New Deal @ Work

Failure to consult primary sources and documents frequently results in a distorted view of not only American history but of America’s historical figures. “Look at all the history textbooks,” Hillsdale College historian Terrence Moore said on February 5, 2010. “What do they say about FDR?”

“He was pragmatic, he believed in what works.” Moore labeled this a “code.” Indeed, the Center for American Progress is sponsoring an upcoming seminar on “Doing what works.”

To get a clear idea of what progressives such as FDR thought of as working, Moore urged attendees at the First Principles breakfast meeting sponsored by Hillsdale to look at Roosevelt’s 1944 State of the Union message in which he urged Congress to pass a “second bill of rights.”

“This Republic had its beginning, and grew to its present strength, under the protection of certain inalienable political rights—among them the right of free speech, free press, free worship, trial by jury, freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures,” President Roosevelt said in his 1944 State of the Union message. “They were our rights to life and liberty.”

“We have come to a clear realization of the fact, however, that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence.” FDR then went on to give a quote without an attribution: “Necessitous men are not free men.”

“People who are hungry, people who are (and) out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made,” FDR explained. “In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident.”

“We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all—regardless of station, or race or creed.” By the way, FDR had no economics degree, unlike Ronald Reagan, who proposed a “Taxpayer bill of rights” that was arguably more in sync with what the Founders had in mind.

FDR’s “second Bill of Rights” included:

• “The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries, or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
• “The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
• “The right of (every) farmers to raise and sell their (his) products at a return which will give them (him) and their (his) families (family) a decent living;
• “The right of every business man, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
• “The right of every family to a decent home;
• “The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
• “The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, and sickness, and accident and unemployment;
• “And finally, the right to a good education.”

The final irony is that FDR goes on to tag his critics with the f word, as in fascist, even though he himself admitted in his first term that many New Deal programs bore a strong resemblance to those of Nazi Germany.

“One of the great American industrialists of our day—a man who has rendered yeoman service to his country in this crisis—recently emphasized the grave dangers of ‘rightist reaction’ in this Nation,” FDR stated. “Any clear-thinking business men share that (his) concern.”

“Indeed, if such reaction should develop—if history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called ‘normalcy’ of the 1920’s—then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of fascism here at home.”

“What we were doing in this country were some of the things that were being done in Russia and even some of the things that were being done under Hitler in Germany,” the squire of Hyde Park privately acknowledged. “But we were doing them in an orderly way.”

“Ah yes,” Liberal Fascism author Jonah Goldberg observes, “the great defense against the charge of fascism: We’re more orderly!”

Here’s a trivia test. Goldberg helpfully includes the Nazi party platform as an appendix to his book: See if you can find FDR’s second bill of rights in it.

Malcolm A. Kline is the Executive Director of Accuracy in Academia.