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(Note: This is one of my earliest published articles. 1982 was the 100th Anniversary of the birth of the sainted Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in my opinion, one of the very worst of all US presidents. That year the media drove me bananas by singing his praise. Out of frustration I banged out this essay essay below. I sent it to Murray N. Rothbard, my hero and arguably the greatest libertarian thinker of all time. To my utter delight Rothbard, a longtime Roosevelt hater himself, ran it in his legendary newsletter LIBERTARIAN FORUM.)

FDR: The True Legacy

by

James W. Harris

(Published in The Libertarian Forum, May-June 1983.)

Franklin D. Roosevelt's 100th birthday has come and gone. For several days the media was filled with testimonies to his wisdom and achievements, and paeans to his greatness and warmth as a leader. Aged New Dealers tearily recalled personal experiences, and former presidents of various political spectrums spoke admiringly of his influence in their careers.

Behind all this hoopla and sentiment, though, lies concealed the actual truth of Roosevelt and the New Deal. Roosevelt was, in reality, one of the worst presidents this country has ever endured -- no mean achievement, considering the competition. In the three great areas of presidential concern --economics, civil liberties, and international affairs -- his record is utterly disastrous.

Furthermore, most of the serious problems that new threaten this country took strong root during Roosevelt's term. That he is remembered otherwise by the great majority is due to his personal charisma, the bias of many mainstream historians and newspeople, and perhaps the fact that we as a nation have yet to pay the full price for Roosevelt's action.

Economics: A Platform of Lies

Roosevelt took office on January 15th, 1932, on a platform of lies. His predecessor Herbert Hoover's wrong­headed attempts to legislate the country out of the Great Depression had failed miserably-not surprisingly, since government intervention in the economy was largely responsible for the depression in the first place. An increasingly desperate public elected Roosevelt to office on campaign pledges to balance the budget, slash the size of government, adhere to a gold standard, and remove government interference from the marketplace-the only policies that would have effectively restored a sound economy. He did none of this, of course. Instead, within weeks he embarked upon a spree of government spending and meddling in the economy the likes of which had never been remotely approached in this nation's history. Roosevelt was an economic illiterate who actually bragged that he had never read a book on economics. "We must lay hold of the fact that economic laws are not made by nature," he once said. "They are made by men." (The Boston Transcript astutely observed that "Two more glaring misstatements of truth could hardly have been packed into so little space.") This attitude made his administration easy prey for any variety of economic snake oil; and it is hardly surprising that they shortly embraced the then-new vogue of Keynesian economics, which gave academic sanction to their wholesale inflation and economic tinkerings.

Roosevelt created a dizzying procession of alphabetically named agencies empowered to "create jobs" by spending tax dollars, and he saddled the economy with a plethora of senseless and destructive regulations. Never before had the federal government dared to expand into so many areas of American life as it did under this new flood of legislation. The Roosevelt administration regarded its word as law, and considered constitutional restraints on the power of the executive branch as merely a nuisance. Typical of the administration's attitude was this quote from Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's right-hand man, speaking to the Advisory Committee of the National Youth Administration: "I want to assure you that we are not afraid of exploring anything within the law, and we have a lawyer who will declare anything you want to do legal."

This unparalled meddling led inevitably to a grossly distorted economy far removed from the actual needs and demands of the marketplace. Ill-considered and destructive federal loans, subsidies, wage and price controls, public works programs, taxation, pro-union legislation and the like wreaked havoc upon society. Needy Americans watched in mystery and horror as dairymen dumped milk out into the streets and the federal government paid farmers millions of dollars to destroy livestock and plow under crops -- actions somehow designed to produce prosperity by destroying goods. As much of the country's productive power was confiscated or restrained by the government, millions of jobs were destroyed and more and more businesses closed. The government's desperate, lurching actions often bordered on the comic -- or rather the tragi-comic. The poorly named National Recovery Administration attempted to prohibit newspaper boys from selling papers, and declared that, somehow in the interest of the economy, no burlesque production could feature more than four strips. In its infinite wisdom, the Supreme Court, in the case of Wickard vs. Filburn, upheld the government's contention that a man growing grain solely for his own use was unlawfully interfering with interstate commerce and therefore subject to penalties and regulation.

The millions who received relief assistance or make-work jobs (and one may judge the usefulness of many of these jobs by the fact that they are responsible for introducing the word "boondoggle" into the public vocabulary) were thankful for this concrete evidence of government concern. What they could not see, and failed to perceive, were the millions of needed and productive jobs that were destroyed by these same governments programs, the lower prices that failed to materialize for goods and services whose prices were artificially inflated by government policies, and the many businesses that failed or never came to existence because of government actions. This was the real, unseen cost of the various Roosevelt emergency programs, and it was a cost no society could bear and still prosper. Thus the relief roles continued to swell and the unemployment lines grew, despite one frantic Roosevelt effort after another.

Among the most shameful of the many shameful and foolish economic acts of the Roosevelt administration was its seizing of the nation's privately held gold and its subsequent repudiation of the gold redemption clause in all government and private debts. Not only was this dishonest (as Senator Gore of Oklahoma noted at the time, "Why, that's just plain stealing, isn't it, Mr. President?"), it also gave the Federal government almost complete control of the nation's money supply, setting the stage for the devaluation of the dollar and the massive inflationary policies the administration was to pursue.

AIl of this economic meddling and financial flim-flammery may be justified in the minds of some by one of the most faIlacious, yet often-heard, claims about Roosevelt: that "he got us out of the Depression." Actually, nothing could be further from the truth. Despite all the "pump­priming," the endless government programs, the currency manipulation, there were still twelve million unemployed at the end of 1937. Between 1937 and 1938, industrial production declined by over a third-the fastest decline in American history. The policies of the Roosevelt administration were a colossal, abject failure. What actually brought the American economy out of its doldrums was the huge boost given to manufacturing by the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, and the subsequent U. S. entry into World War II. This artificial growth in the economy was funded in large part by inflated dollars and huge federal deficits-debt that, in the main, has yet to be paid, and still burdens the U.S. economy.

Thus we have the true economic legacy of the Roosevelt administration: sanction for massive government interference in the economy, acceptance of foolish and destructive economic nostrums as standard policy, a private sector distorted for decades from the true needs of the marketplace, and a huge debt that still weighs heavily upon the backs of American taxpayers. And no discussion of Roosevelt's economic fiascos would be complete without at least a brief mention of Social Insecurity, that great government Ponzi scheme which Roosevelt signed into effect in 1935, and which has since mushroomed into a monstrous fraud that has drained capital for decades and become ever more oppressive. For this, too, we must thank FDR.

As terrible and foolish as the above-mentioned actions of the Roosevelt administration were – and in this limited space I have only touched on a few highlights -- we can only be thankful that not all of Roosevelt's proposed legislation passed. Among his failures were attempts to place a ceiling on salaries at $25,000 and a bill to limit top income to $12,000 and tax the upper brackets at 99%! It is frightening to even imagine what any of this would have done to the United States.

International Affairs

". . . I shall say it again, and again, and again. Your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars."

Roosevelt made this pledge while campaigning for reelection in October, 1940. Needless to say, he was no more faithful to this promise than he was to his earlier economic platform. In fact, shortly after a campaign filled with statements similar to the above, he embarked upon a program of deliberate harassment of the German and Japanese governments. He engineered intentional military confrontations with the German navy in September and October of 1941, and then lied to the American public about the nature of these confrontations-at a time when the vast majority of Americans favored a policy of strict neutrality.

Through a series of crippling trade restrictions, unreasonable diplomatic demands, threats, and hostile speeches, Roosevelt baited and goaded the Japanese government into a fiercely anti-United States position that led inexorably to war. And if some of the more radical revisionist historians' claims are true -- and these claims are becoming increasingly well documented -- Roosevelt not only deliberately led the United States into World War II, he actually had advance knowledge of the planned Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, yet refused to notify U. S. naval forces, realizing that the attack would inevitably cause the United States to enter the war. Whether one accepts such extreme claims or not, there can be no doubt that Roosevelt was fully aware that many of the aggressively anti-German and anti-Japanese acts he took in the months before Pearl Harbor carried a serious risk of provoking a declaration of war against the United States -- a war that as much as 85% of Americans wished desperately to avoid.

Roosevelt must share, along with the other combatants in World War II, blame for extending the horrors of warfare to civilian 'populations. Roosevelt joined with Churchill in the sanction of deliberate indiscriminate bombing of enemy civilian areas (a tactic, incidentally, first adopted by the British, in 1940; not the Germans, as commonly supposed.) This practice led to hundreds of thousands of utterly innocent, helpless, and uninvolved women, children, and civilian men on both sides being slaughtered in gruesome manner. The casualties incurred in these raids are virtually inconceivable. In Dresden, a single firebombing raid turned that city into a blazing hell where 100,000 to 150,000 civilians burned to death. In Tokyo, 185,000 were killed or injured as a result of one firebombing raid. The apotheosis of all this, of course, was Hiroshima and Nagasaki. As a result of the general acceptance of this tactic, mass slaughter of innocent non-combatants in now considered standard policy for future wars. To criticize these bombings is not, of course, to deny the terrible atrocities committed by the Axis forces; but brutality on one side, or by one's allies, do not give sanction to such acts by the other. There can be no excuse for the deliberate, planned murder of innocent non­combatant adults and children as a way of combating the actions of an aggressive state, especially when one considers how little effective say such people have in the actions of their governments.

Roosevelt might well have been able to avoid much of the vast carnage and destruction of the war had he been willing to negotiate a truce with the Axis powers. It is quite possible that Germany and Japan would have been willing to accept peace terms as early as middle or late 1943. Had such efforts been pursued, millions of lives might have been saved and much of the waste and destruction of the war averted. However, Roosevelt never wavered from his insistence on unconditional surrender, thus removing any chance for such a settlement.

Roosevelt's fondness for the Russian dictator, Stalin, led to some of the very worst consequences of World War II. During the war, Roosevelt deliberately allowed Russian spies to steal American uranium samples and atomic bomb research documents, ordering that nothing be done to prevent this. There is no way of calculating how much this aided the Soviets in their own attempts to create a nuclear bomb, but its effect was surely enormous. And after the war, Roosevelt made a series of concessions to Stalin that resulted in Russia acquiring dominance over 16 European and Asian nations with a combined population of over 725 million people. Thus, millions in Soviet slavery, and the thousands who have died in these areas since World War II at the hands of the Soviets, can thank Roosevelt for much of their predicament. Roosevelt also approved Stalin's insistence that all persons displaced by the war be forced to return to their home countries-a policy that all too obviously meant death camps and firing squads for' thousands. For this horror, too, Roosevelt must share blame.

These post-war concessions to Stalin were greatly responsible for the creation of the monstrous Soviet Union that we know today. The end result of Roosevelt's conduct of World War II, then was simply to replace the horror of Nazism with the horror of international state communism-at an unimaginable cost of life and property.

Civil Liberties

Finally, an examination of Roosevelt's actions in the area of civil liberties shows that in this, too, his record is dismal.

Roosevelt can take credit, at least, for ridding the country of the scourge of Prohibition. However, a few years later he introduced a new kind of prohibition: the use of marijuana was made illegal in 1937. The devastation that this nation has suffered as a result of this single act is incalculable. Roosevelt also greatly increased the power and jurisdiction of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, helping to create a national police force that routinely spied upon citizens engaged in peaceful, non-illegal activities.

As it inevitably does, the outbreak of war, and these accompanying increase in rabid nationalism, brought with it numerous violations of basic civil liberties-and as always, once the state assumes a power during wartime, it rarely retreats fully when peace resumes. Thus World War II was, as many have noted, a period of massive growth of state power in all areas of life.

One of the most outrageous and well documented domestic actions of the Roosevelt administration was the imprisonment of 112,000 Americans of Japanese ancestry in prison camps at the outbreak of U. S. entry into the war. This was truly a black page in the history of this country. Roosevelt can also take credit for instituting the first peacetime draft in this nation's history, and for supporting the 1940 Smith Act, which, among other things, specified fines and imprisonment for written or oral "treasonous" arguments and ,persuasions. The Smith Act was so broad in scope that, as The New York Times observed at its passing, "If strictly construed, several of the leading speakers at last week's Republican National Convention might be in danger."

Mention must also be made of Roosevelt's refusal, along with other Allied countries, to loosen immigration restrictions in order to allow refugee European Jews to enter this country. This left hundreds of thousands of Jews without refuge and doomed to fall into the hands of the Nazis.

Gone But Not Forgotten

These few examples of the ignorance and perfidy of the Roosevelt administration barely scratch the surface, but they give at least some idea of the true legacy of Franklin D. Roosevelt. And make no mistake about it, his influence h.. still very much with us today. Roosevelt bears much of the responsibility for the creation of today's political boundaries and centers of power; and his influence is apparent in the approach of this nation's leaders to foreign policy, economics, and social concerns-much to our misfortune.

Even more aggravating, the hand of his ghost is still reaching into our pockets. Not only are Americans still struggling under the burden of the enormous national debt he saddled us with, we are also being faced, now that his centennial is upon us, with pleas from politicians and assorted blind worshippers of Roosevelt for millions of tax dollars to be spent to create a memorial to the former president. A fine reply to this sort of nonsense was made by Inquiry in their January 11 and 25, 1982, issues:

“Our own suggestion (for FDR memorial) would be to bronze the $1 trillion national debt. Surely it would never have been possible without FDR.”

John Flynn, in the final pages of his brilliant, caustic book, The Roosevelt Myth, summarizes the truth about the Roosevelt administration in a few biting sentences:

"But go back through the years, read the speeches and platforms and judgments he made and consider them in the light of what he did. Look up the promises of thrift in public office, of balanced budgets and lower taxes, of disbanded bureaucrats, of honesty in government and of security for all. Read again the warnings he uttered to his own people against those wicked men who would seize upon a war in Europe to entangle them upon specious visions of false war abundance. Read the speeches he made never, never again to send our sons to fight in foreign wars. Look up the promises he made, not to our own people, but to the Chinese, to Poland, to Czechoslovakia, to the Baltic peoples in Lithuania and Latvia and Estonia, to the Jews out of one side of his mouth and to the Arabs out of the other side. He broke every promise. He betrayed all who trusted him. . .

“The figure of Roosevelt exhibited before the eyes of our people is a fiction. There was no such being as that noble, selfless, hard-headed, wise and farseeing combination of philosopher, philanthropist and warrior which has been fabricated out of pure propaganda and which a small collection of dangerous cliques in this country are using to advance their own evil ends."

SOURCES

William E. Leuchtenburg's Franklin D. Roosevelt and the New Deal (New York: Harper and Row, 1963) is an excellent source of general information about the pre-World War II Roosevelt administration, though it tends to be rather favorable and uncritical.

John T. Flynn's The Roosevelt Myth (New York: Devon-Adair, 1956) is a lively and highly critical attack on Roosevelt's years as president and the results of his terms.

For discussions of how government intervention in the economy was responsible for the Great Depression (and the subsequent years of economic chaos) see Murray Rothbard's America's Great Depression (Los Angeles: Nash Publishing, 1972) and Garet Garret and Murray Rothbard's The Great Depression and New Deal Monetary Policy (San Francisco: CATO Institute, 1980). For brief summaries of this position, see The Incredible Bread Machine by the Campus Studies Institute (San Diego: World Research, Inc., 1974), pp. 29-53, and John Hospers' Libertarianism (Los Angeles: Nash Publishing, 1971), pp. 330-344.

There are many revisionist history works concerning World War II, of varying quality. The definitive -- and exciting -- book on Pearl Harbor is John Toland's Infamy: Pearl Harbor and its Aftermath (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1982). The writings of James J. Martin are pithy, highly readable sources of little known information. Particularly relevant to the issues in this article are his essays "On the 'Defense' Origins of the New Imperialism," "The Bombing and Negotiated Peace Questions-In 1944," and "The Return of the 'War Crimes -- War Criminals Issue," from his Revisionist Viewpoints (Colorado: Ralph Myles, 1971); and the essays "The Consequences of World War Two to Great Britain: Twenty Years of Decline, 1939-1959" and "Pearl Harbor: Antecedents, Background, and Consequences," in his collection The Saga of Hog Island and Other Essays in Inconvenient History (Colorado: Ralph Myles, 1977). Martin's essays and footnotes serve as good introductions to other revisionist works.

Bruce Russett's No Clear and Present Danger (New York: Harper and Row, 1972) gives a brief yet concise discussion of Roosevelt's pre-Pearl Harbor manipulative actions against Germany and Japan. Russett also makes an excellent, though somewhat non-libertarian, argument against U. S. entry into World War II, and demonstrates how U. S. aims could have been achieved without military actions.

Roosevelt's friendship with Stalin, and the tragic international consequences, are discussed in Roosevelt's Road to Russia by George N. Crocker (Chicago: Henry Regency Co., 1959). Stalin's post-war repatriation program and the resulting mass slaughter is detailed in Operation Keelhaul by Julius Epstein (Conn: Devin Adair, 1973) and The Secret Betrayal by Nikolai Tolstoy (New York: Scribner and Sons, 1977).

 

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