Come Home, Conservatives!—to the Antiwar Conservative Movement

Real conservatives oppose war -- except as a last resort, and then only to protect lives and liberty. Think of war as the outward expression of an interventionist government; one form of aggression fuels the other, as Robert E. Lee warned us years ago when he wrote, "... the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it."

Thomas Woods, Jr. has written a review of Bill Kauffman's Ain’t My America: The Long, Noble History of Anti-War Conservatism and Middle-American Anti-Imperialism. It's not just about famous men such as Russell Kirk and Robert Taft, but it's also about others, including a Southern opponent of the Neocon Wars, Congressman Jimmy Duncan (R-TN). And here's another Southern conservative few readers have encountered, one who bravely voted against America's entry into WWI, probably the most senseless of the military adventures DC has launched:

Along the same lines Kauffman cites Senator James K. Vardaman, Republican [actually, a Democrat] senator from Mississippi, who like most Americans at the time believed neither in integration nor racial equality but who sacrificed his career for the cause of peace as Woodrow Wilson was pushing his country into the Great War. His friends tried in vain to persuade him to support the president, but he would not budge. Losing his Senate seat was as nothing, he said, compared to the lives and liberties that Americans would lose if the country entered the war. In 1918 he was defeated for re-election by Democrat Pat Harrison—who, by the way, was pro-war and pro-segregation.

Great ammunition as we fight to reclaim America's soul, starting with reclaiming its past.