Alright, Pat is not expressing loyalty to his father when he writes such a book, but is engaged in sober analysis. He has written a highly speculative account of how the course of the war might have been changed merely to buttress his neo- isolationism, and floated it at this point because it is a kind of policy "backgrounder". Now, you say that he does not characterize the loss of life as futile, but I do not understand how that can be if it were, in his mind, evidently avoidable. You say that he is denigrating Americans who gave their lives, and that may be, but he is taking away the whole rationale for the sacrifice, and saying that one of the noblest things America has participated in was one vast mistake. How could anyone as savvy as Pat expected that it would be taken in any other way, and therefore resented by millions of Americans? Why would such a provocation make sense in the context of a political campaign, when one could be sure that one's opponents would put things in the worst light possible? It is for this reason that I suppose that he was motivated by loyalty, which everyone who knows him seems to agree is a strong characteristic in his make- up. Otherwise, he is just a fool....
Coughlinite has been a derisive term for sometime. Since I have not made a particular study of the man, I will not argue with you about him. I will only say that he was widely decried for overt anti- semitism and pro- fascist sentiments..... |
