Flag Pins in American History

This is too good to be true, but it's on the internets, so it must be. From The American Conservative blog (a real conservative magazine, and thus anti-Bush), linked by Sullivan, a quote in Bill Kaufmann's 2008 book "Ain't my America:"

American flag lapel pins had been distributed to members before the president spoke to Congress on April 2, 1917, requesting a declaration of war. It took a certain obdurate courage to refuse to wear the colors; Senator La Follette was among the refusers, as was the Mississippi senator Vardaman. (Wilson had called for “stern repression” of disloyalty in his speech of April 2–a Prussian formulation that ought to have set American throats to gagging.)

It's possible the story is true but it sounds almost mythic. I don't have Kaufmann's book and I don't know his ultimate source, but since it's a new book, it's not inconceivable that he is trying to apply current events to earlier times.

Why it sounds too good to be true: the match up between Wilson & La Follette is too much like Bush/Hillary and Obama. Bush's foreign policy is Wilsonian (and for the record, despite his affiliiation with Princeton, I think he was a bad president and a bad person) and La Follette was the head of the Progressive party (and the Hair Club for Men, evidently). He's considered one of the best Senators in history, a real thinker and patriot, who was beacon of sanity in the insane 1920s.

A myth, to my hoax-busting ears, always sounds *too* neat and pat. Let's see how this plays out.