Talk:The Plot Against America

message: The article seems to take it as a given that Lindbergh was "anti-semitic." This is certainly not born out by Lindberg in his private life or from family and other sources in his immediate circle. 
In his controversial Des Moines speech, and apparently no actual transcript is available, Lindberg criticised three groups he believed were leading America the push to bring America into the war. These were the Roosevelt administration, the British and the jews. There is no reason to believe he thought all jewish Americans were pro-war and his belief that jewish Americans were more pro-war than their non-jewish countryman may even have been true, although I have seen no opinion poll data to prove an argument one way or the other. 
A large number of jewish americans at the time probably had good reasons to seek American intervention, Lindberg sought to win them over to the anti-intervention camp. He believed that war would enflame ethnic and political tensions at home and that this could not be in the interest of minorities. 
Roth and other pro-interventionists, then and now, preferred to twist Lindberg's argument into a threat. This ignores thw well documented fact that many isolationists and pacifists were, ...perhaps misled by the experience of WW1, anticipating that World War Two, would bring depression, and perhaps even revolution and civil strife in it's wake. Looking at what happened globally after WW1 this was a not unreasonable expectation.
The article fails to pin Roth for ignoring the reality of a massive pro-war campaign by the both the Roosevelt administration and the British Operations (including BSC http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Security_Coordination ) to bring the US into the war. These operatives were certainly keen to exploit any opportunities that came their way (including Lindbergh's gaffe?) and were not above dirty tricks (discussed at http://www.independent.org/publications/tir/article.asp?issueID=25&articleID=285 ).  Without context it gives less than half the story. In Roth's fantasy world there are no pro-war forces, only bigoted anti-war politicians.
At the same time, other comments from the time from FDR that could just as easily be interpreted as anti-semitic are forgotten.
For example, here is FDR quoted in JOSEPH E. PERSICO's "ROOSEVELT'S SECRET WAR. FDR AND WORLD WAR II ESPIONAGE." Random House NY 2002
 
Quote from Page 219-220
 
"After the North African landings, succeeded, the President went to Casablanca and, in a meeting with the French resident general at Rabat, delivered an astonishing opinion. "The number of Jews engaged in the practice of the professions- law, medicine etc.- should be limited to the percentage that the Jewish population in North Africa bears to the whole of the North African population, " he urged. "This plan would further eliminate the specific and understandable complaints which the Germans bore towards the Jews in Germany, namely, that while they represented a small part of the population, over fifty percent of the lawyers, doctors, school teachers, college professors, etc, in Germany were Jews." He had echoed the rationale that the Nazis had carried to barbaric limits."    (Italics added)
 
Persico's cited source for this is:
p.308
Francis L. Loewenheim, Harold D. Langley, and Manfred Jonas, eds.,
ROOSEVELT AND CHURCHILL: THEIR SECRET WARTIME CORRESPONDENCE
New York: Saturday Review Press / Dutton 1975
In fact Lindbergh's Des Moines speech sounds tame in comparison. (see http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/lindbergh/filmmore/reference/interview/anne06.html and http://www.charleslindbergh.com/pdf/092441_lindy.pdf )
 
Of course this does not "prove" FDR was anti-semitic or the opposite. His opinions didn't seem to stop him appointing Felix Frankfurter to the SCOTUS, who was the third jewish Supreme Court justice (Wilson appointed Louis Brandeis and Hoover appointed Benjamin Cardozo before him - source: http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-jewish-american-political-figures). Similarly Lindberg's opinions didn't stop him from having a close personal and business relationships with jewish friends like aviation pioneer Harry Guggenheim. He found Henry Ford's anti-semitic views distasteful.
The whole game of retroactively applying the standards and tabous of modern politically correctness to historical figures is playing a stacked deck to begin with. In FDR and Lindberg's day language the modern era's sensitivity to ethnic group labels was unknown. Lindberg's desire to keep America out of war was wholly honourable, even if in historical retrospect we may consider it ill advised. 
The above quote is useful in defending Lindberg from modern deck stackers. Can you imagine what Roth would say if Lindbergh had said this? He has no qualms in charging Lindberg and Borah of promoting pogroms without the slightest evidence, ..and engages in some anti-Catholic bigotry of his own. Does Roth want to run some pogroms of his own? His political fantasy is just a travesty of history.
THe above section should be deleted.  It does not appear to serve a Wikipedia purpose.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.17.206.234 (talk) 23:51, 28 May 2014 (UTC)
thread_title: Anonymous analysis

message: I removed a criticism section that was simply a list of historical events not in the novel at least one of which occurs before the events of the novel. This is clearly POV. Any criticism needs to be sourced and attributed to a serious publication. --dm (talk) 12:16, 18 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Reverting edits of anonymous editor 24.48.182.26

message: This article would benefit from a plot summary.  If anyone has read the book can you please write one? Zombie Hunter Smurf (talk) 13:26, 28 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Plot Summary 

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thread_title: Assessment comment

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: I plan on adding some new content to the article and making other edits in the coming week. I plan on making a new Analysis section to help the article better fulfill Wikipedia's guidelines on the sections of a book article. The section will cover some of the analysis of the novel's themes that I have found in my research. I also plan on restructuring the Lead so that it references this new section and all of the other sections of the article. I hope to shorten the list of historical figures down to the figures most important to the story and turn that section into a Characters section that briefly describes the fictional main characters as well. Lastly, I plan on making some minor revisions to the Plot section to improve its clarity and presentation. An annotated bibliography of the sources I gathered for these changes is available here. SebastianG1002 (talk) 08:10, 7 December 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Proposed Edits