March 24, 2003
Its 1899 platform declared: “We hold that the policy known as imperialism is hostile to liberty and tends toward militarism, an evil from which it has been our glory to be free.” Left and Right, union men and capitalists worked together to oppose the drift from Republic to Empire. […] In an odd mix of Randian-capitalism-meets-altruism, Carnegie even “offered to buy the Philippines from the United States to give the islands their independence.” The opponents of Empire are heirs to a proud tradition. It’s a good answer to ANSWER.[10:57 PM]
Thanks for this topic. Taylor Caldwell, the author, dealt with this issue, especially with regards to WW1.
Internet users or "armchair purveyors of information" can play a new role. It's new, for me anyway, and I just post links to alternative viewpoints, e.g. on the hopelessly rabid Yahoo message boards (see their guidelines, then see the content!).
If anyone has a "manual for armchair disseminators",
please post it here or send me a copy.
Is it just me, or is anyone else momentarily tickled by imagining the Anti-Imperialist League as a Yankee spin-off of Alan Moore's League of Extraordinary Gentlemen? Two-fisted Andrew Carnegie, the snarky quippage of Mark Twain, tormented mastermind Samuel Gompers--
It's just me, isn't it. (I doubt George Soros is rich enough, but the idea of purchasing Iraq to liberate it is blasphemously enticing.)
k-
No, it isn't *just* you. The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is the first thing I flashed on when I read the phrase "Anti-Imperialist League".
Anti-imperialist Mark Twain was seated at a banquet next to a young hawkish politician from the UK, and they had a heated but courteous argument over the Boer War. The politician didn't go into specifics when he mentioned this in his memoirs years later, but one gets the impression that he was entirely outargued by Mark Twain.
You can read about it in Sir Winston Churchill's My Early Life.
For fans of modern dance, Mark Morris set a piece called "World Power" to Mark Twain's writings against the Spanish-American war. Great piece of work (both the dance and Twain's polemic)
cf. http://www.danceinsider.com/f2001/f315_3.html
Also see http://xroads.virginia.edu/~DRBR/sitting.html
and
http://www.boondocksnet.com/ai/twain/index.html
Kip, if Soros' has his wallet open, maybe he can buy back our country first. :)
Hard-Hitting Moderator: Teresa Nielsen Hayden.
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