George Wald Quotes
A peacetime draft is the most un-American thing I know.
This principle became the Civil War Draft. Ironically, when the draft was legislated by Congress, there were relatively few men drafted as enlistments increased. See {621897} .
This was the inception of the Civil War draft.
26 years after he wrote this, both the Government and the Southern Rebels had introduced military conscription, and with few exceptions, it has prevailed through the 20th century, and then replaced by a volunteer army concept.
In the latter part of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st, one of the tactics of conservatives was to accuse liberal candidates and office holders of being un-American, unpatriotic, and disloyal to the country. The tactic goes back to the beginning of the nation when Jefferson and the Democratic Republicans claimed the Federalists were un-American--monarchists and Anglophiles. In the 1950’s, Senator Joseph McCarthy attacked President Truman, Secretary of State Acheson, Secretary of the Army Stevenson and many others for “un-Americanism.” Even wounded war hero, paraplegic, Senator Max Cleland was accused by Republicans a of being unpatriotic which led to his defeat at the polls. So accusing the President of being un-American, was that unique an act even though it shocked most Americans.
This was a particularly heinous insult. In this campaign, some Republicans began claiming that President Obama was not a legitimate President because he was not born in America as the Constitution requires. Despite the fact that the State of Hawaii validated his birth certificate and the local newspapers carried announcements of his birth, many continued to make the accusation along with the parallel accusation that he was a Muslim and not a Christian despite his Church Membership all of his adult life. For many the purpose was to delegitimize Obama and they added the claim that he was anti American. So when Sununu, a major party leader said this the implication was particularly egregious. Sununu, to his credit, did apologize for the language he used and the implication thereof, but the quote is an excellent example of what has happened when campaigns get hyper-partisan. Even senior, veteran politicians get carried away and say things they regret. The 2012 was a particularly hyper-partisan campaign.
Public opinion in the Union was quite different and more complex. Eggleston was an accomplished writer who had served in the Confederate army of the Civil War. 20 year after the war he wrote a series of articles for the prestigious Northern Atlantic Monthly trying to convey the war from the Southerner’s point of view.
This quotation comes as a surprise to most readers who are amazed that the first American Legion National Commander described the role of the Legion as parallel to that of Mussolini and the Fascists of Italy. The early Legion leadership were themselves very right wing and fascistic themselves. See {640098} which shows that the Legion of that time was fomenting race hatred against Asians. The Legion leadership was not alone in its fascist tendencies; many of the right wingers from Charles Lindbergh to Joseph Kennedy—father of JFK were admirers of the fascists and advocated many of their practices. They even praised Hitler and Mussolini.
Defining Americanism has always been a challange. Huntington sees American national identity defined by political ideology with the only commonality of Americans are this American political ideology.
George Wald was an American scientist who studied pigments in the retina. He won a share of the 1967 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine with Haldan Keffer Hartline and Ragnar Granit.
