Me#1You#10
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Joined: 06 May 2004
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 Posted: Wed May 08, 2013 12:19 pm Post subject: Taranto: "Dream Job" |
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(note to self: keep up with Taranto)...
| Quote: | Dream Job
By James Taranto
Best of the Web Today
March 4, 2013
"[John] Kerry's Europhilia is back with a vengeance," the Los Angeles Times reports: In his first trip to Europe as Secretary of State this week, Kerry spoke in French, German and Italian, warmed to discussions of European cuisines and lifestyles, and recited a Thomas Jefferson epigram--in French.
While U.S. diplomats are "proud Americans, we are also citizens of the world," Kerry explained in London, exposing an unashamed new internationalism. . . .
He plunged into the language of Flaubert with no prompting when he met Wednesday in Paris with French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.
"Je suis tres contente d'etre ici," Kerry declared, meaning I'm delighted to be here. Also in Paris, Kerry "told how Pamela Harriman, the English-born socialite who served as U.S. ambassador to France in the 1990s, once put him up in a bed previously used by aviator Charles Lindbergh. 'I'm a pilot and I love everything about Lindbergh,' Kerry confessed."
As PBS's "American Experience" reported in a feature called "Fallen Hero: Charles Lindbergh in the 1940s," in 1936 Lindbergh and his wife "attended the Summer Olympic games as the special guests of Field Marshal Hermann Goering. . . . [Lindbergh] visited Germany twice during the next two years."
On one of those visits, in October 1938, "Lindbergh was presented by Goering, on behalf of the Fuehrer, the Service Cross of the German Eagle for his contributions to aviation." To be sure, "Lindbergh, by all appearances, considered the medal to be just another commendation. No different than all the others." And after Kristallnacht, the nationwide pogrom the following month, "the Lindberghs decided to cancel their plans to move to Germany."
But after returning to the U.S. in 1939, Lindbergh began to agitate to keep America out of World War II: Lindbergh saw Nazi victory as certain and thought America's attention should be placed elsewhere. "These wars in Europe are not wars in which our civilization is defending itself against some Asiatic intruder. . . . This is not a question of banding together to defend the white race against foreign invasion." Building on his belief that "racial strength is vital," Lindbergh published an article in Reader's Digest stating, "That our civilization depends on a Western wall of race and arms which can hold back . . . the infiltration of inferior blood." On Sept. 11, 1941, Lindbergh delivered a speech in Des Moines, Iowa, in which he identified "what he saw as the pressure groups pushing the U.S. into war against Germany"--namely "the British, the Jewish and the Roosevelt Administration":Of the Jews, he went on to say, "Instead of agitating for war, Jews in this country should be opposing it in every way, for they will be the first to feel its consequences. Their greatest danger to this country lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government." Did Kerry really say he admires everything about Charles Lindbergh? If so, that's quite a confession.
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