Dr. Seuss - Political Views

Political Views

Geisel was a liberal Democrat and a supporter of President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal. His early political cartoons show a passionate opposition to fascism, and he urged to oppose it, both before and after the entry of the United States into World War II. His cartoons tended to regard the fear of communism as overstated, finding the greater threat in the Dies Committee and those who threatened to cut the US's "life line" to Stalin and the USSR, the ones carrying "our war load".

Geisel supported the Japanese American internment during World War II. His treatment of the Japanese and of Japanese Americans, between whom he often failed to differentiate, has struck many readers as a moral blind spot. On the issue of the Japanese, he is quoted as saying:

But right now, when the Japs are planting their hatchets in our skulls, it seems like a hell of a time for us to smile and warble: "Brothers!" It is a rather flabby battle cry. If we want to win, we’ve got to kill Japs, whether it depresses John Haynes Holmes or not. We can get palsy-walsy afterward with those that are left. —Theodor Geisel, quoted in Dr. Seuss Goes to War by Richard H. Minear

After the war, though, Geisel overcame his feelings of animosity, using his book Horton Hears a Who! (1954) as an allegory for the Hiroshima bombing and the American post-war occupation of Japan, as well as dedicating the book to a Japanese friend.

In 1948, after living and working in Hollywood for years, Geisel moved to La Jolla, California. It is said that when he went to register to vote in La Jolla, some Republican friends called him over to where they were registering voters, but Geisel said, "You, my friends, are over there, but I am going over here ."

Shortly before the end of the 1972–1974 Watergate scandal, in which United States president Richard Nixon resigned, Geisel converted a copy of one of his famous children's books into a polemic by replacing the name of the main character everywhere it occurred. "Richard M. Nixon, Will You Please Go Now!" was published in major newspapers through the column of his friend Art Buchwald.

The line "A person's a person, no matter how small!!" from Horton Hears a Who! has grown, despite the objections of Geisel's widow, into widespread use on the pro-life side of the issue. While Geisel preferred to let his work speak for itself, in 1986 when the line first started being used by the pro-life movement, Geisel, who would speak out to protect his characters from exploitation, demanded a retraction and received one. In its original context, it is unrelated to abortion issues.