FDR2

[Linda Reed--PCC West Campus CSC <lreed@west.cscwc.pima.edu>]

They were eager
for America to get into a war if it came. But they felt the people
had to be drawn along a little at a time. They
wanted the President to frighten the people a little as a starter.
But he increased the recommended dose. The
reaction was so violent that they felt it put back by at least six
months the purpose they had in mind YD rousing
America to a warlike mood. 

However, following the Panay
incident, Mr. Hull began to churn up as much war spirit as possible
and through the radio and the movies
frantic efforts were made to whip up the anger of the American people.

There never has been in American politics a religion so expansively
and luminously righteous as the New Deal.
>From the beginning to the end it was constant in one heroic enterprise
YD war to the death upon evil, upon greed,
poverty and oppression. It had, in fact, one monstrous enemy against
which it tilted its shining spear seven
days a week and that was SIN. If you criticized the New Deal, you were
for sin. 

There is no vast sum of money in holding
office. The riches are in the perquisites, the graft, legal and illegal,
often collected by men who do not hold
office but who do business with those who do. Some Democratic chieftains
of the newer stripe began to drift
into vice rackets of various sorts.

It was this Tammany at its lowest level which surrendered to the New
Deal and became finally the political tool
of Mr. Roosevelt in New ork. From an oldYDfashioned political district
machine interested in jobs and
patronage, living on the public payroll and on various auxiliary grafts,
some times giving a reasonably good
physical administration of the city government, some times a pretty
bad one, some times very corrupt, some
times reasonably honest, it became a quasiYDcriminal organization flying
the banner of the Free World and the
Free Man. 

Cermak fought Roosevelt's nomination at Chicago, and went to Miami
in February, 1933 to make his peace with
Roosevelt where the bullet intended for Roosevelt killed him.
{Who fired the shot? - sog}

d before the House Committee Investigating UnYDAmerican Activities.
Frey, in a
presentation lasting several days, laid before the Committee a completely
documented account of the
penetration of the CIO by the Communist Party. He gave the names of
280 organizers in CIO unions 

It was the Communists who were engineering the sitYDdown strikes and
who instigated and organized the
Lansing Holiday when a mob of 15,000 blockaded the state capitol and
2,000 of them, armed with clubs, were
ordered to march on the university and bring part of it back with them.
At the Herald Tribune forum in New
ork City about this time the President delivered one of the bitterest
attacks he had ever made on a government
official. It was against Martin Dies for investigating these Communist
influences in the sitYDdown strikes. 

Sidney Hillman would become not only its
dominating mind but Roosevelt's closest adviser in the labor movement
and in the end, though not himself a
Democrat, the most powerful man in the Democratic party. 

Sidney Hillman28 was born in Zargare, Lithuania, then part of Russia,
in 1887. He arrived here in 1907 after a
brief sojourn in England.
it is entirely probable that Hillman, while not a Communist, was at
all times
sympathetic to the Communist philosophy. He was a revolutionist 

It is certain that the Russian revolution set off a very vigorous flame
in Hillman's bosom. In 1922 he hurried
over to Russia with a plan. He had organized here what he called the
RussianYDAmerican Industrial Corporation
with himself as president. Its aim was to operate the "textile and
clothing industry of Russia." Hillman's
corporation sold to labor organizations at $10 a share a quarter of
a million dollars of stock. The circular letter of
the corporation soliciting stock sales among labor unions said: "It
is our paramount moral obligation to help
struggling Russia get on her feet." Hillman went to Russia to sell
the idea to Lenin. He cabled back from
Moscow: "Signed contract guarantees investment and minimum 8 per cent
dividend. Also banking contract
permitting to take charge of delivery of money at lowest rate. Make
immediate arrangements for transmission of
money. Had long conference with Lenin who guaranteed Soviet support."

Hillman was never an outright exponent of Communist objectives. He
was, however, deeply sympathetic to the
Communist cause in Russia and to the extreme leftYDwing ideal in America,
but he was an extremely practical man
who never moved upon any trench that he did not think could be taken.
He never pressed his personal
philosophy into his union and his political activities any further
than practical considerations made wise. 

He was a resolute man who shrank from no instrument that could be used
in his plans. He was a cocksure,
selfYDopinionated man and he was a bitter man, relentless in his hatreds.
He had perhaps one of the best minds
in the labor movement YD sharp, ceaselessly active and richly stored
with the history and philosophy of the labor
struggle and of revolutionary movements in general. When Lewis and
Dubinsky at a later date would leave the
CIO, Hillman would be supreme and would reveal somewhat more clearly
the deep roots of his revolutionary
yearnings that had been smothered for a while under the necessities
of practical leadership. 

There is no doubt that Hillman was one of the first labor leaders to
use the goon as part of his enforcement
machinery.

Why should LaGuardia want to scuttle the investigation of a notorious
murder? Why should the President of
the United States refuse to deliver Lepke to Dewey and thus save him
from going to the chair? Why save the
life of a man convicted as the leader of a murder syndicate? Who was
the leading politician supposed to be
involved? Who was the nationally known labor leader? 

The murder for which Lepke was convicted and wanted for execution by
Dewey and shielded by Roosevelt
was, as we have seen, that of Joseph Rosen. Rosen was a trucking contractor
who was hauling to nonYDunion
factories in other states for finishing, clothing cut under union conditions
in New ork. He was put out of
business by Lepke in the interest of a local of Hillman's Amalgamated
and Rosen was threatening to go to the
district attorney and tell how this was done.

But for some reason there rose to the surface at this
time a lawless element, some of them criminal, some of them lawless
in the excess of their revolutionary zeal,
some of them just plain grafters. And these elements constituted the
most powerful section of those groups
that were supporting the President. This was in no sense the Army of
the Lord, as it was so widely advertised. 

He wanted
ambassadors from their own countries to tell them that other governments
were "looking to Roosevelt as the
savior of the world," as he put it himself. Farley admits this was
done and says it was a mistake and that he said
so at the time. 
With the rise of the New Deal, however, a vast
army of persons appeared on the payroll of the federal government and
because some of the payrolls were
flexible and had no connection whatever with the Civil Service, it
was a simple matter for the government to use
this ancient but now enormously enhanced tool to control votes in particular
localities. 

The story of the third term campaign which we shall now see is the
story of dealing with all these
groups, and the feasibility of doing so successfully was enormously
enhanced by the fact that in September,
1939, just about the time the active work for the coming convention
was under way, Hitler marched into Poland.
{Just happens to fit right in with Planned Government/Economy - sog}

On July 17, 1940, Franklin D. Roosevelt was nominated for the presidency
for the third time. The prologue to
this event was supplied by Europe. 

When the convention met, Willkie
seemed the most unlikely of these candidates, but his strength grew.
Dewey was eliminated on the fourth ballot
and on the sixth, in a contest between Taft and Willkie, the latter
was nominated in one of the most amazing
upsets in convention history. 

The Democrats believed that Willkie would make a formidable opponent.
But from the moment he was
nominated the result of the election could no longer be in doubt. Charles
McNary, Republican leader in the
Senate, was nominated for the vice presidency. The joining of these
two men YD Willkie and McNary YD was so
impossible, they constituted so incongruous a pair that before the
campaign ended McNary seriously
considered withdrawing from the race. 

There was a moment in that convention when one voice was lifted in
solemn warning, the full meaning of which
was utterly lost upon the ears of the delegates. Former President Hoover,
in a carefully prepared address, talked
about the "weakening of the structure of liberty in our nation." He
talked of Europe's hundredYDyear struggle for
liberty and then how Europe in less than 20 years surrendered freedom
for bondage. This was not due to
Communism or fascism. These were the effects. "Liberty," he said, "had
been weakened long before the
dictators rose." Then he named the cause: 

"In every single case before the rise of totalitarian governments there
has been a period dominated by
economic planners. Each of these nations had an era under starryYDeyed
men who believed that they could plan
and force the economic life of the people. They believed that was the
way to correct abuse or to meet
emergencies in systems of free enterprise. They exalted the State as
the solvent of all economic problems. 

These men
shifted the relation of government to free enterprise from that of
umpire to controller. Directly or indirectly
they politically controlled credit, prices, production or industry,
farmer and laborer. They devalued,
pumpYDprimed and deflated. They controlled private business by government
competition, by regulation and by
taxes. They met every failure with demands for more and more power
and control ... 

societies oneYDfourth socialist, threeYDfourths
capitalist, administered by socialist ministries winding the chains
of bureaucratic planning around the strong
limbs of private enterprise. 

Mr. Hoover then undertook to describe the progress of this baleful
idea here in a series of headlines: Vast
Powers to President; Vast Extension of Bureaucracy; Supreme Court Decides
Against New Deal; Attack on
Supreme Court; Court Loaded with Totalitarian Liberals; Congress Surrenders
Power of Purse by Blank Checks
to President; Will of Legislators Weakened by Patronage and Pie; Attacks
on Business Stirring Class Hate;
Pressure Groups Stimulated; Men's Rights Disregarded by Boards and
Investigations; Resentment at Free
Opposition; Attempts to Discredit Free Press. 

e State Planned and Managed Capitalism

Roosevelt executed a political maneuver that beyond doubt caused great
embarrassment to the Republicans. He announced the appointment of Henry
L. Stimson, who had been
secretary of State under President Hoover, as Secretary of War, and
Frank Knox, candidate for vice president
with Landon in 1936, as Secretary of the Navy. 

He was laying his plans cunningly to have himself "drafted." The
movement began some time in 1939 and the leaders in it were Ed Kelly
of Chicago and Frank Hague of New
Jersey.

The debacle was the plan Roosevelt was engineering to
literally put the party out of business by inducing its leaders not
to contest his election. Commentators like
Dorothy Thompson and H.V. Kaltenborn and other proYDwar writers were
calling on the Republicans not to
contest the election. And Roosevelt schemed to induce the presidential
candidates of the party in 1936 to
become Secretaries of War and Navy respectively in his cabinet.

Wallace
He has been pictured as a vague
and impractical mystic, half scientist, half philosopher, with other
ingredients that approach the pictures in the
comic strips of the professor with the butterfly net. 

Wallace brought men like Tugwell into the Department as his UnderYDSecretary
of Agriculture

To understand what made this thoroughly dangerous man tick it is necessary
to look at another widely
advertised side of his nature YD his interest in mysticism. 

Some time in the 'twenties, a gentleman by the name of Nicholas Constantin
Roerich appeared on the American
scene. Roerich was a highly selfYDadvertised great philosopher on the
Eastern Asiatic model. He gathered
around himself a collection of admirers and disciples who addressed
him as their "Guru" YD a spiritual and
religious person or teacher. He dispensed to them a philosophic hash
compounded of pseudoYDogism and
other Oriental occult teachings that certain superior beings are commissioned
to guide the affairs of mankind.
Roerich wrote a long string of books YD "In Himalaya," "Fiery Stronghold,"
"Gates Into the Future," "The Art of
Asia," "Flame in Chalice," "Realm of Light." 

Logvan and Logdomor
were the names by which Horch was known in this mystic circle. 

stories in English language newspapers in China indicated that
Roerich applied to the 15th U.S. Infantry in Tientsin for rifles and
ammunition and that the expedition had
mysterious purposes. 

He cried out in ecstasy in a speech: "The people's revolution is on
the march and the devil and all his angels
cannot prevail against it. They cannot prevail because on the side
of the people is the Lord." Now he was
fighting not George Peek and Hugh Johnson and Harold Ickes. He was
fighting the devil and the bad angels.
And he had on his side the lord, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the good
angels YD the Democrats and the CIO and,
in good time, he would be joined by Joe Stalin and Glen Taylor, the
singing Senator from Idaho. He would
begin making world blueprints YD filling all the continents with TVAs,
globeYDcircling sixYDlane highways, world
AAAs, World Recovery Administrations, World Parliaments and International
Policemen. 

This was the man chosen for Vice President by Roosevelt who had warned
that his health was not too good
and who forced this strange bird upon his party in the face of a storm
of angry protest. 

. One of Roosevelt's early
acts in foreign affairs was to recognize Soviet Russia. Three months
later YD February 28, 1934 YD Elliott went into a
deal with Anthony Fokker to sell the Soviet government 50 military
planes for a price which would leave a
commission of half a million dollars for Elliott and the same for Fokker

It is estimated that she has received during the 15 years
since she entered the White House at least three million dollars YD
which is not very bad for a lady who had no
earning power whatever before she moved her desk into the Executive
Mansion, a lady whose husband spent a
good deal of time denouncing the greed of men who made less for directing
some of the greatest enterprises in
America.17 

Nevertheless, in spite of these defiances of all the amenities, all
the laws imposed by decency, all the traditional
proprieties and all that body of rules which highYDminded people impose
upon themselves, the Roosevelt family,
through a carefully cultivated propaganda technique not unlike that
which is applied to the sale of quack
medicines, imposed upon the American people the belief that they were
probably the most highYDminded beings
that ever lived in the White House. Behind this curtain of moral grandeur
they were able to carry on in the field
of public policy the most incredible programs which our people, unaccustomed
to this sort of thing, accepted
because they believed these plans came out of the minds of very noble
and righteous beings. 

Why did the President permit his wife to carry on in this fantastic
manner and why did the Democratic leaders
allow her to do it without protest? ou may be sure that whenever you
behold a phenomenon of this character
there is a reason for it. The reason for it in this case was that Mrs.
Roosevelt was performing an important
service to her husband's political plans.

There were never enough people in the country belonging to the more
or less orthodox
Democratic fold to elect Mr. Roosevelt. It was necessary for him to
get the support of groups outside this
Democratic fold. 

In the election of 1944,
Governor Dewey got nearly half a million votes more on the Republican
ticket than Roosevelt got on the
Democratic ticket, but Roosevelt was the candidate of two other parties
YD the American Labor Party of the
Communists and the Liberal Party which was a collection of parlor pinks,
technocrats, pious fascists and
American nonYDStalinist Communists. These two parties gave him over
800,000 votes and it was this that made
up his majority in New ork. The same thing was true in Illinois, in
New Jersey, Connecticut, Massachusetts,
and other large industrial states, although the fact was not so obvious
because the radicals operated inside the
Democratic party where they could not be so easily identified. 

It was in this field that Mrs. Roosevelt performed her indispensable
services to the President. It was she who
fraternized with the Reds and the pinks, with the RedYDfascists and
the technocrats and the crackpot fringe
generally, gave them a sense of association with the White House, invited
their leaders and their pets to the
White House and to her apartment in New ork, went to their meetings,
endorsed their numerous front
organizations

Finally in 1899 when she was 15 years old she was sent to a school
called Allenwood, outside of London. It
was a French school kept by an old pedagogist named Madame Souvestre
who has taught Eleanor's aunt in
Paris before the FrancoYDPrussian war 

After Roosevelt was stricken with infantile paralysis in 1921, she
suddenly found herself for the first time in her
life in a position approaching power on her own feet. While she, with
her rather stern sense of formal
responsibility, made every effort to bring about her husband's recovery,
she also saw the necessity of keeping
alive his interests in public affairs and his contacts and she set
herself about that job. She had already fallen
into acquaintance with leftYDwing labor agitators and she brought these
people as frequently as she could to her
imprisoned husband where they proceeded to work upon a mind practically
empty so far as labor and economic
problems were concerned. The moment a person of Mrs. Roosevelt's type
exposes herself to these infections,
the word gets around radical circles, whose denizens are quick to see
the possibilities in an instrument of this
kind. During Roosevelt's term in Albany she was extensively cultivated
by these groups, so that when she
went to Washington in 1933 they had easy and friendly access to her.

I think it must be said for her that at this point YD in 1933 YD the
country, including its public men, were not too well
informed about the peculiar perils involved in Red propaganda activities.
The Reds seized upon three or four
very popular American democratic cults YD (1) freedom of speech, (2)
the defense of the downtrodden laborer YD
the forgotten man, (3) the succor of the poor. They also began to penetrate
the colleges in both the teaching
staffs and the student bodies through their various front organizations
dominated by Reds. The first attempt to
expose these designs was made by the House Committee on UnYDAmerican
Activities. The attacks upon Martin
Dies and the Dies Committee, as it was known, were engineered and carried
out almost entirely by the
Communist Party. But the Communist Party itself was powerless to do
anything effective and it used some of
the most powerful and prominent persons in the country to do its dirty
work
{Does this  not also apply to all other organizations/religions? -
sog}

oung Communist League and a group of workers including William W.
Hinckley
(Roosevelt/Cremac - Reagan/Brady -- 2 Hinkleys? - sog}

. Here
was the wife of the President of the United States, a separate department
of the government, using the White
House as a lobbying ground for a crowd of young Commies and Pinkies
against a committee of Congress.19 

At this very moment, Joe Lash was living in the
White House as Mrs. Roosevelt's guest, while Joe Cadden and Abbot Simon
were occasional boarders there.
. Joe Lash had been the leader of the
movement in the American Student Union. Lash worked in collaboration
with the Communist Party. After this,
the American Student Union became a mere tool of the Red organization
in America. 

the assembled
young philosophers gave the President and Mrs. Roosevelt a hearty Bronx
cheer. And now, of course, Mrs.
Roosevelt felt they were Communists, although she had rejected all
of the overwhelming evidence before that.
Booing the President suddenly turned them into Communists. 

. A member of Congress, and
ardent New Dealer, visited the White House one morning. While there
he saw Abbot Simon of the national
board of the American outh Congress, come out of one of the bedrooms.
He couldn't believe his eyes. He
asked the White House usher if he was mistaken. The usher assured him
he was not, that this little Commie tool
had been occupying that room for two weeks and sleeping in the bed
Lincoln had slept in. 

These are probably not more than 80,000 or 90,000 in number, if that.
But there are
several hundred thousand, perhaps half a million, men and women in
America, but chiefly in New ork and the
large eastern industrial states, who string along with the Communists
without being members of the party.

The President's father was a sixth generation Roosevelt who played
out decently
the role of a Hudson River squire. He was a dull, formal and respectable
person moving very narrowly within
the orbit set by custom for such a man. By 1900, however, the name
Roosevelt had become a good one for
promotional purposeyYYYY".Y~Y~^Y~S<OYYYYY~`'""Yz--~s>oY~Y~ Y-YYY~Y|Y~Y~cY~Y.Y*YDRY~YxYqY}Y~'YfY~YyY~Y~Yx
Y/Y,Y+Y~Y(AAAAYYYYEYEEIIIIDNOOOOYxOUUUYY~YaYY YaYYYYY
YYY	Y
!YYY~Y$YY"YoYYvYmYY#YY
ypYs,
because it had become illustrious by reason of Theodore Roosevelt who
belonged to a
very different branch of the family. 

On Franklin D. Roosevelt's mother's side there was certainly nothing
distinguished in the blood. Her father was
a crusty old China Sea trader and opium smuggler. The family had much
of its fortune in soft coal mines 

Roosevelt was born and grew up in the midst of a baronial estate, surrounded
by numerous acres and many
servants and hemmed about with an elaborate seclusion. What sort of
boy he was we do not know, save that
he was carefully guarded from other boys and grew up without that kind
of boyhood association usual in
America.

The only books that really
interested him were books on the Navy, particularly old books such
as appeal to a collector. He did amass a
considerable library in this field. It is to be assumed he read many
of them. But the history of the Navy and its
battles is not the history of the United States or of Europe or of
their tremendous and complex political and
social movements. 

They never elected anybody. They offered the nomination to young Roosevelt
and he took it reluctantly. But this was an auspicious year for the
New ork Democrats. 

In 1912, with the Republicans split in the great TaftYDRoosevelt feud,
the Democrats swept the country and
Roosevelt, though in bed throughout the campaign with typhoid, was
reelected State Senator. When Wilson
entered the White House and someone suggested it would be a good idea
to have a Democratic Roosevelt in
the administration, Franklin Roosevelt was offered the post of Assistant
Secretary of the Navy,

When the First World War ended he was
36. Apparently his service in the Department was satisfactory, though
I have never seen anywhere any
authentic evidence about it one way or the other.

Actually he was not very well known and had absolutely no record of
his own to justify the
nomination. But luck dogged his heels. 
{Luck/good fortune/auscpicious circumstances/ad infinitum - sog}

Then in August, 1921 Roosevelt was stricken with infantile paralysis,
which put an end to his career in politics
for the next seven years. 

During his Harvard days, shortly after his marriage, he and his bride
took a trip to Europe YD a regular tourist's
wandering from city to city. He had not been in Europe since save twice
when he went as Assistant Secretary
during the war on a naval inspection tour for about a month, and at
the end of the war on another tour in
connection with the demobilization of naval forces in Europe.

et somehow his promotion managers whipped up the myth that he
possessed some kind of intimate and close knowledge of

Life up to this had been
a long succession of gifts from Lady Luck, whose attendance he had
come to think of as a settled and
dependable affair. And she had failed him. The visitation of the terrible
sickness had perhaps effaced from his
character the assumption of superior fortune that made him hold his
head so high

In his efforts at recovery he had gone to Warm
Springs, Ga., and spent several years there. 
But Warm Springs became the subject of one of the most curious deals
in the nomination of a man to high
office
he said "one of the reasons he could not stand for governor was because
he had put a great deal
of his personal fortune into Warm Springs, and he felt he should stay
and manage the enterprise so that it
would eventually become a paying proposition."

"Confirming
my telephone message I wish much that I might consider the possibility
of running for governor." Roosevelt
then gave two reasons why he could not: (1) "our own record in New
ork is so clear that you will carry the
state no matter who is nominated" and (2) "My doctors are definite
that the continued improvement in my
condition is dependent on avoidance of a cold climate" and "daily exercise
in Warm Springs during the winter
months." He added: "As I am only 46 years old I owe it to my family
and myself to give the present constant
improvement a chance to continue ... I must therefore with great regret
confirm my decision not to accept the
nomination."31 
{Roosevelt trying to 'back out' of his role as schill... -sog}
Mrs. Roosevelt was in Rochester as a member of the Women's Committee
for Al Smith. So were Ed Flynn and
John J. Raskob, recently named chairman of the National Democratic
Committee to manage Al Smith's campaign
for the presidency.
{...but Elanor is in deep. - sog}

But Flynn told Smith that he believed Roosevelt could be induced to
accept, that his health
treatments were not the real reason for his refusal, that the real
reason was the financial obligations he had
outstanding at Warm Springs, that he was facing a heavy personal loss
but that if this could be gotten out of
the way he might yield. Smith told Flynn to tell Roosevelt they would
take care of his financial problem. "I don't
know how the hell we can do it, but we'll do it some way," he said.32
Flynn suggested that the problem be put
up to Raskob. This was done. Smith asked Raskob to telephone Roosevelt.
Raskob thought it over but decided
to talk to Mrs. Roosevelt about it. 

He asked Mrs. Roosevelt for
her frank opinion. She replied that if her husband were to say his
health would permit him to run then Raskob
could rely on it and that the real reason was the financial problem
at Warm Springs. Everybody got the
impression that Mrs. Roosevelt wanted her husband to run. 

Raskob then asked him to say frankly
what they amounted to. Roosevelt replied: "Two hundred and fifty thousand
dollars." Raskob then brought the
whole matter to a head by saying: "All right. our nomination is important
in New ork State. I am in this fight
to get rid of Prohibition which I believe to be a terrible social curse
and I think the only way to do it is to elect
Al Smith. I am willing therefore to underwrite the whole sum of $250,000.
ou can take the nomination and
forget about these obligations. ou can have a fundYDraising effort
and if it falls short of the total I will make up
the difference." Roosevelt was a little flabbergasted at the offer.
{Elanor was not? - sog}

Roosevelt was built by propaganda, before the war on a small scale
and after the war upon an incredible scale,
into a wholly fictitious character YD a great magnanimous lover of the
world, a mighty statesman before whom
lesser rulers bowed in humility, a great thinker, a great orator YD
one of the greatest in history YD an enemy of evil
in all its forms. 

In his first administration someone was responsible for a very effective
job of selling Roosevelt
to the public. 

But over and above this some cunning techniques were industriously
used to
enhance the picture. For instance, Mrs. Roosevelt took over the job
of buttering the press and radio reporters
and commentators. They were hailed up to Hyde Park for hamburger and
hot dog picnics. They went swimming
in the pool with the Great Man. They were invited to the White House.
And, not to be overlooked, it was the
simplest thing in the world for them to find jobs in the New Deal for
the members of their families. 

*** sog ***
The most powerful propaganda agencies yet conceived
by mankind are the radio and the moving pictures. Practically all of
the radio networks and all of the moving
picture companies moved into the great task of pouring upon the minds
of the American people daily YD indeed
hourly, ceaselessly YD the story of the greatest American who ever lived,
breathing fire and destruction against
his critics who were effectually silenced, while filling the pockets
of the people with billions of dollars of war
money. The radio was busy not only with commentators and news reporters,
but with crooners, actors, screen
stars, soap opera, comedians, fan dancers, monologists, putting over
on the American mind not only the
greatness of our Leader but the infamy of his critics, the nobility
of his glamorous objectives and the sinister
nature of the scurvy plots of his political enemies. The people were
sold first the proposition that Franklin D.
Roosevelt was the only man who could keep us out of war; second that
he was the only man who could fight
successfully the war which he alone could keep us out of; and finally
that he was the only man who was
capable of facing such leaders as Churchill and Stalin on equal terms
and above all the only man who could
cope successfully with the ruthless Stalin in the arrangements for
the postYDwar world. 
*** sog ***

The ordinary man did not realize that Hitler and Mussolini were made
to seem as brave, as strong, as wise and
noble to the people of Germany and Italy as Roosevelt was seen here.
Hitler was not pictured to the people of
Germany as he was presented here. He was exhibited in noble proportions
and with most of those heroic
virtues which were attributed to Roosevelt here and to Mussolini in
Italy and, of course, to Stalin in Russia. I
do not compare Roosevelt to Hitler. I merely insist that the picture
of Roosevelt sold to our people and which
still lingers upon the screen of their imaginations was an utterly
false picture, was the work of false propaganda
and that, among the evils against which America must protect herself
one of the most destructive is the evil of
modern propaganda techniques applied to the problem of government.

{Eugenics was in vogue here, as well as Germany, and would have formed
the
science of the future *immediately* if Hitler had not been linked to
its 'final
outcome', giving it a bad name. - sog}

There
was really nothing complex about Roosevelt. He was of a wellYDknown
type found in every city and state in
political life. He is the wellYDborn, rich gentleman with a taste for
public life, its importance and honors, who finds
for himself a post in the most corrupt political machines, utters in
campaigns and interviews the most pious
platitudes about public virtue while getting his own dividends out
of public corruption one way or another. 

e NRA Act
provided an appropriation of $3,300,000,000 which the President was
given to be spent for relief and recovery at
his own discretion. He now had in his hands a sum of money equal to
as much as the government had spent in
ten years outside the ordinary expenses of government. He decided how
it should be spent and where. If a
congressman or senator wanted an appropriation for his district, instead
of introducing a bill in Congress, he
went up to the White House with his hat in his hands and asked the
President for it. All over the country,
states, cities, counties, business organizations, institutions of all
sorts wanted projects of all kinds. Instead of
going to Congress they went to the President. After that congressmen
had to play along with the President or
they got very little or nothing for their districts. This was the secret
of the President's power, but it was also a
tremendous blow at a very fundamental principle of our government which
is designed to preserve the
independence of the Congress from the Executive. 

In the same way, blankYDcheck legislation led to the subservience of
Congress and the rise of the bureaucracy.
Under our traditional system, Congress alone could pass laws. The executive
bureau merely enforced the law.
But now Congress began to pass laws that created large bureaus and
empowered those bureaus to make
"regulations" or "directives" within a wide area of authority. Under
a law like that the bureau became a
quasiYDlegislative body authorized by Congress to make regulations which
had the effect of law. This practice
grew until Washington was filled with a vast array of bureaus that
were making laws, enforcing them and
actually interpreting them through courts set up within the bureaus,
literally abolishing on a large scale within
that area the distinction between executive, legislative and judicial
processes. 

Many of these bureaus were never even authorized by Congress. Even
the Comptroller General of the United
States, who audits the government's accounts, declared he had never
heard of some of them. They were
created by a new method which Roosevelt exploited. Instead of asking
Congress to pass a law, set up a bureau
and appropriate money, the President merely named a group of men who
were authorized by him to organize a
corporation under the laws of the states. This done, there was a government
corporation instead of a bureau
and a group of corporation directors instead of commissioners. The
Reconstruction Finance Corporation was
given a blanket appropriation by Congress and authority to borrow money.
It borrowed twenty or more billions.
The RFC would buy the stock of a new corporation and lend it money
YD ten, fifty or a hundred million, billions in
some cases. Thus the President bypassed Congress and the Constitution
and engaged in activities as
completely unconstitutional as the imagination can conceive, such as
operating business enterprises in Mexico
and Canada. By means of the blankYDcheck appropriations, the blankYDcheck
legislation and the government
corporation, there is no power forbidden to the government by the Constitution
which it cannot successfully
seize. And if these techniques are permitted to continue the Constitution
will be destroyed and our system of
government changed utterly without a vote of the people or any amendment
to the Constitution. Roosevelt by
his various hit or miss experiments all designed to get power into
his hands, prepared a perfect blueprint for
some future dictator of the modern school to usurp without very much
difficulty all the powers he needs to
operate a firstYDclass despotism in America. 

Having changed the Neutrality Act, given a million army rifles to England
and increased the army to 1,500,000,
the President took the next step YD he handed over to Britain 50 destroyers
belonging to the American navy
without authority of Congress. Those men and women who formed the various
committees to induce this
country to go into the war approved these moves. They were honest about
it and logical, because they were
saying openly we should give every aid, even at the risk of war. But
the President was saying he was opposed
to going to war and that he was doing these things to stay out of war.
I do not here criticize his doing these
things. I criticize the reason he gave, which was the very opposite
of the truth. At the time he did these things,
83 per cent of the people month after month were registering their
opposition to getting in the war. 

After the 1940 election, in fact early in 1941, the President's next
decision was the LendYDLease proposal. Senator
Burton K. Wheeler declared that this was a measure to enable the President
to fight an undeclared war on
Germany.

The truth is that the President had made up his mind to go into the
war as early as October, 1940. To believe
differently is to write him, our naval chiefs of staff and all our
high military and naval officers down as fools. 

The answer must be that Roosevelt lied to the people for their own
good. And if
Roosevelt had the right to do this, to whom is the right denied? At
what point are we to cease to demand that
our leaders deal honestly and truthfully with us? 

There must be a thorough philosophical inquiry into the limits within
which this convenient discursive weapon
can be used. It has been generally supposed that our diplomats are
free to lie to foreign diplomats, also that in
war and on the way into war we are free to lie ad libitum to the enemy.
The right of the President YD and maybe
certain lesser dignitaries YD to lie to our own people and, perhaps,
in certain defined situations, to each other
ought to be explored and settled. Thus it may be used impartially by
the representatives of all parties. It does
not seem fair to limit the right of lying only to good and truthful
men. 
(TruthMonger Lives!!! - sog}

President and the
Prime Minister issued what they called a Joint Declaration. The most
important parts of that document were the
first three paragraphs: 

"First, their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or otherwise.

"Second, they desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord
with the freely expressed desires of the
peoples concerned. 

"Third, they respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of
government under which they will live and
they wish to see sovereign rights and selfYDgovernment restored to those
who have been forcibly deprived of
them."