Principles and Heresies

The Concept of Fortress America

Back in the thirties, those Americans who understood that the threat to the United States and to Western values from Soviet Communism was of the same order as the threat from Nazi fascism, were vilified as narrow and backward hillbillies (sometimes) or as pro-fascists (usually), because they refused to go along with a “crusade” against the one evil, so conceived that it could only lead to the aggrandizement of the other evil. Those who held this position were labeled “isolationists.” Their clear grasp of the realities of world politics was deliberately and successfully obscured by identification with other positions hostile to the foreign policies adopted by the Roosevelt Administration—positions motivated by pacifism, isolationism in the true sense, Anglophobia, and a dozen other considerations.

FS

About the Author

Frank S. Meyer

Frank S. Meyer was a senior editor of National Review.

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The Concept of Fortress America

Back in the thirties, those Americans who understood that the threat to the United States and to Western values from Soviet Communism was of the same order as the threat from Nazi fascism, were vilified as narrow and backward hillbillies (sometimes) or as pro-fascists (usually), because they refused to go along with a “crusade” against the one evil, so conceived that it could only lead to the aggrandizement of the other evil. Those who held this position were labeled “isolationists.” Their clear grasp of the realities of world politics was deliberately and successfully obscured by identification with other positions hostile to the foreign policies adopted by the Roosevelt Administration—positions motivated by pacifism, isolationism in the true sense, Anglophobia, and a dozen other considerations.