Norman Thomas - Causes

Causes

Thomas was initially as outspoken in opposing the Second World War as he was with regard to the First World War. Upon returning from a European tour in 1937, he formed the Keep America Out of War Congress and spoke against war, thereby sharing a platform with the America First Committee. However, after the United States was attacked by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor, his stance changed to support for US involvement, and later wrote self-critically for having "overemphasized both the sense in which it was a continuance of World War I and the capacity of nonfascist Europe to resist the Nazis".

Thomas was one of the few public figures to oppose President Franklin Roosevelt's (D) internment of Japanese Americans following the attack on Pearl Harbor. Thomas accused the ACLU of "dereliction of duty" when the organization supported the internment. Thomas also campaigned against racial segregation, environmental depletion, anti-labor laws and practices, and in favor of opening the United States to Jewish victims of Nazi persecution in the 1930s.

Thomas was an early proponent of birth control. The birth-control advocate Margaret Sanger recruited him to write "Some Objections to Birth Control Considered" in Religious and Ethical Aspects of Birth Control, edited and published by Sanger in 1926. Thomas accused the Roman Catholic Church of hypocritical opinions on sex, such as requiring priests to be celibate and maintaining that lay people should only have sex to reproduce. "This doctrine of unrestricted procreation is strangely inconsistent on the lips of men who practice celibacy and preach continence."

Thomas also deplored the secular objection to birth control because it originated from "racial and national" group-think. "The white race, we are told, our own nation — whatever that nation may be — is endangered by practicing birth control. Birth control is something like disarmament — a good thing if effected by international agreement, but otherwise dangerous to us in both a military and economic sense. If we are not to be overwhelmed by the 'rising tide of color' we must breed against the world. If our nation is to survive, it must have more cannon and more babies as prospective food for the cannon."

Thomas was also very critical of Zionism and of Israel's policies towards the Arabs in the postwar years (especially after the Suez Crisis) and often collaborated with the American Council for Judaism.