Historian and Writer
My latest is my first (!) for the great American Conservative, an article entitled, “America Was Never Isolationist: Fareed Zakaria’s “America First” is a lazy exercise in the abuse of history.” It is a critical response to a special on America First and “isolationism” done by CNN’s Fareed Zakaria.
Give it a read.
My latest piece with Responsible Statecraft argues that the Harris campaign’s embrace of the Cheneyes and neoconservatism has its ideological roots in the progressive rifts of the Great War, rifts that have given many observers a false idea of what historic Democratic foreign policy is all about.
Give it a read:
Harris embrace of Cheney goes back to World War I | Responsible Statecraft
I recently reviewed H.W. Brands’ newly released America First: Roosevelt vs. Lindbergh in the Shadow of War for the Libertarian Institute.
Check it out:
A New Primer Brings the ‘Great Debate’ Back To Form | The Libertarian Institute
Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Tom Woods on the noninterventionist right and their legacies for the present.
Check it out.
I am pleased to share that today, I made a panel appearance at the Cato Institute with Dr. Victoria Coates, moderated by Justin Logan, Director of Defense and Foreign Policy Studies. We discussed the current discord within the Republican Party’s positions on foreign policy, its past (my department), and what might come next.
In case you missed it, watch at either of the links below:
View on the Cato website: Old Right, New Right? What History Suggests about the Future of GOP Foreign Policy | Cato Institute
View on C-SPAN: Republican Party Foreign Policy Priorities | C-SPAN.org
I am pleased to share that the folks at Reason provided me with an opportunity to review Rachel Maddow’s new work on the radical right:
Rachel Maddow’s ‘Prequel’ Is a Deceptively Framed History of the Radical Right (reason.com)
I’m excited to share a recent interview with Matt Kibbe of Free the People. We discussed my recent work on Woodrow Wilson, FDR, the birth of the information state, and current changes in conservative foreign policy opinion.
Check it out:
War Propaganda and the Information State | Guest: Brandan P. Buck | Ep 241 – YouTube
Listen: Kibbe On Liberty – TheBlaze
A special thanks to Patrick MacFarlane for having me on his show, Vital Dissent to talk about my work and current strains of noninterventionism on both the left and the right.
And, in case you missed it links are below to the articles that we discussed.
Feeling manipulated? How Uncle Sam perfected the information state – Responsible Statecraft
Brown Scare, Red Scare, Fake Scare, Who’s Scared? | The Libertarian Institute
The recent drip of think pieces regarding the resurrection of conscription inspired me to revisit the antiwar ads featured below.
They are some haunting stuff designed to tug at the heartstrings. I first ran into them while researching at the Hoover Presidential Library, specifically while pouring through the Senator Gerald Nye Papers. As you can see, the images feature a mother tossing their smiling child with the text “To be Killed in Action” superimposed above.
The center image and the one on the right are posters/flyers related to a speaking tour put on by Senator Gerald Nye in order to sell the public on the newly proposed Neutrality Act, itself the result of his famed “Special Committee on Investigation of the Munitions Industry,” colloquially known as the Nye Committee.
The Nye speaking tour poster and flyer make explicit and repeated references to the Great War as a mistake, one not to be repeated. Lost in the “Good War,” mythologizing the once apolitical and visceral opposition to the war in the United States in the wake of World War I, sentiments that carried through in Congress.
I’ve looked into the ad’s origins and cannot pin it down for certain, although it appears that it at least ran in Esquire magazine.
I have not found anything on the ad’s origins except for one other appearance on a vintage ad blog that places its origins in 1939, which can’t be correct as the copies I ran into have it at least as early as 1935. According to said blog:
The ad from a group called World Peaceways, in NYC is from 1939 before America entered WWII is remarkable in the fact that it ran as a full-page advertisement in an issue of “Woman’s Home Companion,” a mainstream woman’s magazine. It appeared alongside recipes for the 1930’s housewife for husband pleasin’ meals and advise on hanging dainty curtains. The contrasts between the usual vintage advertising to women and a daring war protest ad was startling.
War, What is it Good For? | Envisioning The American Dream
If you’ve come this far, read the ads; they’re jarring historical documents. And even if you possess a completely orthodox view of “isolationism” and America’s entry into the war, I hope you can glean a modicum of sympathy for those who desired to stay out of Europe’s growing travails. Most simply didn’t want their children to die half a world away.
Is that so hard to comprehend?
Thanks to the Libertarian Institute for publishing my latest article, “Enemies Above: The FBI and the Creation of the Brown Scare Myth.” It highlights the role of the Federal Bureau of Investigation in propagating the “Brown Scare,” and its implications for modern politics.
Check it out:
Enemies Above: The FBI and the Creation of the Brown Scare Myth | The Libertarian Institute
