In his new book, "Whatever It Takes: Illegal Immigration, Border Security, and the War on Terror," Congressman J.D. Hayworth outlines his solutions for some of the most pressing problems facing our country. Among his recommendations are support for the Minutemen and a call to end the practice of automatically granting citizenship to children born in the United States.
Hayworth has made no bones about his position on immigration. So the above should come as no surprise to readers. What may come as a surprise, and an unpleasant one at that, is Hayworth's praise for "Americanization" and its proponent, Henry Ford.
Hayworth writes: "The ever-so-successful process that used to be called 'Americanization' was a major movement in the early 1900s ... Henry Ford, a leader in this movement, said, 'These men of many nations must be taught American ways, the English language, and the right way to live.' Talk like that today and our liberal elites will brand you a cultural imperialist, or worse. But if you ask me, Ford had a better idea."
Perhaps Hayworth, and/or Joseph J. Eule, with whom he wrote the book, should have looked at that idea more closely before espousing it. A brief tour of the American Jewish Historical Society's Web site, www.ajhs.org, would have clued Hayworth into the xenophobic, anti-Semitic nature of Ford's vision of "Americanization."
Ford's belief in a Jewish world conspiracy led him to spread such bile, including "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," that the American Jewish Committee and the Anti-Defamation League finally negotiated an agreement with him that "articles reflecting on the Jews" would never again appear in the Dearborn Independent, a newspaper Ford owned. He claimed that he himself had been too busy to read the pieces that bore his name - a contention that Louis Marshall, chairman of the AJC at the time (and grandfather of Valley resident Jonathan Marshall), called "humiliating."
According to the AJHS site, Ford later claimed that his signature on the agreement with Marshall had been forged, and that Jewish bankers had caused World War II.
We're not saying that Hayworth is anti-Semitic - only that he should choose his heroes more carefully. One has only to listen to the broadcasts of Ford's friend and fellow Detroit resident Father Charles E. Coughlin to understand the ignorance at work in the kind of thinking Ford espoused. Or read the words of F.D.R.'s Secretary of the Interior, Harold L. Ickes, in response to news that Ford had received a medal from Adolf Hitler and refused to return it: "How can any American accept a decoration from the hand of a brutal dictator who, with that same hand, is robbing and torturing thousands of fellow human beings?"
Whatever it takes, J.D.? To that we say, with the accompanying dismissive hand gesture, "Whatever."
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