I get occasional emails from the America First Party, which I read because they are polite, although I am not particularly sympathetic to them. I share some of their views, but I am mightily put off by their constricted view of the rest of the world, or as they put it: "The central focus of the America First Party is to put America and all Americans First." I admit that part of their appeal to me was that although they had some connection to Pat Buchanan, they manage to be not racist and decidedly anti-establishment, which appeals to my inner rhetorical bomb thrower.

They are hardly establishment, so I would not have expected them to have establishment sympathizers. But it turns out they do. Case in point, Susan Thistlewaite, president of the very establishment Chicago Theological Seminary as well as a theology professor there, and a board member of the left wing and very establishment Center for American Progress. I would hardly expect her to be a sympathizer, but it turns out she is. Witness this comment in the Washington Post:

We have the money to pay for health care insurance for every child in America and instead we are choosing to spend it on making war and still more war. That is truly sick, morally sick, perhaps even fatally sick because when you can see the suffering so many children without access to adequate medical care and do nothing, you are lost.