Across a Century, Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr. Addresses the Globalists Who Are Wrecking the World Today on Purpose

The particular occasion was a speech against the League of Nations, a U.N. prototype.

But every word still rings true as an indictment of the Corporate Fascists and Globo-Communists of today--and especially as a rebuke of this American Government of Occupation, a Self-Installed Shadowy Cabal Currently Known as "Joe Biden".

Against a Century of Sedition

Sen. Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr., August 12, 1919

"Mr. President:

The independence of the United States is not only more precious to ourselves but to the world than any single possession. Look at the United States today. We have made mistakes in the past. We have had shortcomings. We shall make mistakes in the future and fall short of our own best hopes. But none the less is there any country today on the face of the earth which can compare with this in ordered liberty, in peace, and in the largest freedom? I feel that I can say this without being accused of undue boastfulness, for it is the simple fact, and in making this treaty and taking on these obligations all that we do is in a spirit of unselfishness and in a desire for the good of mankind. But it is well to remember that we are dealing with nations every one of which has a direct individual interest to serve, and there is grave danger in an unshared idealism. Contrast the United States with any country on the face of the earth today and ask yourself whether the situation of the United States is not the best to be found.

I will go as far as anyone in world service, but the first step to world service is the maintenance of the United States.

I have always loved one flag and I cannot share that devotion with a mongrel banner created for a League.

You may call me selfish if you will, conservative or reactionary, or use any other harsh adjective you see fit to apply, but an American I was born, an American I have remained all my life. I can never be anything else but an American, and I must think of the United States first, and when I think of the United States first in an arrangement like this I am thinking of what is best for the world, for if the United States fails, the best hopes of mankind fail with it. I have never had but one allegiance — I cannot divide it now. I have loved but one flag and I cannot share that devotion and give affection to the mongrel banner invented for a league [now the UN].

Internationalism, illustrated by the Bolshevik and by the men to whom all countries are alike provided they can make money out of them, is to me repulsive. National I must remain, and in that way I like all other Americans can render the amplest service to the world. The United States is the world's best hope, but if you fetter her in the interests and quarrels of other nations, if you tangle her in the intrigues of Europe, you will destroy her power for good and endanger her very existence. Leave her to march freely through the centuries to come as in the years that have gone. Strong, generous, and confident, she has nobly served mankind. Beware how you trifle with your marvelous inheritance, this great land of ordered liberty, for if we stumble and fall freedom and civilization everywhere will go down in ruin.

We are told that we shall 'break the heart of the world' if we do not take this league just as it stands. I fear that the hearts of the vast majority of mankind would beat on strongly and steadily and without any quickening if the league were to perish altogether. If it should be effectively and beneficently changed the people who would lie awake in sorrow for a single night could be easily gathered in one not very large room but those who would draw a long breath of relief would reach to millions.

We hear much of visions and I trust we shall continue to have visions and dream dreams of a fairer future for the race. But visions are one thing and visionaries are another, and the mechanical appliances of the rhetorician designed to give a picture of a present which does not exist and of a future which no man can predict are as unreal and short-lived as the steam or canvas clouds, the angels suspended on wires and the artificial lights of the stage. They pass with the moment of effect and are shabby and tawdry in the daylight. Let us at least be real. Washington's entire honesty of mind and his fearless look into the face of all facts are qualities which can never go out of fashion and which we should all do well to imitate.

Ideals have been thrust upon us as an argument for the league until the healthy mind which rejects cant revolts from them. Are ideals confined to this deformed experiment upon a noble purpose, tainted, as it is, with bargains and tied to a peace treaty which might have been disposed of long ago to the great benefit of the world if it had not been compelled to carry this rider on its back? 'Post equitem sedet atra cura,' Horace tells us, but no blacker care ever sat behind any rider than we shall find in this covenant of doubtful and disputed interpretation as it now perches upon the treaty of peace.

No doubt many excellent and patriotic people see a coming fulfillment of noble ideals in the words 'league for peace.' We all respect and share these aspirations and desires, but some of us see no hope, but rather defeat, for them in this murky covenant. For we, too, have our ideals, even if we differ from those who have tried to establish a monopoly of idealism. Our first ideal is our country, and we see her in the future, as in the past, giving service to all her people and to the world. Our ideal of the future is that she should continue to render that service of her own free will. She has great problems of her own to solve, very grim and perilous problems, and a right solution, if we can attain to it, would largely benefit mankind. We would have our country strong to resist a peril from the West, as she has flung back the German menace from the East. We would not have our politics distracted and embittered by the dissensions of other lands. We would not have our country's vigor exhausted or her moral force abated, by everlasting meddling and muddling in every quarrel, great and small, which afflicts the world. Our ideal is to make her ever stronger and better and finer, because in that way alone, as we believe, can she be of the greatest service to the world's peace and to the welfare of mankind.".......

"In the beginning of the contest with Britain, when we were sensible of danger, we had daily prayers in this room for Divine protection. Our prayers, Sir, were heard and they were graciously answered. All of us who were engaged in the struggle must have observed frequent instances of a superintending Providence in our favor.... And have we now forgotten this powerful Friend? Or do we imagine we no longer need His assistance?"--Benjamin Franklin, Constitutional Convention, 1797

Related: The True Origins of ‘America First’ › American Greatness--Angelo Codevilla:

“In 1900, as Senator Albert Beveridge (R-Ind.) was arguing for fighting harder to subdue resistance to U.S. rule in the Philippines, he said: “The Declaration of Independence does not forbid us to do our part in the regeneration of the world. If it did, the Declaration would be wrong.” Though that statement appealed to many, it would have had no traction two years earlier, as Americans were debating intervention in Cuba. Nobody wanted to rule it, never mind to regenerate it.
 

By the following year, Andrew Carnegie’s quip about “having substantially civilized and sent to heaven” some 8,000 Filipinos struck President McKinley deeply. Within another two years, the crest of empire’s glories had passed over the U.S. population. Thereafter, some of the 1890s’ most vocal imperialists, notably Theodore Roosevelt and Senator Henry Cabot Lodge (R–Mass.), had refocused soberly and forcefully on peace, national power, and balancing ends with means.

President Theodore Roosevelt relished the United States’ power and shared the Founders’ commitment to peace as well as their understanding that peace is to be earned by focusing on America’s own business. He personified the fact that great power wielded strictly on America’s own behalf and measured to its purpose is likeliest to secure peace.

Roosevelt had always despised most imperialists for being concerned with foreign nations as if these were their own. Rudyard Kipling had written “The White Man’s Burden” as if to sober TR about imperialism. Empire, said Kipling, means to “send your sons to exile, to serve your captives’ need” and “to seek another’s profit and work another’s gain.” It means ending up with “the blame of those ye better, the hate of those ye guard.” America’s experience in the Philippines was confirming these warnings; thus, TR’s steadfast love for America First, and his experience dealing with other nations at the highest levels, led him back to the Founders’ fundamentals.” …….