No, no, it's not an Obama thread. I'm currently reading 'Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism (http://www.amazon.com/Aint-America-Conservatism-Middle-American-Anti-Imperialism/dp/0805082441/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216512380&sr=8-1)' (love it so far btw, although the true title of the history it describes should be 'The Few, The Proud, The Useless: Non-interventionism in America) and was really amused to hear about the wearing of the lapel pin being used as a political statement back in the day. Here's the text:

American flag lapel pins had been distributed to members before the president spoke to Congress on April 2, 1917, requesting a declaration of war. It took a certain obdurate courage to refuse to wear the colors; Senator La Follette was among the refusers, as was the Mississippi senator Vardaman. (Wilson had called for "stern repression" of disloyalty in his speech of April 2-a Prussian formulation that ought to have set American throats to gagging.)

One interesting point the book has made so far is that, throughout American history, being against war brings together the strangest bedfellows. Just in this example we have Senator La Follette who was a liberal Republican champion of social security, minimum wage, women's suffrage etc., matched with Senator Vardaman who was a segregationist Democrat from the South who was famous for his extreme racism (even to the point of supporting lynching in order to maintain his vision of white supremacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_K._Vardaman).)

Lapel pins are for pussies. Break out the armbands.

http://i33.tinypic.com/szeqmd.jpg

Another modern political faction that attached a lot of importance to lapel pins recently was Hamas.

Some Palestinian politician was photographed without the appropriate lapel pin, and had his patriotism questioned by the Hamas propaganda providers.

iceaura: That sounds interesting, I tried to find the story but a google search only turned up (unsurprisingly) the Obama lapel pin incident. Do you have a link?

, I tried to find the story but a google search only turned up (unsurprisingly) the Obama lapel pin incident. Do you have a link? It's in the archives of a couple of lefty sites - "Crooks and Liars", for one - but they all grabbed it off a site that tracks the Arabic language press. I'll look around. There's a photo, IIRC it's Abbas sporting the traitorous undecorated lapel.

edit in: Found one, but the throughlink to the original arabic source doesn't work for me: http://lawrenceofcyberia.blogs.com/news/2008/05/patriotism-made.html

No, no, it's not an Obama thread. I'm currently reading 'Ain't My America: The Long, Noble History of Antiwar Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism (http://www.amazon.com/Aint-America-Conservatism-Middle-American-Anti-Imperialism/dp/0805082441/ref=pd_bbs_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1216512380&sr=8-1)

The book seems interesting.

~String

The book seems interesting.

~String

Oh it's so good, I'm not quite finished with it yet but I'm really enjoying it. It chronicles so many conservative figures, many of whom I would have never heard about elsewhere, along with the occasional liberal or centrist anti-war character. My only major criticisms thus far are that 1. Kauffman manages to cover dissent to almost every war but misses the Civil War? It's quite a big and noticeable jump in his narrative. 2. His free use of the word isolationist doesn't always clarify whether or not the person he's describing is a full-on isolationist (foreign policy and trade) or just a non-interventionist. Aside from that though, I definitely recommend. Here's an excerpt that I really liked:

Taft’s Midwest campaign manager in 1952 was a Cornhusker member of Congress who’d have wanted to abolish almost any department a President Taft would have put under his charge. The name may be vaguely familiar: Howard Buffet. But man, did the apple ever fall far from this tree.

Warren Buffet, the legendary investor whose taste for hamburgers and life in Omaha, Nebraska, gives him a reputation for Middle American oddness in the world of high finance, is just another colorless gray-pinstriper when compared with his father: Representative Howard Bugget (R-NE), who half a century ago was perhaps the most radical and principled member of Congress.

The Buffetts were pillars of Omaha. Howard Buffett was a stockbroker, “gentle and sweet-natured,” in the words of Warren’s biographer Roger Lowenstein. His politics, though, were to “the right of God,” cracked one local banker.

Buffett was elected to Congress in 1942 with a pledge to keep FDR from “fasten[ing] the chains of political servitude around America’s neck.” He marked himself a maverick by returning a pay raise to the Treasury and by subjecting each piece of legislation to a simple test: “Will this add to, or subtract from, human liberty?”

Very few H.R.s passed Howard Buffett’s test.

In four nonconsecutive terms representing Omaha in the U.S. House of Representatives, the backbench Republican compiles an almost purely libertarian record. He opposed whatever New Deal alphabet-soup agencies and Fair Deal bureaucracies emerged from the black lagoon of the Potomac.

He was also a strict isolationist, denouncing NATO, conscription, the Marshall Plan (“Operation Rathole”), and the Cold War, which he believed would enchain Americans in “the shackles of regimentation and coercion… in the name of stopping communism.” He foresaw the reward for holding fast to the old ways: “Patriots who try to bring about economy would be branded as Stalin lovers.”

Foreign aid was a Buffett bugaboo. The story is told that as the family drove past the British Embassy late one night, Howard, seeing the lights still on, quipped, “They even stay up late to think of ways to get our money.”

Buffett summed up his views of America and the world in the speech on the House floor condemning the Truman Doctrine:

Even if it were desirable, America is not strong enough to police the world by military force. If that attempt is made, the blessings of liberty will be replaced by tyranny and coercion at home. Our Christina ideals cannot be exported to other lands by dollars and guns. Persuasion and example are the methods taught by the Carpenter of Nazareth, and if we believe in Christianity we should try to advance our ideals by his methods. We cannot practice might and force abroad and retain freedom at home. We cannot talk world cooperation and practice power politics.

A leviathan of theretofore unimagined proportions was taking shape, its ravenous belly fed by the tax man. Buffett’s colleague Representative George Bender (R-OH), a close ally of Senator Robert Taft, also foresaw a hemorrhage of tax dollars to the despots of the globe, once those depots leaned how to sweet-talk Uncle Sam: “Every corrupt government in the world which has fastened itself on the backs of the people will raise the cry of communism to get money away from the United States to keep itself in power. This policy is one which can lead only to bankruptcy for the United States.”

Dissent must be its own reward; seldom does it bring promotion. Howard Buffett retired from politics after losing the 1954 Republican Senate nomination to Roman Hruska, who would achieve immortality in 1970, when he defended Nixon’s doomed Supreme Court nominee G. Harold Carswell from charges that he was a “mediocrity” with the immortal effusion, “Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren’t they?” Not to worry, Roman; they’ve got it now.