A lot of readers have been prompted to tell me that Charles Lindbergh was a rightwinger, an anti-Semite, and pro-Nazi in response to my column. Even if all these things were true, I don’t think any of it rebuts my argument. I hardly said there were no pro-Nazi or isolationist rightwingers. Moreover, while I am by no stretch of the imagination an admirer of Lindbergh politically, he was a far more complicated figure than the conventional narrative suggests. The case for him being a virulent anti-Semite has been overstated (as I noted here). Moreover, the America Firsters hardly rushed to embrace Lindbergh’s disastrous comments in Des Moines. Even the pro-Lindbergh Chicago Tribune denounced his comments as did virtually all of the leading Isolationists (and the few that didn’t went to implausible lengths to claim there was nothing anti-Semitic about his remarks). It’s also more than an overstatement to claim him as a “rightwinger” at least without defining your terms and understanding the context of the times. Look, I really dislike the isolationism of the 1930s. And part of my intent here is to dislodge the idea from the popular mind that 1930s isolationism is the ghost of modern conservatism.

Also, I should say because it is one of my great peeves, that too many people use the following logic when discussing such things: anti-Semitism is rightwing, therefore anti-Semites are rightwingers. This is absurd, as a brief tour of the web will reveal or an even briefer perusal of Marx’s musings on the Jewish Question.

Update: Then, there’s this point, from a reader:

Dear Jonah, Charles Lindbergh was an isolationist, and a Nazi sympathizer, but he did wake up once the war began in earnest. In part to make up for his earlier views, he acted as a private consultant to the Army Air Force. He was too old to fly anymore (though he still did fly a few missions before being totally grounded by the brass) but offered his services to fix a problem with the P-38 Lightning fighter. The problem that he fixed – too complicated to get into here – turned the P-38 from a so-so plane into a war winner. Lindbergh can rest in peace as far as I’m concerned.