by Webster Griffin Tarpley, Ph.D.
GEORGE ROMNEY BACKED PRO-FASCIST BUCHMANITE IDEOLOGY OF "MORAL RE-ARMAMENT"
George Romney was also deeply interested in the international movement known as Moral Rearmament, also known as Buchmanism, after its American founder, Dr. Frank Buchman.
Seldes describes Buchman as "a notorious fascist, who had endorsed Hitler many years ago, and who made an excellent living getting money from big business men to preach a 'philosophy' of appeasement to labor. Everyone was to cooperate, there were to be no strikes, the lion and lamb were to lie down together." Among strong backers of Buchman, Seldes lists the notoriously stingy Henry Ford, plus SS boss Heinrich Himmler, Rudolf Hess (number three in the Nazi hierarchy), the reactionary publisher Harry Chandler of the Los Angeles Times, William Randolph Hearst, Harvey Firestone, George Eastman, and other super-rich businessmen.
JEWISH WAR VETS CONDEMN MORAL RE-ARMAMENT AS FASCIST, ANTI-SEMITIC
The Jewish War Veterans of the United States, at their national convention, unanimously approved a resolution stating:"Whereas, Dr. Frank N. D. Buchman, founder of Moral Rearmament, also known as the Oxford Group Movement and Buchmanism, is also the author of the expression, 'Thank God for Hitler. ... ';
Whereas, Buchman has been exposed in the British Parliament;
Whereas, Dr. Guy Emery Shipler, leading Protestant editor, has exposed the Buchmanites as largely anti-Semitic;
Whereas, Dr. Buchman has cooperated with leading Buchmanites in all enemy nations, notably Himmler, the arch murderer in Nazi Germany, and the leading Japanese war makers;
Whereas, when the call to fight Nazi-ism came in both Britain and America the Buchmanites claimed exemption from the draft saying they were really a religious movement;
Whereas, both in Britain and America public officials have denounced Buchmanites as draft dodgers, and force them to register;
Whereas, in general, the Moral Rearmament movement may be described as fascist, subsidized by native Fascists, and with a long record of collaboration with Fascists the world over;
Therefore, be it resolved by the Jewish War Veterans of the United States, that they join in denouncing Buchmanism, the Oxford Movement and Moral Rearmament as Fascist in viewpoint, as un-American, and as a menace to the world's war against the common enemy of mankind." [297]
One wonders whether George Romney used his support for Moral Re-Armament and Buchmanism as a means of escaping the draft.
Buchman told a gathering in East Ham Town Hall, London, on May 29, 1938: "The Crisis is fundamentally a moral one. The nations must re-arm morally. Moral recovery is essentially the forerunner of economic recovery. Moral recovery creates not crisis but confidence and unity in every phase of life." These ideas were later the basis of the 1965-2000 musical spin-off operation called Up with People, which featured relentlessly banal singing productions by clean-living, straight-arrow young people. Up with People was prominent during the last years of the Cold War, after which it lost its corporate funding, and was designed to counter communism and socialism on the one hand, and the hippie subculture on the other. The internal life of the group was built around reactionary politics, with a definite cultist overtone involving arranged marriages. The affinity with Mormondom is quite evident.
Seldes sums up:" ... Moral Rearmament was pretty well discredited when its founder, Reverend Dr. Frank N. P. Buchman, was publicly quoted as thanking God for Hitler." [298]
GEORGE ROMNEY'S 1968 WHITE HOUSE BID BASED ON MORAL RE-ARMAMENT
George Romney's personal papers from the 1920s to 1973 are available for scholars in the Michigan Historical Collections in the Bentley Historical Library of the University of Michigan. According to the overview available online, about 15 boxes of George Romney's correspondence deal with either Moral Rearmament directly, or with Governor Romney's Governor's Ethical and Moral Panel which he set up in order to promote these ideas.
In his role as liberal Republican governor of Michigan, George Romney came under attack from labor unions, which tried to expose him with a pamphlet entitled "Who is the Real George Romney?" One of the themes was that Governor Romney deliberately misled voters, showing that he had talked on the stump of Michigan's need for 100,000 new jobs, but later prevaricated that he never promised to create these jobs. [299]
When George Romney ran for president in 1967-68, he assumed the profile of a stern Buchmanite moralist calling his fellow citizens to account for their multiple failings. He announced that the problems of the United States were due to rampant godlessness, and to public immorality. He lamented the decline of religious belief, and of virginity. He warned against a disintegration of the family which was robbing the American people of their wholesome traditional values. George Romney was at the same time very vague about the issues. He suggested that the solution to these problems was to be found in personal responsibility, and in traditional American principles. The remedy would have to start in the home. His campaign, he said, was designed to be an appeal to conscience that could begin a crusade. But he did say that the U.S. Constitution was divinely inspired -- the traditional Mormon line. Like father, like son.
Some concluded that George Romney felt that his actions were ordered by God, and that his opponents were necessarily the Devil's disciples. The New York Times noted in 1965 that Romney's critics saw him as a "sanctimonious, intractable, egotistical tyrant." [300]
"At a Romney campaign stop in San Francisco, a black teenager turned to her boyfriend and said 'That Romney, he's a pretty cool governor.' The answer was, 'He belongs to a church where you ain't got no soul.'" A black woman in Atlanta asked Romney how he could feel comfortable in the racist Mormon Church, but he was unable to reply.
The New York Times Magazine commented that "the impromptu speech in which Romney is most completely at ease is the inspirational appeal, with its stress on the divinely inspired nature of American government and the sure ability of every individual to achieve happiness and success through faith and good works." Like father, like son.