, or spreading their legs grotesquely like a 1930s whore...

...Taft was constantly wary of threats to such freedom, and during the thirties he even preached his own version of that ancient idea, the cycle of regimes: "In Greece republics gave way to tyrannies...

...A dose of Taft's skepticism would have been valuable at a time when New Frontierism was the orthodoxy of voters, intellectuals, journalists, and politicians alike...

...It will be more than sad if we are liberated from the mistaken belief that sex is "dirty" only to be imprisoned by the even more dangerous notion that the human body is ludicrous and contemptible...

...And it is worse yet...

...And most important, Taft opposed military buildups and foreign commitments because hefeared they would augment the power of the federal government...

...Disliking budget deficits and "garrison states," he hoped by these means to limit the size and influence of the military to three million men and its budget to $75 billion...

...Taft's greatest concern and insight was that foreign policy has serious, unintended domestic consequences...

...He also vigorously advocated public housing and federal aid to education, even in the face of the disapproval of many of his supporters...

...I am not accusing Mr...

...There was also, however, a serious moral and philosophical basis for his views...

...It might also have tempered our blind confidence in Presidential competence and, above all, the faith that the government can accomplish anything...

...He found the very idea of a world state repugnant...

...foreign policy...

...His constitutional strict constructionism and his courageous rejection of the Nuremberg trials (on the grounds that they were an application of ex post facto law) showed his reverance for rule of law...

...The girls are not very pretty, a deficiency exacerbated by their struggles to simulate erotic gestures...

...If someone had resuscitated Taftism in the early '60s, for example, he would have performed a needed service...

...She is the well-wisher to the freedom and independence of all, she is the champion and vindicator only of her own...

...Contrast, in short, these "poor bare forked animals" with, say, the Venus of Praxiteles...

...In the first place, it is not clear that the Truman Administration's assessment of Soviet intentions was incorrect...

...It is unfortunate that, in a crucial period for foreign policy, America was thus deprived of an important perspective...

...And President Truman's exercise of sweeping powers in international affairs drew sharp fire from Taft...

...The U.N...

...I do not think the Russians are going to start a Third World War," he explained to a friend...

...The misogyny, if not misanthropy, of Penthouse is obvious to anyone who can look clearly at the burnt-out cases who make up the "Pets...

...M. J. Sobran, in a fine National Review article on Playboy (February 1, 1974) decided that what Hugh Hefner, his magazine, and its readers had in common was that they were "self-consciously tasteless...

...Please rush me the following Limited Edition Alternative Tee Shirts at $5.00 each...

...The increased Communist threat that followed the war only confirmed his view that if Germany had not declared war on the United States, we would have been wise to continue our policy of neutrality...

...When columnist Xaviera Hollander advises that incest can be fun, that the taboos against it are unscientific, the genetic defects exaggerated, she is wrong (as a scientist informs her in the "letters" section...

...Distrust of involvement in European affairs had long been a hallmark of Taft's 16 The Alternative: An American Spectator October 1975 foreign policy views...

...A token force in Europe, he believed, would be enough to demonstrate and satisfy America's commitment to Europe without antagonizing the Soviets or dividing the world into two armed camps...

...The way in which our postwar policy was framed probably led policymakers and politicians to see foreign affairs in Manichean terms and to ignore subtle changes that did occur in the postwar power structure...

...He was to say after the second world conflict, "I do not believe that any war can be justified as a crusade...

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...Nostalgia, or admiration for Taft's integrity, does not obviate the need to take an honest look at his stand on specific issues...

...Later, in the "Great Debate" of 1951, Taft joined Senator Kenneth Wherry of Nebraska in opposing the sending of troops to Europe "without the approval of Congress...

...Not the "consenting adults," whose instincts, wishes, and desires have for so many the force that Yahweh's prophets had for the Hebrews...

...This has been a deeply held view in America, and at the end of the Second World War, Robert Taft was its leading spokesman...

...Taft was not so opposed to long-term commitments when it came to Asia...

...Taft's opposition to broad Presidential power to curb labor abuses is ample evidence of his consistency on the subject...

...Naked girls removed from any human context, standing or sitting around with their genitalia shoved out are being ripped-off in a sense more important than the financial...

...Nevertheless, he opposed the Atlantic Pact on the grounds that it violated the spirit of the U.N...

...But in a world where body (matter) and sensations are all there is, we eventually come to the situation described by Dostoevsky in Crime and Punishment, where God is dead and thus "everything is permitted...

...Stylization is the homage the artistic sensibility pays to reality...

...Once this power was surrendered to government, it would not be returned, and individual freedom would eventually be extinguished...

...she said, "I've never cared much for that 'end of civilization' chatter...

...Penthouse does not have any style...

...While he favored the use of such tactics by the free world, America's chief weapons in the defense of liberty would be the force of its arguments and, above all, its example...

...Whatever the girls get it isn't enough...

...In June 1950, for example, he had "much sympathy" with Truman's position on Korea, though he questioned whether the President had chosen "the right time or the right place to declare this policy...

...The Alternative: An American Spectator October 1975 29...

...If we extend Federal power indefinitely, if we concentrate power over the courts and Congress in the executive, it will not be long before we have an American Fascism...

...The post-Vietnam era, however, presents different problems...

...He foresaw that an activist foreign policy would require as a permanent feature of American life, a stronger federal government, a huge military budget, and a powerful executive...

...Thus Taft could criticize U.S...

...At its worst, this imperialism could lead to the use of war as "an instrument of public policy rather than its last resort...

...There was some justice in the New York Times' characterization of Taft as the "Hamlet" of U.S...

...it probably serves some good purposes, for example as a do-it-yourself kit for Prufrock's "lonely men in shirt sleeves...

...While President Truman, like all Presidents, was forced to choose the least unsatisfactory alternative open to him, Senator Taft was free to counsel a more agreeable path than was open to the statesmen of his time...

...According to Taft's analysis, sending troops to a country under attack made the military involvement of American troops inevitable...

...In 1948 Taft went so far as to say: "I believe very strongly that the Far East is ultimately even more important to our future peace than is Europe...

...Taft was also concerned that military spending would result in a destructive inflation and divert funds from needed social welfare measures...

...Criticism in time of war," he said after Pearl Harbor, "is essential to the maintenance of democratic government...

...Conservative Republicans increasingly met the Democrats in political debate by denouncing them for not being tough enough in facing up to the Communist challenge...

...Perhaps it was made in desperation in order to provide some alternative to the onslaught of the power politics that Taft foresaw and dreaded...

...He was unwilling to accept the fact that none of the alternatives facing the United States government after the war were particularly palatable...

...Perhaps, too, Taft absorbed, to some extent, Hoover's conviction that European realpolitik and America's traditional idealism were incompatible, and that it would be best for the latter to "retire from Europe lock, stock and barrel...

...entrance into World War II and critics of America's postwar "containment" strategy...

...The Taft Philosophy The perspective on foreign policy that Robert Taft presented throughout his political career, one 'that was usually dubbed "isolationist," was probably attributable in part to temperament...

...It at least might have prevented us from committing ourselves so heavily to that country without any discernible military goal...

...It would no doubt disturb Robert Taft to find his policies being voiced and his name invoked by those who want to turn the nation's attention away from foreign involvement and toward enlarging the public sector at home...

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...But political failure did release him from political responsibility...

...hell, contrast them with the chaste (in retrospect) maidens of Playboy's early days...

...Second, his hatred of war was intense-(his wife in fact was a pacifist), and he approved of practically any course of action that would safeguard peace...

...Like its girls, Penthause writers are almost certainly rejects from Playboy, which pays more money...

...Medieval republics became monarchies...

...Look at the girls...

...Waging war would concentrate even more power in Washington than had been gathered there in the New Deal, which Taft at various times had called totalitarian, collectivist, socialist, and fascist...

...The horrors of modern war, which he called "murder by machine," were especially abhorrent to him, and he believed they could not be justified by a desire to bring His deeply felt conservatism was based on a Whiggish distrust of mammoth government undertakings and altruistic projects in foreign as well as in domestic affairs...

...but when I looked at that magazine for the first time I thought I saw the beast slouching...

...Conclusion The tradition that Taft represented faded rapidly after his death in 1953, as John Foster Dulles' "liberationist" rhetoric became the Republican answer to the Democratic containment policy...

...Penthouse's lack of philosophy, relatively attractive compared to Playboy's excess of same, is finally a lack of self-consciousness...

...Despite his distaste for the New Deal and federal bureaucracies, Taft recognized a role for the federal government in helping to provide a minimum standard of living for all citizens...

...foreign policy without having to provide a viable alternative, and, sometimes, while advising the pursuit of contradictory goals...

...At best, the U.N...

...Don't ignore the bags and sags, the fat legs and plasticized chests, the pathetic "sexy" leers that passed thirty years ago for sensuality...

...And the book jacket endorsements of Prophets on the Right is a "Who's Who" of American radicalism, including Noam Chomsky, Anthony Lewis, and Karl Hess...

...Taft never believed that the President should be immune to criticism in foreign policy matters, even during war-time...

...Years later, in 1951, he told his biographer, William S. White, that he still believed Germany had never menaced the security of the U.S...

...Surely, he did not expect Communist governments to abide by the decisions of a world court voluntarily...

...it was "an unnecessary war" by then, and it had been "begun by President Truman without the slightest authority from Congress or the people...

...One of the reasons Taft advised caution in making foreign commitments was that he was very scrupulous about the need to keep them once they were made...

...Charter and encouraged Russian aggression...

...But who, after all, does incest harm...

...Although the President's pronouncements were incompatible with Taft's desire to remain detached from internal conflicts, and to avoid antagonizing the Soviet Union, Taft eventually did vote for the Truman Doctrine, lest American credibility be undermined by our reneging on a commitment Truman seemed to have already made...

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...its implicit motto is: do unto others...

...Indeed, he often seemed to defend Asian anti-Communism with a fervor that ran against his traditional distrust of European entanglements...

...But Taft's most wide-ranging attack on the potential for American imperialism focused on Henry Luce's dream for an "American Century": "It is based on the theory that we know better what is good for the world than the world itself...

...His repeated warnings against getting involved in land wars in Asia have also contributed to his reputation among today's liberals...

...But perhaps, at least in part, he realized that the U.S...

...Dear Baron: I'm over/under whelmed...

...The Korean War he saw as the gravest example of this disregard for the Constitution...

...It is ironic that Taft, who had displayed a distrust of foreign crusades and international idealism from the days of the First World War, would put forth such a naive solution to postwar problems...

...Congressional government was to Taft synonymous with rule of law...

...He defended American neutrality before we entered World War II because he believed that winning the war might be almost as destructive of liberty as losing it...

...Taft feared that world war would inaugurate an era of Anglo-American imperialism and lead to the complete nationalization of American industry...

...Taft's great contribution to the political debate of his times was his insistence that foreign policy has an important influence, often unfortunate, on domestic policy...

...Taft always showed a deep distrust of intervening in the affairs of other nations, and he feared that after the war America would become an imperialist power...

...He insisted that America defend Asia, like Europe, without committing large numbers of ground troops to "continental soil," by relying instead on aid to our allies and strong airpower...

...War is worse even than a German victory," he declared to the Senate...

...One of the chief duties of an American statesman, he believed, was to protect and preserve American lives and American liberty...

...But to conclude that a policy was inflexible is not to say that its premises were incorrect...

...But Taft's overriding concern in foreign policy, as in all political affairs, was his fear of the aggrandizement of federal and executive power...

...Two sizes fit all, if in a casual, baggy sort of way: Large and Too Large...

...Taft's new popularity with the Left is especially ironic in light of these views...

...Although he never was captured by the wild romanticism about the East that seized a great many conservative Republicans, especially the partisans of the so-called China Lobby, he was surprisingly militant about the need to defend places in Asia—particularly Formosa...

...And in contrast to the relish with which he studied and spoke of domestic matters, he took part in foreign policy debates more as a matter of duty than of preference...

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...Taft favored the basic purpose of NATO, which was to warn the Soviets that aggression against Western Europe would lead to retaliation by the United States...

...We do not need to recall Hitler's Germany and Stalin's Russia to remind us that relatively few people really believe in the worth and dignity of the human person...

...Senator Eugene McCarthy said recently that the country would have been better off if Taft had beaten Eisenhower at the 1952 Republican convention...

...This, for him, was not merely a partisan position, but a deep faith...

...At the same time, despite his dire warnings, Taft's view of the postwar situation was, in a sense, overly optimistic...

...I do not think that the American people have ever faced a more serious constitutional issue or one which in the end may present a greater threat to their freedom," he wrote in 1951...

...But in October 1950, Taft unequivocally declared the war a "tragic example of the results of wavering and weakness...

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...Our military forces will work with our commercial forces to obtain as much of the world trade as we can lay our hands on...

...Taft was also less than enthusiastic about the "Truman Doctrine" when it was announced in March 1947...

...the Administration's internationalism, Taft was to remain an ardent believer in avoiding entanglements with other nations...

...Taft returned to this theme repeatedly throughout the postwar period...

...The Roman Republic became an Empire...

...Sorry, no C.O.D...

...After the war he turned down a place on the Foreign Relations Committee...

...The preservation of American liberty, he thought, should be the primary goal of foreign policy, and his most basic reason for resisting activism in foreign affairs was his belief that it would lead inevitably to an increase of government power over the individual...

...I have enclosed $ in full payment...

...Any foreign adventure undertaken by the U.S., he warned, should be well within its capacity and almost certain of success...

...And he did finally vote to establish the Voice of America and the Marshall Plan...

...it has all the vices of selfishness...

...Show your colors: Faded White on Tyrrell Green...

...This made it an act of war, requiring Congressional authorization...

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...The President was an administrator, and rule by executive order was arbitrary and unjust...

...Taft, however, probably underestimated Stalin's challenge in Europe, and he overestimated the control that the United States could exercise over the vast area and turbulent affairs of Asia...

...Despite Arthur Vandenberg's conversion to bipartisan foreign policy, i.e...

...The difference between "The Naked and the Nude," as Robert Graves suggests in a poem of that name, is style, another name for grace...

...With the armed might of each superpower freezing the other into military inaction, the Communists, he believed, would rely on domestic infiltration and propaganda...

...Radosh, a former student of revisionist historian William Appleman Williams, calls himself "an advocate of a socialist solution to America's domestic crisis...

...Taft discerned all of the unpleasant aspects of a world role for the United States, and hoped that they somehow could be avoided...

...Submitting international disputes to the Security Council and the General Assembly turned questions of justice into ones of politics and power...

...His position on NATO was more moderate than Herbert Hoover's, for example...

...Playboy is guilty of some of the same sins as its younger brother, but it at least appears to like women, even if it does not respect them, the obligatory liberal gestures to Women's Lib notwithstanding...

...Placing the war-power in the hands of the executive was an old mistake, in Taft's view, and made war more likely...

...or Big MAC Bonds accepted...

...Taft is perhaps most famous for jealously guarding the prerogatives of Congress, particularly the war-making power, against the encroachments of the executive branch...

...18 The Alternative: An American Spectator October 1975 TAFT (continued from page 18) For Taft's foreign policy to be carried out by his New Left defenders would defeat his basic purpose...

...How long can nations restrain themselves from using such force with just as little of the aggressiveness of Germany and Japan...

...and that a German victory over Britain would not have increased the danger from Germany...

...Taft's views on American policy in Asia, however, were at times ambiguous and contradictory...

...He bitterly opposed lend-lease and accused Roosevelt of trying to ease the United States into war...

...But in his last, and one of his best known speeches, read by his son to the National Conference of Christians and Jews, Taft warned that a land war anywhere in Asia, including China and Indochina, "would bring about complete exhaustion, even if we were able to win...

...There are striking similarities between Taft's foreign policy views and those of the New Left, just as his views paralleledthose of some of his most liberal contemporaries, such as Henry Wallace and Claude Pepper...

...Taft felt not only that ground troops would be ineffective against Russian airpower in Europe, but that the United States was incurring the military expense needlessly...

...His opposition to sending troops to Europe and Asia should not obscure his belief, clearly demonstrated by his bitterness over the Communist victory in China, that the United States had an important responsibility to resist Communism on those continents...

...was a "diplomatic weapon...

...War should never be undertaken or seriously risked except to protect American liberty," he wrote...

...He distrusted even the Anglo-American alliance that had faced up to Hitler, fearing that the coalition would spark vast rearmament and clothe militarism with a new respectability: "Our fingers will be in every pie...

...Only with the rule of international law, and the adjudication of disputes by an impartial world tribunal, he believed, could international justice, as well as peace and security for the U.S., be achieved...

...Perhaps it would have encouraged an early form of the Nixon Doctrine, and, specifically, a wariness of committing ground troops in Vietnam...

...One of Taft's greatest fears was that the U.S., in its zeal to spread democracy throughout the world, might instead become an imperialist power spreading injustice and resentment...

...Despite his wariness of Asian land wars, it would be difficult to imagine Taft supporting, as so many liberals did, a cutoff in aid to a long-time ally such as South Vietnam...

...A revival of Taft's policies today might only bolster the neo-isolationism that is abroad...

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...We will occupy all the strategic points in the world and try to maintain a force so preponderant that none shall dare attack us...

...He was not being insincere in expressing this apprehension...

...Potential power over other nations, however benevolentits purpose, leads inevitably to imperialism...

...Taft, however, insisted that we view politics as a whole, that we not ignore the domestic consequences of foreign policy...

...His loss to General Eisenhower at the 1952 Republican convention was the most stinging rejection of all...

...In foreign policy, as in domestic matters, his deeply felt conservatism was based on a Whiggish distrust of mammoth government undertakings and altruistic projects in foreign as well as in domestic affairs...

...Charter was not an adequate substitute, in Taft's view...

...But above all, he refused to accept that preventing a Nazi victory over Britain justified the American casualties that would result from American participation in a European conflict...

...This is not a new idea...