Ain’t My America: The Long Noble
History of Anti-War Conservatism and
Middle-American Anti-Imperialism by
Bill Kauffman (New York: Henry Holt,
2008). 268 pp.

GEORGE W. CAREY is Professor of Government at
Georgetown University.

Readers will find this work witty, informative,
humorous, and irreverent.
Kauffman’s accounts and anecdotes about the
famous and not so famous—principally those
over the course of our history with the courage
and good sense to oppose America’s wars
and imperial policies—coupled with his frequent
light-hearted editorial interjections,
are alone sufficient to engage readers. His
style, however, in no way detracts from the
central themes of his book that concern matters
of profoundest import.

Kauffman is among the growing number
convinced that George W. Bush has betrayed
conservative principles of long standing by
initiating a preventive war and in pursuing an
interventionist foreign policy to achieve goals
well beyond even those envisioned by
Woodrow Wilson. Indeed, Bush’s betrayal
may well have served as the catalyst for this
book. Kauffman writes of the “cockeyed
militarism of the Bush administration” and of
“the ignorance and cowardice of the subsidized
Right that…cheered him on” and that
“have poisoned the word conservative for
years…to come.” Citing a Pew survey that
reveals “Democrats are ‘twice as likely as
Republicans to say that the United States
ought to mind its own business internationally’,”
he comments on the success of “Bush
and the neoconservatives” in bringing the
rank-and-file Republicans around to support
interventionist policies. The upshot of these
and like developments, Kauffman maintains,
is that conservatism is now linked with war,
interventionism, and imperialism; that is, with
the very activities and policies that erode and
ultimately destroy those “values once associated
with conservatism—decentralization, liberty,
economy in government, religious faith,
family-centeredness, parochialism, smallness.”

Kauffman’s concerns, however, range beyond
those associated with President Bush,
his neoconservative allies, and how they have
managed to denigrate conservatism. Instead,
his primary mission is to show the devastating
costs of those policies engendered by war and
our seemingly ceaseless quest for empire over
the course of our history; costs that extend
beyond the customary measures of blood and
treasure to the degradation of traditional communities,
humane values, and civil liberty—
that is, the very foundations of a decent and
orderly society. He presents his case in five
chapters bracketed by an introduction and a
conclusion. Chapter one deals with the birth
of the American empire (“The Greatest Curse
That Ever Befell Us”) and traces its development
from the time of the Louisiana Purchase,
through the War of 1812, the Mexican
War, and, finally, to the Spanish-American
War (“the highwater mark of naked U.S.
imperialism”). The middle chapters are largely
concerned with American involvement in
the wars that followed the Spanish-American
and our entry upon the world stage. Chapter
two deals with our involvement in the First
and Second World Wars and contains a highly
informative and sympathetic treatment of the
America First organization and movement;
chapter three with the Korean and Vietnam
wars; and a short chapter four with the Iraq
War and our actions in the Balkans. The costs
of war and empire in terms of “Blood, Treasure,
Time, and Family” is the focus of the
final chapter. Of particular interest here is his
discussion of the impact on both children and
the family.

There is considerable value in Kauffman’s
undertaking. It surveys very adequately the
grounds upon which critics of American
interventionism over the years have based
their arguments and, as intimated above,
points to others that have been slighted or
ignored. In terms of substance, to be sure,
students familiar with the more extensive
critical works on American interventionism
probably will not find much that is new; that
is, Kauffman takes the reader through well
explored territory. Nevertheless, this work,
free from the tedious and often irrelevant
accounts of the diplomacy preceding and
following our interventions, is well suited for
general readers and could even serve as required
reading at both the high school and
college levels in those courses dealing with
America’s role in the world. Quite aside from
the fact that it reveals the darker side of
America’s involvement in the world, it stimulates
thinking about critical issues and problems
central to the health and future of the
American Republic. Kauffman’s treatment
of the Louisiana Purchase, for instance, raises
anew the question of how extensive a republic
can be without sacrificing the presumed
benefits historically associated with republican
government. If, as Kauffman details,
prominent New England “Yankees” could
contend at the time of the purchase that it
“would plant ‘the seed of division’ in American
soil,” that “the enlarged country would
be too big, its sections too various, to exist
under any common government beyond the
loosest confederation,” even the most casual
reader might wonder about the character of
our republic today, extending as it does to
Hawaii. To what extent, for example, do the
travails of empire—interventions and periodic
wars—compensate for the lack of common
chords of union by providing a sense of
oneness and unity. And if so, to what extent
do our political leaders exploit this state of
affairs to their advantage? On the basis of
Kauffman’s presentation, a strong case could
be made that the United States ought to be
divided up into six or seven small regional
republics (e.g., New England, the Northwest)
joined in a loose confederacy, an arrangement
which, inter alia, would probably
serve to put imperial ambitions to rest.

Still another concern, more directly related
to the thrust of Kauffman’s charges, can
be put as follows: He provides abundant
evidence to show that Americans are not an
imperial people who relish the prospects of
war, that they are at best reluctant warriors.
Yet, in an important sense, they have been
betrayed by their presidents. As Kauffman
remarks, Woodrow Wilson, who ran on the
slogan “He Kept Us Out of War,” “took his
reelection as license to plunge the nation into
a foreign conflict he had pledged to avoid.”
As he notes, the same can be said of Franklin
D. Roosevelt and Lyndon B. Johnson. Nor,
as he goes on to show, have presidents and
elected leaders been attentive to public attitudes
about commitments to war. As late as
October 1941, for example, a Gallup poll
showed that 79 percent of Americans wanted
to “stay out” of the European war, down
from a high of 84 percent in June 1940.
Equally revealing, a 1938 Gallup poll showed
that 68 percent of the American people,
perhaps sensing what was to come, supported
the Ludlow Amendment that would have
required, as Kauffman puts it, “a national
referendum on any congressional declaration
of war.” But this amendment failed to receive
even a majority vote in the House, which was
determined to block any limitations on its
constitutional prerogatives. In sum, during
the twentieth century at least, there has been
a gulf between the goals of presidents and
those of a majority of the people. One might
think, by way of emphasizing the seriousness
and extent of this gap, that presidents attentive
to the welfare of the people and the
people’s views would regard war as a last
resort, an alternative to be avoided at almost
any cost. Yet the very opposite has been the
case: Lacking public support for war, presidents
have used their powers and position to
“lead”—some might say “push”—the nation
into wars.

If we view Kauffman’s account from this
perspective, serious questions arise. The most
basic relate to the reasons for this gulf between
the people and their leaders. Are there strong,
organized interests in the country that are
inclined to come down on the side of war
when circumstances seem ripe? Does, say, the
existence and growth of the military-industrial
complex render the option of war more
acceptable? Are presidents inclined to commit
to war in hopes of securing a place in the
pantheon of “strong” presidents? Is there any
way to check or control presidents in this
respect, given their constitutional powers and
capacities to mobilize public opinion?

Kauffman’s plea, “Come Home, America”
—a plea borrowed from George McGovern’s
1972 presidential campaign that resonates in
various ways throughout his presentation—
reflects his yearnings for a return to simple,
family-friendly, Norman Rockwell-like communities,
free from the ravages of war. In this,
as he points out at some length, he finds
support in the writings of major conservative
thinkers: for example, Russell Kirk, Robert
Nisbet, Allan Carlson. What seems clear,
however, is that his dream will remain unfulfilled
unless there is a paradigm shift in thinking
among the political elite and much of the
intellectual class about America’s responsibilities
in the world.

There is an interventionist, imperialist
mindset—for some amounting to an ideol
ogy—that prevails today at the highest levels
of government, as well as in our higher
institutions of learning, which holds that the
United States has special responsibilities that
require and justify interventionism and, if
need be, even preventive wars. We may infer
from Kauffman’s narrative that this mindset
has various roots. Some under its sway, no
doubt, sincerely believe in an active, even
militant, version of American “exceptionalism”:
that we are God’s people and that, as
such, we have a unique obligation to advance
democracy, eradicate evil, eliminate tyranny,
and so forth. Others see the United States as
the most powerful nation in the world and the
appointed guardian of the values of the West,
whose enemies are legion. Still others simply
want to secure American’s pre-eminent position
in the world, whether for reasons of
control, exploitation, or security, and they
profess idealistic ends only in order to conceal
these baser motivations. But no matter what
the source of this mindset, it is responsible for
the conditions Kauffman details, and it constitutes
a barrier to their amelioration. Beyond
this, even, it contributes to an American
arrogance and sense of entitlement; that is,
that America knows what is best for the world
and those who differ with it do so out of
ignorance or with evil intent.

That those, like Kauffman, who challenge
this mindset are labeled “isolationist” or even
unpatriotic should come as no surprise given
the orthodoxy concerning America’s role in
the world that prevails in the major “think”
tanks and among our elected leaders. These
labels are, of course, intended to marginalize
and discredit those who take exception to our
present imperialist stance. Yet on Kauffman’s
showing, it is imperative that we re-open the
question of what role the United States should
play in the world because the costs of continuing
down the road our present leaders
seem to have marked out for us are simply too
great. For this, and for reminding us that our
interventionist policies contravene the basic
values long associated with traditional conservatism
and humane societies, Kauffman
deserves great praise.