Congress in 1935 enacted the first of several neutrality laws that barred the United States from sending arms, munitions, credits, and most other forms of support to any of the belligerents in the growing wars in Europe and Asia...as Germany gobbled up countries in central Europe and Japan invaded China, Roosevelt believed (as he said in his 1937 "Quarantine" speech) that there was no escape from the growing global wars "through mere isolation or neutrality," and that only "positive endeavors" could preserve peace.

But American isolationism remained steadfast, and Roosevelt's weak attempts to loosen neutrality restrictions to aid countries that opposed Germany and Japan failed.

It was only after Hitler overran the Low Countries and chased the British out of Dunkirk that Roosevelt decided to take decisive action. But here again he was severely constrained. First FDR named two prominent Republicans as secretaries of the Army and the Navy. With some bipartisan cover, he pushed the envelope.

One of Roosevelt' most controversial actions was his decision in September 1940 to give Great Britain fifty overaged destroyers in exchange for military bases in the Western Hemisphere. Churchill had been begging for the destroyers since May, arguing they they were critical to prevent Germans from invading Great Britain. Roosevelt hesitated. It was a presidential election year in which isolationism still dominated and any move toward war could bring political harm...

...Finally, Roosevelt believed the neutrality laws forbade such a transfer in any event. "[A] step of that kind could not be taken except with the specific authorization of Congress, and I am not certain that it would be wise for that suggestion to be made to the Congress at the moment," Roosevelt wrote a disappointed Churchill in May 1940.

By August 1940 the British position had become so perilous that Roosevelt instructed his Attorney General to come up with some theory that would justify doing an end-run around Congress. It wasn't exactly the 'Unitary Executive' theory, but it definitely involved a novel interpretation of the separation of powers.

My question for Stephens is: might the country, and Congress, not have been more congenial to helping the British if they been warned of the danger at Columbia University by none other than The Fuhrer himself?

It's hard to see how the country could not have benefited from such a lesson.

Stephens wonders why Hitler might have been invited in 1939 and references the justification made for Ahmadinejad's appearance:

What, then, would be the purpose of such an invitation? Columbia's president, Lee Bollinger, offered a clue in a statement issued last week: "Columbia, as a community dedicated to learning and scholarship, is committed to confronting ideas--to understand the world as it is and as it might be," he said. "Necessarily, on occasion this will bring us into contact with beliefs many, most or even all of us will find offensive and even odious. We trust our community, including our students, to be fully capable of dealing with these occasions, through dialogue and reason."

But there is nothing in that statement that precludes the students (and the nation) from concluding that the 'occasion' calls for more than dialogue and reason. They could assess that a threat exists and, in the theoretical case of Hitler, they surely would have made such an assessment.

In the current case...the case of Ahmadinejad, it is far more likely that the students, and the nation, will conclude the opposite. And that is why so many advocates of war with Iran are so passionately opposed to listening to their president's ideas.