http://www.americanfreepress.net/Editorial/Ed_Issue_4_3/ed_issue_4_3.html
America Needs More Men Like Robert A. Taft
American Free Press pledges on page one to fight “For Life and Liberty . . . Against the New World Order.” The enemies of the United States—they are legion—cannot and will not tolerate an America-first attitude on the part of either the government or the people. In other words, these culture destroyers work overtime to extinguish every spark of freedom they can find.
What is more, these anti-American assets of the plutocratic establishment working hand-in-hand with their masters are honeycombed throughout the congressional, executive and judicial branches of our government.
Now, the United States needs leaders who will stand up for liberty and freedom. While we were checking a date for September on a populist calendar when the name of the late Sen. Robert A. Taft of Ohio (1889-1953) caught our attention. Here was an American of principle and courage who was not afraid to challenge the American globalist Establishment—the plutocrats and one-worlders of his time.
A genuine populist patriot, son of a president who was later a chief justice of the United States—William Howard Taft—Bob Taft was a man, who upon arriving in the Senate in January 1939, immediately began to make an impact on Washington and the world.
Almost at once he took out after the “New Deal” policies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, who into his second term had long since abandoned the “conservative” platform that he had campaigned on in order to defeat the “liberal” Herbert Hoover in 1932. By the late 1930s, FDR was quickly moving to involve the United States in another European war.
FDR’s so-called Lend-Lease program for Britain put the United States government in the ironic position of helping a European power already at war while at the same time resuscitating a prostrate American economy. For the first time in years America’s factories were belching smoke. Americans were returning to work. However, little did they realize the high price they would pay in money and blood in the name of democracy.
In 1940 Taft sought the GOP nomination for president but was beaten by Wendell Willkie who ran a “me-too” campaign against FDR. Ever the expedient charmer, FDR promised America’s families that their sons would not fight on foreign soil, a stance that kept him in the White House for an unprecedented third term.
As the months rolled on, Taft—ever concerned about America’s traditional policy of neutrality—voted against loans for Finland but supported increased U.S. naval appropriations to strengthen a weak spot in U.S. defenses. He also voted against U.S. aircraft for foreign countries, in favor of increasing U.S. military preparedness, against military conscription and the expansion of the lending authority of the Export-Import Bank.
During 1941 Taft voted to restrict U.S. military forces to the Western Hemi sphere, U.S. territories and possessions. And he vehemently denounced Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union, which he totally distrusted.
A great believer of equal justice under law, Taft came under severe criticism for opposing the Nuremberg trials. In a speech in Gambier, Ohio, at Kenyon, College on Oct. 5, 1946, he charged that the Nuremberg trials of the German high command were simply ex post facto—literally, “after the fact”—proceedings that “violate the fundamental principle of American law that a man cannot be tried under an ex post facto statute.
Taft said: “The trial of the vanquished by the victors cannot be impartial no matter how it is hedged about with the forms of justice. I question whether the hanging of those, who however despicable, were the leaders of the German people, will ever discourage the making of aggressive war, for no one makes aggressive war unless he expects to win. About this whole judgment there is the spirit of vengeance, and vengeance is seldom justice.”
The establishment roundly scolded Taft for this courageous speech, with internationalist Republicans like New York Gov. Tom Dewey and Sen. Jacob Javits leading the pack.
This is the same Tom Dewey who was the GOP standard bearer in 1944 and was soundly defeated by FDR. (That year Taft was reelected to the Senate.)
Taft again sought the GOP nomination for president in 1948. Once again the Eastern establishment cabal knocked him out of the contest and Dewey was again the nominee.
Dewey lost to Harry Truman, who proceeded to permit the United Nations to send Americans to fight and die in a so-called “police action” in Korea which has yet to be settled.
Taft didn’t give up. By 1952 he calculated that he could be the nominee. The people were so fed up with Truman’s war that HST decided not to run again.
By convention time Taft had the delegates but the establishment had the muscle. Taft delegates were denied credentials and delegates favoring General Dwight Eisenhower were seated in his place. And Ike was nominated.
Of his loss to Ike Taft said: “First it was the power of the New York financial interests and a large number of businessmen subject to New York influences who selected Gen. Eisenhower as their candidate at least a year ago.
“Second, four-fifths of the influential newspapers in the country were opposed to me continuously and vociferously, and many turned themselves into propaganda sheets for my opponent.”
Taft campaigned for Ike. And in 1953, in a GOP controlled Senate, Taft served as majority floor leader. In May he learned he had cancer. In June he resigned his leadership post and on July 31, 1953, he died.
A great populist leader for liberty and peace had passed on to his eternal reward. His kind has not been seen since.
