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Congressman Usher Burdick Of North Dakota And The "Ungodly Menace" Anti-United Nations Rhetoric, 1950-1958, Bernard Lemelin

Great Plains Quarterly

In the rare studies dealing with American post-World War II isolationism, the state of North Dakota always holds a special place, as it has acquired the reputation of having been "the nation's most isolationist state during [the] postwar decade."¹ To a large extent, this reputation can be ascribed to the attitude of some of its prominent members on Capitol Hill, such as Senators William Langer, who voted against the United Nations Charter in 1945, and his colleague Milton Young, an opponent of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949.² Representative Usher Burdick, who sat between 1949 and 1959, also …