В июле 1919 бывший президент Уильям Говард Тафт публикует статью “The Progressive World Struggle of the Jews for Civil Equality”.
Значительным вкладом Тафта в историю на посту президента стал разрыв российско-американского торгового договора в ответ на отказ царского правительства прекратить дискриминацию в отношении приезжающих в Россию американских евреев.
In November 1911, the AJC committee met again with Taft, and it marked the first time an American president had invited a Jewish delegation to dine with him at the White House. They were shocked and disappointed when the president announced he would decline to rescind the treaty. But in one of the earliest and most successful national lobbying campaigns by American Jews, the AJC led the way in bringing extraordinary pressure to bear on both Congress and the president. The risks inherent in undertaking this campaign were monumental. The AJC and its supporters would need to take on the full power of the administration, which could be perceived as “Jewish agitation” inimical with the public interest. They would have to undertake an ambitious public and media campaign, with no assurance that the American public would be persuaded, and they knew that failure would result in significant adverse repercussions, not the least of which would be a reduction of “Jewish capital” with the American public. Their effort proved enormously successful, however, as they effectively convinced the media and the public - and, significantly, New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson, who would defeat Taft for the presidency the following year - that the abrogation of the treaty was an American interest, not merely a Jewish one. In short order, a bill of abrogation was passed by the House of Representatives in an astounding 301-1 vote (the lone dissenter was George R. Malby of New York); the Senate, after only forty minutes of debate, unanimously passed it on December 19, 1911; and Taft, saying he would give the Jews a Chanukah present, signed it into law the very next day. Reflecting this Chanukah theme, one publication ran a political cartoon juxtaposing an image of Judah Maccabee, the great Jewish hero, with an image of Taft thrashing a Russian figure. https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/front-page/president-taft-and-the-jews-a-remarkable-friendship/2015/12/23/
In 1776 we were fighting for our own independence and the development of our future. In 1861 we tried to eliminate that living lie in the Declaration of Independence, which declared that "all men are born free and equal." It took us four years of a terrible struggle to demonstrate to the world what had been doubted. We demonstrated to the world that we could make sacrifices of lives and treasure for the maintenance of a moral principle and the integrity of the nation. We showed in the words of Lincoln, that "the rule of the people should not perish from the earth." And then we went on and increased from 30,000,000 to 100,000,000 people, and we created a material expansion which has given us greater wealth than any other country. We have had comfort and luxury. Now the question was when this issue came on whether in that change from 30,000,000 to 100,000,000, from comparative wealth to great wealth, we had lost the moral spirit we had before shown, we had become so enervated by our success that we felt it was not wise to risk the lives of those dear to us, to risk the destruction that war must bring in order to assert our rights. Now we have stepped to the forefront of nations, and they look to us. Before we came into this fight Russia had become a democracy, and we find ourselves fighting shoulder to shoulder with the democracies of the world. We find arrayed against us the military dynasties of the world, Germany, Austria, and Turkey. Of course, people say England has a King; so has Italy and other countries that are fighting on our side. A democracy is a country ruled by the people. The King of England and the King of Italy haven't any more influence over the policies of their country than an ex-President. The issue at present is drawn between the democracies of the world and the military dynasties, and people like to characterize that as the issue. It is and it isn't. What I mean by that is: The United States is not a knight-errant country going about to independent people and saying, "We do not like your form of government, we have tried our own popular government and we think it is better for you to take it, and you have got to take it." That is a very unreasonable position, in so far as that form of government deals with only their domestic pursuits and their domestic happiness. If they like to have a Tsar, if they prefer it, why, it isn't for us to take away their freedom of will. Otherwise we shall go back to the logic of the Inquisition, when they burned people in this world so that they might not burn in the next. But when their form of government involves a policy which does not confine its opinions to the people who make the government or support it, but becomes a visible policy against the welfare and happiness of the rest of the world family, we have a right and a duty, standing with other nations as we do, to see to it that such a foreign policy is stopped and stamped out forever. https://www.firstworldwar.com/source/taftonwar.htm
Тафт признавал, что разрыв торгового договора способствовал падению дома Романовых.
Ex-President Taft applauded vigorously last night when Jacob H. Schiff, at a dinner of the " American Jewish Friends of Free Russia," praised Theodore Roosevelt for his efforts, while President, to bring the Russian autocracy to a realization of the wrongs committed against Jewish subjects. There was another outburst of applause when Mr. Schiff, introduced by the toastmaster as a "Russian Revolutionist" asserted that, in his opinion, the abrogation of the treaty between the United States and Russia because of discrimination against American citizens of Jewish birth was the inspiration which, to a great extent, ultimately brought about the overthrow of the Romanoffs. <...> “The revolution has come, the Czar's Government has been swept away over night, and the first act ofthe new Government. God bless It, was to call home Russian exiles and to emancipate the Russian Jews. We do not know what may come hereafter but we do know - that never again will these rights be taken away. The Russian Jew has been liberated and will remain so forever." https://www.nytimes.com/1917/05/11/archives/warning-to-new-russia-taft-commends-jewish-efforts-for-liberated.html
In spite of promises to continue Teddy Roosevelt’s legacy of the conservation of public lands, Taft appointed former Seattle mayor, Richard Ballinger to be Secretary of Interior. Ballinger set about re-privatizing public lands. This raised the ire of progressives who set about publicly denouncing Taft, including in testimony before Congress by Roosevelts close friend and holdover from his administration, conservation pioneer Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot cannot show that Taft was breaking any law, but highlighted a potential abuse of power in using his office to solicit financial support from prominent mining and logging interests. In the magazines the headlines read “Are the Guggenheim’s in charge of the Department of Interior?” Taft/Ballinger end up firing the leading progressives in their administration, including Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot secures Louis Brandeis as his attorney for a hearing in Congress about his firing. Brandeis is able to prove that the President backdated memos he claimed he had reviewed before firing Pinchot. At that time, the President being caught lying to the American people was such a scandal that Taft’s Republicans were trounced in the 1910 election and the treatment of Pinchot so angered Teddy Roosevelt that he decided to come out of retirement and run against Taft in 1912, splitting the Republican Party and guaranteeing the election of Woodrow Wilson. http://jewishmuseummd.org/2020/02/was-our-27th-president-antisemitic/
В 1920 Тафт сделал доклад в ADL об антисемитизме в Америке и заклеймил Генри Форда за распространение «Протоколов».
В 1921 он был назначен главным судьей Верховного суда и проработал в нем долгое время вместе с Брэндайсом.
Here’s what Brandeis had to say there about Taft: “It’s astonishing he should have been such a horribly bad President, for he has considerable executive ability. The fact, probably, is that he cared about law all the time and nothing else. He has an excellent memory, makes quick decisions on questions of administration that arise and if a large output were the chief desideratum, he would be very good. He is a first-rate second-rate mind.” https://brandeiswatch.wordpress.com/2007/12/05/brandeis-as-dissenter-in-journal-of-supreme-court-history/
In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Brandeis objected to warrantless wiretapping by the government and set down some lasting principles. “The greatest dangers to liberty,” he wrote, “lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.” Brandeis’s views were later adopted by Congress and the courts, at least in the context of domestic wiretapping. More important yet, Brandeis’s dissent in Olmstead provided a basis for Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 decision that established the constitutional right to marital privacy and led to Roe v. Wade, the decision that identified a right to abortion in 1973. Brandeis told Frankfurter that he construed the Constitution liberally where property rights were involved, meaning he seldom voted to strike down laws regulating them, but that laws restricting individual rights required closer scrutiny. He explained why in a 1927 concurrence to a Court decision that would help transform First Amendment law. “Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards,” Brandeis wrote. “They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.” https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/books/21liptak.html
В ноябре 1907 Тафт, военный министр и преемник Рузвельта, прибыл во Владивосток, был встречен с почестями и в императорском вагоне проехал по транссибирской железной дороге для встречи с Николаем Вторым в Петербурге.
Во внешней политике его тогда больше всего беспокоил эксперимент по смене режима на Филиппинах, где он до своего назначения министром служил губернатором.
Upon arriving in the islands, Taft immediately clashed with the military governor, General Arthur MacArthur (the father of General Douglas MacArthur of World War II and Korean War fame). Taft viewed the military control of the islands as too brutal and unsympathetic to the islanders. Obtaining McArthur's removal after the capture of Aguinaldo, Taft quickly set to work drafting the Island's constitution. It included a Bill of Rights that was nearly identical to the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, with the notable absence of the right to trial by jury. Central to the new governance structure was the role of civil governor, a post to which Taft was appointed. He established a civil service system, a judicial system, English-language public schools, a transportation network, and health care facilities. He also negotiated with the Vatican (the Roman Catholic papal headquarters in Rome) to purchase 390,000 acres of church property in the Philippines for $7.5 million. Taft distributed this land by way of low-cost mortgages to tens of thousands of Filipino peasants. While in the Philippines, Taft had twice turned down President Roosevelt's offer of a Supreme Court appointment in order to finish his work in the Islands. Taft was loved and supported by many Filipino residents for his evenhanded governance. In Taft's own view, the Filipinos were not yet capable of governing themselves, and he believed that it would take years before self-rule would work. He foresaw a long period of U.S. instruction and protection of the islands through which the "immature" culture could be raised by American tutelage to capacities for independent governance. The Philippines did not achieve self-rule and independence until 1946. https://millercenter.org/president/taft/life-before-the-presidency
В июле 1919 бывший президент Уильям Говард Тафт публикует статью “The Progressive World Struggle of the Jews for Civil Equality”.
Значительным вкладом Тафта в историю на посту президента стал разрыв российско-американского торгового договора в ответ на отказ царского правительства прекратить дискриминацию в отношении приезжающих в Россию американских евреев.
In November 1911, the AJC committee met again with Taft, and it marked the first time an American president had invited a Jewish delegation to dine with him at the White House. They were shocked and disappointed when the president announced he would decline to rescind the treaty. But in one of the earliest and most successful national lobbying campaigns by American Jews, the AJC led the way in bringing extraordinary pressure to bear on both Congress and the president.
The risks inherent in undertaking this campaign were monumental. The AJC and its supporters would need to take on the full power of the administration, which could be perceived as “Jewish agitation” inimical with the public interest. They would have to undertake an ambitious public and media campaign, with no assurance that the American public would be persuaded, and they knew that failure would result in significant adverse repercussions, not the least of which would be a reduction of “Jewish capital” with the American public.
Their effort proved enormously successful, however, as they effectively convinced the media and the public - and, significantly, New Jersey Governor Woodrow Wilson, who would defeat Taft for the presidency the following year - that the abrogation of the treaty was an American interest, not merely a Jewish one.
In short order, a bill of abrogation was passed by the House of Representatives in an astounding 301-1 vote (the lone dissenter was George R. Malby of New York); the Senate, after only forty minutes of debate, unanimously passed it on December 19, 1911; and Taft, saying he would give the Jews a Chanukah present, signed it into law the very next day.
Reflecting this Chanukah theme, one publication ran a political cartoon juxtaposing an image of Judah Maccabee, the great Jewish hero, with an image of Taft thrashing a Russian figure.
https://www.jewishpress.com/indepth/front-page/president-taft-and-the-jews-a-remarkable-friendship/2015/12/23/
В 1917 Тафт горячо поддержал Февральскую революцию и вступление США в мировую войну.
Reply
We demonstrated to the world that we could make sacrifices of lives and treasure for the maintenance of a moral principle and the integrity of the nation. We showed in the words of Lincoln, that "the rule of the people should not perish from the earth."
And then we went on and increased from 30,000,000 to 100,000,000 people, and we created a material expansion which has given us greater wealth than any other country. We have had comfort and luxury. Now the question was when this issue came on whether in that change from 30,000,000 to 100,000,000, from comparative wealth to great wealth, we had lost the moral spirit we had before shown, we had become so enervated by our success that we felt it was not wise to risk the lives of those dear to us, to risk the destruction that war must bring in order to assert our rights.
Now we have stepped to the forefront of nations, and they look to us.
Before we came into this fight Russia had become a democracy, and we find ourselves fighting shoulder to shoulder with the democracies of the world. We find arrayed against us the military dynasties of the world, Germany, Austria, and Turkey.
Of course, people say England has a King; so has Italy and other countries that are fighting on our side. A democracy is a country ruled by the people. The King of England and the King of Italy haven't any more influence over the policies of their country than an ex-President.
The issue at present is drawn between the democracies of the world and the military dynasties, and people like to characterize that as the issue. It is and it isn't. What I mean by that is: The United States is not a knight-errant country going about to independent people and saying, "We do not like your form of government, we have tried our own popular government and we think it is better for you to take it, and you have got to take it."
That is a very unreasonable position, in so far as that form of government deals with only their domestic pursuits and their domestic happiness. If they like to have a Tsar, if they prefer it, why, it isn't for us to take away their freedom of will. Otherwise we shall go back to the logic of the Inquisition, when they burned people in this world so that they might not burn in the next.
But when their form of government involves a policy which does not confine its opinions to the people who make the government or support it, but becomes a visible policy against the welfare and happiness of the rest of the world family, we have a right and a duty, standing with other nations as we do, to see to it that such a foreign policy is stopped and stamped out forever.
https://www.firstworldwar.com/source/taftonwar.htm
Тафт признавал, что разрыв торгового договора способствовал падению дома Романовых.
Ex-President Taft applauded vigorously last night when Jacob H. Schiff, at a dinner of the " American Jewish Friends of Free Russia," praised Theodore Roosevelt for his efforts, while President, to bring the Russian autocracy to a realization of the wrongs committed against Jewish subjects. There was another outburst of applause when Mr. Schiff, introduced by the toastmaster as a "Russian Revolutionist" asserted that, in his opinion, the abrogation of the treaty between the United States and Russia because of discrimination against American citizens of Jewish birth was the inspiration which, to a great extent, ultimately brought about the overthrow of the Romanoffs. <...>
“The revolution has come, the Czar's Government has been swept away over night, and the first act ofthe new Government. God bless It, was to call home Russian exiles and to emancipate the Russian Jews.
We do not know what may come hereafter but we do know - that never again will these rights be taken away. The Russian Jew has been liberated and will remain so forever."
https://www.nytimes.com/1917/05/11/archives/warning-to-new-russia-taft-commends-jewish-efforts-for-liberated.html
Reply
Дело было в личной обиде - благодаря Брэндайсу был вскрыт скандал с приватизацией, из-за которого Тафт в 1912 не смог переизбраться на второй срок https://louisville.edu/law/library/special-collections/the-louis-d.-brandeis-collection/synopsis-of-the-ballinger-pinchot-affair
In spite of promises to continue Teddy Roosevelt’s legacy of the conservation of public lands, Taft appointed former Seattle mayor, Richard Ballinger to be Secretary of Interior. Ballinger set about re-privatizing public lands. This raised the ire of progressives who set about publicly denouncing Taft, including in testimony before Congress by Roosevelts close friend and holdover from his administration, conservation pioneer Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot cannot show that Taft was breaking any law, but highlighted a potential abuse of power in using his office to solicit financial support from prominent mining and logging interests. In the magazines the headlines read “Are the Guggenheim’s in charge of the Department of Interior?”
Taft/Ballinger end up firing the leading progressives in their administration, including Gifford Pinchot. Pinchot secures Louis Brandeis as his attorney for a hearing in Congress about his firing. Brandeis is able to prove that the President backdated memos he claimed he had reviewed before firing Pinchot. At that time, the President being caught lying to the American people was such a scandal that Taft’s Republicans were trounced in the 1910 election and the treatment of Pinchot so angered Teddy Roosevelt that he decided to come out of retirement and run against Taft in 1912, splitting the Republican Party and guaranteeing the election of Woodrow Wilson.
http://jewishmuseummd.org/2020/02/was-our-27th-president-antisemitic/
В 1920 Тафт сделал доклад в ADL об антисемитизме в Америке и заклеймил Генри Форда за распространение «Протоколов».
В 1921 он был назначен главным судьей Верховного суда и проработал в нем долгое время вместе с Брэндайсом.
Here’s what Brandeis had to say there about Taft:
“It’s astonishing he should have been such a horribly bad President, for he has considerable executive ability. The fact, probably, is that he cared about law all the time and nothing else. He has an excellent memory, makes quick decisions on questions of administration that arise and if a large output were the chief desideratum, he would be very good. He is a first-rate second-rate mind.”
https://brandeiswatch.wordpress.com/2007/12/05/brandeis-as-dissenter-in-journal-of-supreme-court-history/
In his 1928 dissent in Olmstead v. United States, Brandeis objected to warrantless wiretapping by the government and set down some lasting principles. “The greatest dangers to liberty,” he wrote, “lurk in insidious encroachment by men of zeal, well-meaning but without understanding.”
Brandeis’s views were later adopted by Congress and the courts, at least in the context of domestic wiretapping. More important yet, Brandeis’s dissent in Olmstead provided a basis for Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 decision that established the constitutional right to marital privacy and led to Roe v. Wade, the decision that identified a right to abortion in 1973.
Brandeis told Frankfurter that he construed the Constitution liberally where property rights were involved, meaning he seldom voted to strike down laws regulating them, but that laws restricting individual rights required closer scrutiny.
He explained why in a 1927 concurrence to a Court decision that would help transform First Amendment law. “Those who won our independence by revolution were not cowards,” Brandeis wrote. “They did not fear political change. They did not exalt order at the cost of liberty.”
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/21/books/21liptak.html
Reply
Во внешней политике его тогда больше всего беспокоил эксперимент по смене режима на Филиппинах, где он до своего назначения министром служил губернатором.
Upon arriving in the islands, Taft immediately clashed with the military governor, General Arthur MacArthur (the father of General Douglas MacArthur of World War II and Korean War fame). Taft viewed the military control of the islands as too brutal and unsympathetic to the islanders. Obtaining McArthur's removal after the capture of Aguinaldo, Taft quickly set to work drafting the Island's constitution. It included a Bill of Rights that was nearly identical to the first ten amendments to the U.S. Constitution, with the notable absence of the right to trial by jury. Central to the new governance structure was the role of civil governor, a post to which Taft was appointed. He established a civil service system, a judicial system, English-language public schools, a transportation network, and health care facilities. He also negotiated with the Vatican (the Roman Catholic papal headquarters in Rome) to purchase 390,000 acres of church property in the Philippines for $7.5 million. Taft distributed this land by way of low-cost mortgages to tens of thousands of Filipino peasants.
While in the Philippines, Taft had twice turned down President Roosevelt's offer of a Supreme Court appointment in order to finish his work in the Islands. Taft was loved and supported by many Filipino residents for his evenhanded governance. In Taft's own view, the Filipinos were not yet capable of governing themselves, and he believed that it would take years before self-rule would work. He foresaw a long period of U.S. instruction and protection of the islands through which the "immature" culture could be raised by American tutelage to capacities for independent governance. The Philippines did not achieve self-rule and independence until 1946.
https://millercenter.org/president/taft/life-before-the-presidency
Тафт вёл тайные переговоры с Японией о разделе сфер влияния - в ответ на отказ японцев от претензий на Филиппины, Америка соглашалась бы с их претензией на Корею https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taft%E2%80%93Katsura_agreement
От России он хотел размещения войск рядом с корейской границей для устрашения Японии.
It is now reported that at the time of his visit Secretary Taft wanted Russia to keep an - army of about half a million men close to the Korean frontier not with the object of fighting but to prevent Japan from concentrating all her attention on the Philippines.
https://www.nytimes.com/1908/02/02/archives/taft-talk-in-russia-gossips-there-persist-in-rumormongering-about.html
Размер вооруженных сил США в это время составлял около 100 тысяч человек https://www.alternatewars.com/BBOW/Stats/US_Mil_Manpower_1789-1997.htm
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