FDR and the Fascists

Here is an interesting "Know Your Statists Challenge." Examine the following quotes. Then match them to their author. The available choices are Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and FDR. Can you spot the quote from FDR, or is it not all that simple?

I am

G. Stolyarov II

A. “..above all the unity of a nation’s spirit and will are worth far more than the freedom of the spirit and will of an individual… By this we understand only the individual’s capacity to make sacrifices for the community, for his fellow men.”

B. “The [] people must march forward as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline.”

C. “...moral law, binding together individual and the generations into a tradition and a mission, suppressing the instinct for a life enclosed within the brief round of pleasure in order to restore within duty a higher life free from the limits of time and space.”

Post 1

Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - 5:47pm

Ha ha. Three similar quotes from three similar men. I have no idea.

Post 2

Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - 8:42pm

Clearly the FDR quote is B. I think the other two lend themselves more towards bloody dictators. The middle one uses the "s" word like the others, but it feels very "new deal".

Post 3

Wednesday, March 3, 2004 - 10:16pm

I'm pretty sure the first is Hitler. I'll have to dig through my copy, but I think it was in The Ominous Parallels.

The second sounds like Franklin De-humanizer Roosevelt to me. But that's just guessing.

So I'd have to say the third is Mussolini.

Post 4

Thursday, March 4, 2004 - 10:00am

Yeah! The first quote was Hitler. Yay! I think I deserve two hundred and fifty million Atlaspoints for that! 8^P

I don't know about those other two, though.

J

Post 5

Thursday, March 4, 2004 - 2:01pm

Mr. Voigt and Mr. Johnson have indeed guessed correctly regarding the authors of the quotes. A is from Hitler, B-- from FDR, and C-- from Mussolini.

FDR was obsessed with Wilsonianism and the statist reign of terror and brutal suppression of dissent that occurred in the United States during the World War I era, thus seeking to model a peacetime statist regime similar to Wilson's "emergency" regulatory state.

Nevertheless, his reference to an entire people "marching forward as a loyal army" does invoke images of Nazi colums stomping through the steets of Paris.

I wonder what would have occurred in the United States had FDR survived World War II; by his ideological inclinations, I would expect his policies to even more closely mirror those of the Hitler whom FDR's drafted "loyal army" helped defeat.

I am
G. Stolyarov II

Post 6

Friday, March 5, 2004 - 2:15pm

Mr. Stolyarov:

You muse:

I wonder what would have occurred in the United States had FDR survived World War II; by his ideological inclinations, I would expect his policies to even more closely mirror those of the Hitler whom FDR's drafted "loyal army" helped defeat.

An interesting question. FDR was not a profound thinker. He was a back-slapper from the upper crust of American society. The noblesse oblige of his class fostered in FDR a paternalistic disposition towards the ordinary guy. Granted, paternalism is arrogant, but then it is not ill-motivated either. After all, FDR saw how his wealthy cohorts used government to obtain advantage and privilege, and his New Deal policies were intended to balance the scales for the little guy who lacked such access to power. FDR was misguided, not evil as Hitler, Mussolini, and Stalin were.

Nevertheless, his New Deal policies were fascistic, even if FDR did not comprehend them as such -- at least initially. He did back off the most extreme collectivist aspects of his New Deal program as the economy started to fail again in the late 'Thirties. So he was not an idealogue hell-bent on proving that a particular solution was the only solution to society's ills. Results mattered. So after the economy began recovering from the Fed's assault on the money supply only to start sputtering again under the weight of the New Deal's collectivism, he ratcheted back the New Deal.

The peculiarities of the wartime economy that followed masked the continued ill effects of his remaining New Deal policies. Ditto with America's triumph after World War II in which it accounted for half of the world's GNP. So, on the one hand, it would not have been apparent that the New Deal needed any further dismantlement. On the other, had FDR lived into the post-war era, he probably would have been content to leave a generally improving economy alone. Instead he probably would have focused on trying to fashion a new international order upon Wilsonian principles.

Now that would have been the real danger of a post-war FDR administration. Bad enough we got saddled with the UN, Bretton Woods, and the Marshall Plan. Imagine a U.S. foreign policy subordinated to the fantasy that Uncle Joe's Soviet Union could be trusted as partner in keeping world peace. Truman for all his faults domestically at least understood the Soviet threat.

Regards,
Citizen Rat a.k.a. Bill

Post 7

Friday, March 5, 2004 - 6:07pm

Citizen Rat a.k.a. Bill,

Your analysis of the matter is interesting, indeed. What strikes me as frightening about FDR's presidency, however, is the degree of fanaticism the government deliberately and actively elicited from the masses. Upon passage of the (unconstitutional) NIRA and its component National Recovery Administration, a rally of millions was orchestrated in New York, with one bootlicking man stating that he thought his marriage day was the high point of his life until he heard of the National Recovery Administration. Then about ten thousand schoolchildren were arranged into the shape of the NRA eagle. I was instantly reminded of images from the 1936 Berlin Olympics, in which Hitler orchestrated similar displays of leader/government worship.

My impression of FDR is that of a populist demagogue, not a genuine sympathizer with the "common man." FDR realized that brainwashing the less educated, less wealthy citizens (who may not have been exposed to the idea that initiation of force is immoral) was a key to gaining power of the sort he desired. He did so through similar propaganda schemes to those that were used by other statists of his time. Hitler and Stalin loved to be filmed petting little children (they were known in the propaganda pamflets as "Uncle Adolf" and "Grandfather Stalin"). In this spirit (and in that of his attention-mongerning cousin, TR), FDR stated once that a scene with his granddaughter was more important politically than an elaborate oratory.

I am
G. Stolyarov II

(Edited by G. Stolyarov II on 3/05, 6:08pm)

Post 8

Sunday, March 7, 2004 - 10:42am