I keep hearing people who should know better, well educated people, even from Harvard, refer to WW I as "Wilson's War," as I recently heard at a Committee for the Republic event, seemingly intended to give a false picture of the Republicans as guilt free for WW I, as is a Conservative/libertarian cottage industry . As if Wilson (writing this not in defense of him, but as criticism of fabricated, revisionist history) singlehandedly took the U.S. into WW I. Yet he waited in doing so nearly three years after it began, a delay over the incessant objections of the . . . Republican Party!
As a lawyer, and historian, I have an incessant need to "correct the record," so let me add some historical context to the false myth perpetrated as Republican/Libertarian propaganda since the American people turned against US involvement in the war. The epithet "Wilson's War" was probably first fabricated by the accurately designated libertarian Nietzschean H. L. Mencken, who opposed U.S. intervention in the war, because he wanted Germany to win! Just as later, many "America First" opponents of WW II would include (not all of them or even a majority, but a lot) fascist sympathizers, such as William Buckley's father appears to have been, taking a detour to Italy with his family on the way back from Britain in 1939. Seemingly sharing an ideology that Buckley with his friends, Burnham and Kendall too shared, though having to settle for Franco post-WW II. As did Charles Lindbergh at least as far as admiring Nazi "efficiency," and virile spirit before the war, as recent access to his records show!
But actual, historical facts, seem something to be avoided more and more here, in favor of right-wing revisionism as Koch-funded organizations spew out revisionist history falsely claiming a non-militaristic tradition for the Republicans and Traditional Conservatism itself, in spite of how "inherently incredible" that is, given most of us here lived through that and know damned well that for "Warhawks," the Republican Party was where one wanted to be, rather than as a minority against the McGovernites, and before that, amongst the "Liberals" of the Democrats whom Willmoore Kendall hated even more than Communists (look it up).
But, per actual historical facts, Wilson only got us into WW I after withstanding incessant clamoring by Republican led by Teddy Roosevelt for immediate entry into the war in August 1914, and every day thereafter. I'm well aware of British duplicity to get us into the war, blaming the British for it, and financiers of war bonds (who were generally, if not almost entirely, Republicans), etc., but Teddy Roosevelt was not incited by any of that: he and his many fellow Republicans just had a fetish as war lovers, and Imperialists, amplified even more after "McKinley's War" of 1898. The Committee for the Republic does its credibilty no favors when it amplifies false, Republican/libertarian propaganda, from decades old propaganda themes.
So in the interests of historical accuracy, let me provide some historical information for future use, unless one is merely, duplicitously, working to bolster the Koch-funded, Thiel directed, National Conservative cognitive war campaign similar to those, and in line with Tucker Carlson, now presenting fascism as a a desirable form of governance.
Here is a contemporaneous account of our entry into WW I, against Wilson's delay long delay in getting us into it: BLUF: "Taft's speech served as a rallying call for Americans to support the war effort and the reasons by which the U.S. determined to go to war. He concluded by noting that significant sacrifices would likely be required before the war was won, citing recent British losses as an example; but that in bringing America into the war Germany had committed its greatest blunder. William Howard Taft on America's Entry into the War; an Address at Union College, Schenectady, N.Y., 13 June 1917Was there any other alternative for us than to declare war? I would like to begin with the fundamentals. That depends upon what in fact and in law the act of Germany was.
A Teddy Roosevelt cult is part of National Conservatism, and Straussianism, and Traditional Conservatism, as Josh Hawley and Andrew Bacevich both celebrate Roosevelt's "Strenuous Life" speech, akin to so much of fascism's celebration of the "Strenuous Life":
Speak Softly Theodore Roosevelt and the Panama Canal
Theodore Roosevelt: WarmongerTheodore Roosevelt and World War I
Teddy Roosevelt was in fact the mirror image of Field Marshall Ludendorf (who would march alongside Hitler in the attempted Munich Coup [I know, I know, that was "no coup," using Trumpite standards] whom Mencken idolized. Were Mencken aware of General Freidrich von Bernhardi, he undoubtedly would have been celebrated equally, as standing for the Ubermensch so beloved by Mencken, and contemporary libertarians, such as Koch, Thiel, et al. The book, More Precious Than Peace, i
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