J. William Fulbright

James William Fulbright was a well-known member of the United States Senate representing Arkansas. Fulbright was a Southern Democrat and a staunch multilateralist. He supported racial segregation, supported the creation of the United Nations and opposed the House Un-American Activities Committee. He is also remembered for his efforts to establish an international exchange program, which thereafter bore his name, the Fulbright Fellowship.

A Thousand Days:John F.Kennedy in the White House (1965)

Houghton Mifflin, Boston, ISBN-10:0618219277, ISBN-13:978-0618219278

• To give this activity even covert support is of a piece with the hypocrisy and cynicism for which the United States is constantly denouncing the Soviet Union in the United Nations and elsewhere. This point will not be lost on the rest of the world-nor on our own consciences.
  • Cap. X - Bay of Pigs: On March 29, 1961 Senator Fulbright gave Kennedy a memorandum opposing moral and legal grounds.

• We would be deliberately violating the fundamental obligations we assumed in the Act of Bogota establishing the Organization of American States.
  • Cap. X - Bay of Pigs: On March 31, 1961 Senator Fulbright gave to Secretary of State Dean Rusk a three-page memorandum strongly against the invasio).

• The operation was wildly out of proportion to the threat. It would compromise our moral position in the world and make it impossible for us to protest treaty violations by the Communists.
  • Cap. X - Bay of Pigs: On April 4, 1961 Senator Fulbright, at a meeting, verbally opposed plan.

The Arrogance of Power (1966)

Random House, ISBN 0-812-99262-8

• A pre-emptive war in 'defense' of freedom would surely destroy freedom, because one simply cannot engage in barbarous action without becoming a barbarian, because one cannot defend human values by calculated and unprovoked violence without doing mortal damage to the values one is trying to defend.
  • p. 154

• There are two Americas. One is the America of Lincoln and Adlai Stevenson; the other is the America of Teddy Roosevelt and the modern superpatriots. One is generous and humane, the other narrowly egotistical; one is self-critical, the other self-righteous; one is sensible, the other romantic; one is good-humored, the other solemn; one is inquiring, the other pontificating; one is moderate, the other filled with passionate intensity; one is judicious and the other arrogant in the use of great power.
  • p. 245