Who is John T. Flynn?
John T. Flynn -- journalist, author, and master polemicist of the Old Right -- is highly unusual. He started out as a liberal columnist for that flagship of American liberalism, the New Republic, and wound up on the Right, denouncing "creeping socialism." What is unusual about Flynn is that instead of being seduced by the New Deal and the Popular Front into supporting the war, Flynn was led by his thoroughgoing antiwar stance to challenge the developing state worship of modern liberalism.
Flynn's final and definitive shift from left to right was completed with the writing of his greatest work, As We Go Marching. In this book, Flynn stepped back and tried to see the trends he had been fighting -- militarism, centralism, leader worship -- as the interlocking components of a system. FULL ARTICLE
Comments (1)
John Moser's excellent intellectual history of John T. Flynn, would argue that it wasn't Hoover's or FDR's spending that bothered Flynn; it was his deficit spending. Flynn wanted to see taxes increased dramatically, at least until he made his move toward the right in the 1940s.
Here's a link to Moser's book: http://www.amazon.com/Right-Turn-Transformation-American-Liberalism/dp/0814757006
Published: February 29, 2008 9:52 AM