America First

"From now on, it's going to be America first. OK? America first. We're going to put ourselves first."   --   Donald J. Trump, 12/1/2016.

Apparently Mr. Trump does not realize that there were two America First political movements, one in 1944, the other an actual political party in 2002. Both failed.

The party's first incarnation was dominated by rural southern conservatives with Bible Belt backgrounds who later formed something called the Christian National Crusade which later morphed into America First. America Firsters believed in public prayer, no forieign commitments, limiting the size of the federal government and making the flag a religious icon. The latter actually happened in 1954 when President Eisenhower approved adding the words "under God' to the Pledge Of Allegiance.

The America First poster boy in the 1930s was Charles A. Lindbergh until he came under a cloud for publicly expressing admiration for Hermann Goering, the head of Hitler's Luftwaffe and second in command.  World War Two brought a temporary halt to that movement, as well as civil rights for over 100,000 American and American residents with Japanese surnames who were  imprisoned, or "relocated"  away from the west coast  for the duration of the war.  Well, the Pearl Harbor attack was very much on America's collective mind at the time.  Anti-Japanese propaganda saturated the newspapers, newsreels and radio.  Television had been invented in 1922, but was still a novelty in 1941 with few sets and fewer stations.  During the war television manufacturers were redirected by the government to develop radar and other electronic goodies.

I know, I know; I digress a lot.  It's a character flaw.  So, back to the relocation of Japanese-Americans:  One of its champions was a former Oakland prosecutor, state attorney general, governor, and eventually the Chief Justice of the United States Surpreme Court.  A fella named Earl Warren.  Surprised?  Well, he was a Republican.  But it was also the Warren court that desegregated schools with its ruling on  Brown vs.The Topeka Board of Education in 1954. That move, and pure cussedness, caused another America First offshoot and Tea Party predecessor, the John Birch Society, to try really really hard to get Chief Justice Warren impeached.  Didn't work.

The second significant advent of an America First spinoff occurred in 2002. There were several insignificant ones prior to that, you can Google them, when conservatives preached re-instituting  school prayer, reducing the size of the federal government, no foreign commitments that did not benefit corporations, making the flag a religious icon, with an added proviso of banning federal funding for Planned Parenthood as a pro-life measure. Yet only three percent of Planned Parenthood's efforts are devoted to performing abortions. Most of its efforts are in providing information about sexually transmitted diseases and how to avoid unplanned – and unwanted – pregnancies, especially among young women whose parents got huffy about sex education in schools, and the wives of migrant farm workers whose spiritual leader is an elderly male celibate in a white skirt.

Anyway, the 2002 version drafted former Nixon operative Pat Buchanan as its presidential candidate. They advocated school prayer, reducing the size of the federal government, getting out of the UN, eliminating NAFTA, making the flag a religious icon, banning federal funding for abortion clinics and having the National Guard patrol the Mexican border.

The most prominent difference between the former and the present America First people is that the former ones don't wear red caps inscribed Make America Great Again. My view is that those caps should be replaced by tinfoil hats favored by people who think space aliens are trying to probe their alleged minds.

-oOo-

Send comments and/or hate mail to tomatomike@aol.com.

Saw your piece on Making America Great Again. For what it's worth,  my late mother-in-law, and her family, were interned during WWII. Her brother was a member of the 442nd.  -- Brat.
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The 442nd Regimental Combat Team  is an infantry regiment of the United States Army, part of the Army Reserve. The regiment was a fighting unit composed almost entirely of American soldiers of Japanese ancestry who fought in World War II. Most of the families of mainland Japanese Americans were confined tointernment camps in the United States interior. Beginning in 1944, the regiment fought primarily in Europe during World War II,[2] in particular Italy, southern France, and Germany.

The 442nd Regiment was the most decorated unit for its size and length of service in the history of American warfare.[3] The 4,000 men who initially made up the unit in April 1943 had to be replaced nearly 2.5 times. In total, about 14,000 men served, earning 9,486Purple Hearts. The unit was awarded eight Presidential Unit Citations (five earned in one month).[4]:201 Twenty-one of its members were awarded Medals of Honor.[2] Its motto was "Go for Broke"  -- Wikipedia.