The Ku Klux Klan was the Terrorist Arm of the Democrat Party

By Frances Rice

History shows that the Ku Klux Klan was the terrorist arm of the Democrat Party.  This ugly fact about the Democrat Party is detailed in the book, A Short History of Reconstruction, (Harper & Row Publishers, Inc., 1990) by Dr. Eric Foner, the renown liberal historian who is the DeWitt Clinton Professor of History at Columbia University.  As a further testament to his impeccable credentials, Professor Foner is only the second person to serve as president of the three major professional organizations: the Organization of American Historians, American Historical Association, and Society of American Historians.
Democrats in the last century did not hide their connections to the Ku Klux Klan.  Georgia-born Democrat Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan wrote on page 21 of the September 1928 edition of the Klan’s “The Kourier Magazine”: “I have never voted for any man who was not a regular Democrat.  My father … never voted for any man who was not a Democrat.  My grandfather was …the head of the Ku Klux Klan in reconstruction days….  My great-grandfather was a life-long Democrat….  My great-great-grandfather was…one of the founders of the Democratic party.”

Dr. Foner in his book explores the history of the origins of Ku Klux Klan and provides a chilling account of the atrocities committed by Democrats against Republicans, black and white.

On page 146 of his book, Professor Foner wrote: “Founded in 1866 as a Tennessee social club, the Ku Klux Klan spread into nearly every Southern state, launching a ‘reign of terror‘ against Republican leaders black and white.”  Page 184 of his book contains the definitive statements:  “In effect, the Klan was a military force serving the interests of the Democratic party, the planter class, and all those who desired the restoration of white supremacy.  It aimed to destroy the Republican party’s infrastructure, undermine the Reconstruction state, reestablish control of the black labor force, and restore racial subordination in every aspect of Southern life.”

Heartbreaking are Professor Foner’s recitations of the horrific acts of terror inflicted by Democrats on black and white Republicans. Recounted on pages 184-185 of his book is one such act of terror:  “Jack Dupree, a victim of a particularly brutal murder in Monroe County, Mississippi - assailants cut his throat and disemboweled him, all within sight of his wife, who had just given birth to twins - was ‘president of a republican club‘ and known as a man who ‘would speak his mind.’”

“White gangs roamed New Orleans, intimidating blacks and breaking up Republican meetings,“ wrote Dr. Foner on page 146 of his book.  On page 186, he wrote:  “An even more extensive ‘reign of terror’ engulfed Jackson, a plantation county in Florida’s panhandle. ‘That is where Santa has his seat,‘ remarked a black clergyman; all told over 150 persons were killed, among them black leaders and Jewish merchant Samuel Fleischman, resented for his Republican views and for dealing fairly with black customers.“

Frances Rice is the Chairman of the National Black Republican Association and may be contacted at:  http://www.nbra.info/

National Black Republican Association

Black comedian Paul Mooney Makes Anti-Semitic Remark about Michael Richards on CNN

Any mention of racial stereotypes is routinely denounced by the Left as "racist", so let us follow that rule here:

On the November 21st morning edition of Newsroom, CNN's Kyra Phillips interviewed Paul Mooney,a popular black comedian and activist, and Roland Martin, a Chicago radio personality, about Michael Richards' ("Kramer's") now notorious racist outburst. During the interview Paul Mooney referenced Kramer's appearance as "Jewish" and was not challenged.

CNN publishes transcripts, but removed this version after two hours and edited the remark out of the original interview when they re-ran it. CNN also removed the link to this original transcript on the official CNN Transcript page. They did not delete the actual page, and it remained available through the Google cache. So all references to this racist remark by a known black activist and comedian who specializes in racial humor were removed. I find it hard to believe that CNN would actually care enough to monkey-around with the transcripts but stranger things have happened. Below is given the relevant segment from the original transcript in case Google also loses it.

PHILLIPS: Roland, your reaction?

MARTIN: Kyra, Paul is correct when he says it was a weak apology. First and foremost, the "Letterman" show was the wrong forum for that kind of apology. He was not going to get the kind of questioning that he needed. If you heard the audience, they were laughing. They weren't quite sure whether to laugh at what he was saying, to be serious. And it was Seinfeld who had to say, hey, guys this isn't funny.

Not only that. Another piece is when you really examine what he said, he not only said 50 years ago we'd have you hanging upside down from a tree. Well, guess what, 50 years ago, Michael Richards would have been in some oven in Germany being baked because he's also Jewish. He also said that in his comments, that I'm a white man. I can go get the cops and have you arrested. And so, his comments went beyond that.

But Kyra, we're also making a very big mistake. He has said -- he said, he was heckled. In fact, the people who were there say he was not heckled. There was a large group that was talking. He was angered by them talking. Then after he addressed them, then a couple of the guys said, hey, my boy doesn't think you're funny. Darryl Pitts, who is from Chicago, who was on CNN on Sunday, he gave an eye- witness account. And so, trying to say, well he was being heckled when in fact he wasn't. He was angered because they were talking.

PHILLIPS: All right. Just to step aside for a second, I want to ask you about the 'N' word for a minute. Paul, I remember ...

(CROSSTALK)

MOONEY: Can I say something before you say this. Excuse me. He's not a Jew. He's not a Jew.

MARTIN: OK.

He's either Catholic or atheist or something. He's not that. And as far as blacks and Jews are concerned, I don't think that two men in a burning house have time to argue. That's my point.

MARTIN: I agree.

MOONEY: So he's not a Jew. So people make that mistake. He may look it, but looks are deceiving. Bush looks like he's sane, but anyway go ahead, ask what ...

PHILLIPS All right. I knew Paul had to get something in there. I was waiting for the ...

MOONEY: Of course.

Whether or not Richards is in fact Jewish, there is of course a history of bigoted remarks about "Jewish features" and "looking Jewish" (big noses etc.). The Nazis used such ideas frequently.

There was no chastising Mooney for his racist remark and no one seemed horrified, as they would if it were said about "black features." If Mooney were white, by now an intern would be reviewing hours of his old comedy shows to find inappropriate remarks that support the view that he is an anti-Semite. An American Republican or white man would have ended up with his own CNN segment the next day trying to explain what he meant and promising that he really isn't bigoted.

The "revised" interview transcript is here

BOOK REVIEW of Conservative comebacks to Liberal Lies -- by Gregg Jackson

Review by "Ken", an Australian middle of the road reader

I could not find a more concise description of what you will find in this book than the one written on the cover…“Issue by issue responses to the most common claims of the left…”

Unfortunately, the title sets the general tone of the work. Mr Jackson is very fond of emotive language and uses it liberally when his passion gets the better of his analytical processes. To assume that the Liberal point of view is necessarily “lies”, is to visit an unjustified assumption on many well-meaning and honest Liberals. I can accept that Liberal views may be misguided or ill informed but, really Mr Jackson, lies? This implies some conspiratorial agenda on the part of Liberals or paranoia on the part of Mr Jackson. The abortion issue, for instance, is deeply emotional, but is it really necessary to substitute the word “abortion” with the phrase “…stick surgical scissors in a baby’s skull, suck out her brains with a vacuum, dismember her and throw her away in a garbage can…” unless you are resorting to emotional coercion rather than calm rational argument.

I am also unsure of Mr Jackson’s right to hijack the term “conservative” to encompass his own beliefs. I don’t believe that all conservatives are gun-toting, Christian zealots, intent on enforcing their wish to interfere with people’s lives through legislation.

Despite these and similar lapses that tend to provoke the reader rather than enlighten him, this book is invaluable in pulling together information and statistics to support Mr Jackson’s point of view. The conscientious reader, who likes to confirm what he reads, will be led into a bewildering realm of lies, damned lies and statistics when he attempts to verify the information offered as fact. In pursuing the truth, the researcher will be inundated with claims and counterclaims from academic, empirical and self-serving sources until his head spins.

To take one example: I tried to verify the stated statistics on gun laws (that violent crime increases as gun laws become more draconian) only to find that the definitions of violent crime were far from uniform, and murder numbers were confusing because accidental deaths were not included in some statistics and underreporting and deliberate manipulation was rife even from official police reports.

The following extract from -- Recorded Crime, Australia, 1998. Australian Bureau of Statistics, Jun 1999, is typical of refutations of “the gun lobby” point of view.

Assault and Robbery
Those who claim that Australia suffered a "crime wave" as a result of new gun laws often cite as evidence unrelated figures for common assault or sexual assault (no weapon) and armed robbery (any weapon). In fact less than one in five Australian armed robberies involve a firearm.
"Although armed robberies increased by nearly 20%, the number of armed robberies involving a firearm decreased to a six-year low."

Firearm-Related Homicide
"There was a decrease of almost 30% in the number of homicides by firearms from 1997 to 1998."
-- Australian Crime - Facts and Figures 1999. Australian Institute of Criminology. Canberra, Oct 1999
This report shows that as gun ownership has been progressively restricted since 1915, Australia's firearm homicide rate per 100,000 population has declined to almost half its 85-year average.
Homicide by Any Method
The overall rate of homicide in Australia has also dropped to its lowest point since 1989 (National Homicide Monitoring Program, 1997-98 data). It remains one-fourth the homicide rate in the USA.
The Institute of Criminology report Australian Crime - Facts and Figures 1999 includes 1998 homicide data showing "a 9% decrease from the rate in 1997." This is the period in which most of the country's new gun laws came into force.
Gun-Related Death by Any Cause
The Australian Bureau of Statistics counts all injury deaths, whether or not they are crime-related. The most recently available ABS figures show a total of 437 firearm-related deaths (homicide, suicide and unintentional) for 1997. This is the lowest number for 18 years.
The Australian rate of gun death per 100,000 population remains one-fifth that of the United States.
"We have observed a decline in firearm-related death rates (essentially in firearm-related suicides) in most jurisdictions in Australia. We have also seen a declining trend in the percentage of robberies involving the use of firearms in Australia."
-- Mouzos, J. Firearm-related Violence: The Impact of the Nationwide Agreement on Firearms. Trends & Issues in Crime & Criminal Justice No. 116. Australian Institute of Criminology. Canberra, May 1999; 6

Enough has already been written with regard to the pros and cons of this subject so it is probably prudent to leave further comment to your own research. I strongly suggest that you do the same for most of the arguments in the loosely alphabetically categorised “Lies” listed under ‘table of contents’

To be fair, solutions are outside the scope of the book which merely purports to respond to commonly held beliefs, which it does admirably by invoking statistics, information and reasoned argument. In itself this is an honourable undertaking, but when the author takes as his points of reference The Bible, The American Constitution, The Bill of Rights and The Declaration of Independence, the arguments lose some relevance if these documents are not sacrosanct to the reader.

While I enjoyed the reasoned arguments throughout this book (and some had me thinking very hard) I found myself being worried by the thought of a society run by ideas which sometimes appeared to fly in the face of common sense. What it did highlight for me, however, was just how difficult it is in this information age to gather valid, unbiased data on which to base a decision or an opinion.

This book succeeds in being very thought-provoking. It is well organised and the information is easily accessed through well laid out and self-explanatory chapters. It is by no means a comprehensive conservative philosophy but neither does it claim to be. It is exactly what the cover says it is.

Effect of breast feeding on intelligence in children: prospective study, sibling pairs analysis, and meta-analysis

    Authors:

    Geoff Der, statistician (Geoff@msoc.mrc.gla.ac.uk),
    G David Batty, Wellcome fellow,
    Ian J Deary, professor of differential psychology2

Abstract

Objective To assess the importance of maternal intelligence, and the effect of controlling for it and other important confounders, in the link between breast feeding and children's intelligence.

Design Examination of the effect of breast feeding on cognitive ability and the impact of a range of potential confounders, in particular maternal IQ, within a national database. Additional analyses compared pairs of siblings from the sample who were and were not breast fed. The results are considered in the context of other studies that have also controlled for parental intelligence via meta-analysis.

Setting 1979 US national longitudinal survey of youth.

Subjects Data on 5475 children, the offspring of 3161 mothers in the longitudinal survey.

Main outcome measure IQ in children measured by Peabody individual achievement test.

Results The mother's IQ was more highly predictive of breastfeeding status than were her race, education, age, poverty status, smoking, the home environment, or the child's birth weight or birth order. One standard deviation advantage in maternal IQ more than doubled the odds of breast feeding. Before adjustment, breast feeding was associated with an increase of around 4 points in mental ability. Adjustment for maternal intelligence accounted for most of this effect. When fully adjusted for a range of relevant confounders, the effect was small (0.52) and non-significant (95% confidence interval −0.19 to 1.23). The results of the sibling comparisons and meta-analysis corroborated these findings.

Conclusions Breast feeding has little or no effect on intelligence in children. While breast feeding has many advantages for the child and mother, enhancement of the child's intelligence is unlikely to be among them.

BMJ 2006; 333 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1136/bmj.38978.699583.55

Book review of Only In America An autobiography by Paul Oreffice with Tom Hanlon

(Review by "Ken")

This is an extraordinary life by an intriguing man, written in a page-turning style that that never flags. I could easily reiterate the comments on the back cover of the edition that I read, and laud an obviously gifted communicator and self-confident man of amazing fortitude and foresight -- but who am I in the exalted company of ex presidents and other luminaries? I thought it might be more interesting to look more closely at the book’s title.

While reading of Mr Oreffice’s privileged background and family support, I couldn’t help recalling the story of an interview with a self-made American millionaire who said he had arrived in New York with all of his possessions in a small brown paper bag. When a perspicacious journalist asked what was in that bag, he was told ‘1.2 million dollars in cash and bonds.’

Mr Oreffice came to America with many resources that helped him to achieve what he did; not least of which were an extraordinary set of talents, an extended family support structure and a circle of influential Italian acquaintances of his well-connected father. None of that, however, should be allowed to detract from his achievements and physical and mental acuity.

Mr Oreffice’s generosity in attributing his rise in the world to “America” is admirable and humble but every page of his book tells me that this is an extraordinary man who would have succeeded whatever environment he found himself in. Certainly the political and social atmosphere of America allowed him to express himself with impunity but it is not the only country in the world to offer those conditions.

I am an unqualified admirer of Mr Oreffice’s philosophy, drive and enthusiasm but I think those qualities were genetically imprinted by equally talented parents and a set of life circumstances that imbued him with special qualities.

It is interesting to examine the strange dichotomy that is American democracy; on the one hand citizens are encouraged to conform and to not ‘rock the boat’, whilst the real entrepreneurs do exactly the opposite by having no regard whatsoever for conventions or existing traditions.

Significantly, it is not until two thirds of the way through the book that Mr Oreffice finally lands in America to take a university course, by which time his personal philosophy had been well and truly formed by his life experiences. His father was able to start his own business wherever he went and use his entrepreneurial skills to build factories and provide a decent standard of living for his family. He could not have done this without money and nepotistic support.

So, back to the title; I believe that it is misleading in the extreme and suggests that, not only does America possess some magical property not found elsewhere but that this degree of success is available to everyone. In the highly competitive capitalistic economy that exists in the western world, to succeed requires intelligence, personality, dedication, talent and a degree of luck. Given these parameters anyone can make it in America (and, indeed, pretty well anywhere else in the world.)

As an autobiographical document, “Only in America” is an excellent read. It does trot out Carnegie-style platitudes but they still have validity in context, and good advice is always good advice. I found the early years in Italy far more interesting reading than the American years. Watching the war develop from within Europe allowed a different perspective for me and confirmed my distaste for sheep-like patriotism. Mr Oreffice’s distaste for unions and civil servants lifted my faith in humanity and my only hope is that America listens.

WAR OF THE WORLDS: Planet Civil Libertarian versus Earth

The article below by Australian lawyer James McConvill argues that the major threat to our security comes from an increasingly loud civil libertarian movement

American journalist H. L. Mencken once said: "The average man does not want to be free. He simply wants to be safe." Mencken's quote pretty much sums up the attitude of the average Australian. The average Australian cares little about fluffy concepts such as human rights, particularly the rights of others. Give average Joe the choice between a Bill of Rights and a plasma TV, and I think that you would have to place an order for a large amount of TV's.

In Australia, if you are wanting to win friends and influence people, you do it by appealing to their hip pocket, not to their moral conscience. Yet, if you are unfortunate enough to flick through the editorial pages of the Fairfax broadsheets (particularly Melbourne's Age newspaper), or turn on the ABC, you would think that I've lost touch with reality.

Well, in fact, it is the soft lefts in the media, and their civil libertarian friends in the social sciences faculties across the country, who left reality behind long ago. The result is a growing disconnect between the well-groomed elites and the hard-working average Australian.

The majority of Australians simply have little time for the misconceived bile stemming from the remote civil libertarians. That is why the circulation numbers of the Fairfax broadsheets are laughable. Apart from the precious academic and Camberwell housewives, nobody has time for the idealist dribble pumped out on their editorial pages day after day.

On Planet Civil Libertarian, every street corner has a shiny cafe with skinny lattes flowing like water. With people having very little to do in their day, with no responsibilities, and a constant hunger for blueberry muffins, everybody mingles around crying over coffee about the plight of the poor "refugees" coming for a visit, about how "Jihad" Jack cannot slip out for a smoothie at 1 a.m. due to the dreadful control order imposed on him from the bad people in Canberra, and then after a buzz of caffeine run over to the nearby garden park to jump for joy that Victoria will soon have a Bill of Rights.

It is not expensive to get to Planet Civil Libertarian. One simply needs to cruise down to the local newsagent to pick up a copy of The Age or The Sydney Morning Herald, open up the editorial pages and get a fix. If the newsagent is too far away, turn on 774 ABC.

Back on Planet Earth, things operate a little differently. While the cafes are springing up, people don't have pictures of Papuan warriors and bomb-buddies of Osama Bin Laden pinned up above their bed. Instead of drooling over a pretentious Bill of Rights document, most people actually get excited about such things as paying off a family home, having the ability to put their kids through good schools, and appreciate not getting bombed on their way to work.

Civil libertarians are becoming louder and more organised in trying to switch people over to their side. They have even convinced themselves that they are stepping up to protect the public from the conservative government. But the reality is they are grandstanding. They are becoming desperate. As Professor Mirko Bagaric argues in his new book "A Matter of Opinion", civil libertarians have now become the extremists.

The terrorists wage war through hijacking planes and bombing buildings; the civil libertarians have waged a war on mainstream public opinion through hijacking leftist newspapers and bombarding the ABC.

The average Australian wants just three things: national or military security, cultural security and financial security. If they were smart, the civil libertarians would concentrate on the possible human rights implications of the Howard Government's Work Choices legislation. This is where the average Australia might be prepared to listen because workplace relations affects their financial security.

While the civil libertarians preach from their taxpayer-funded Ivy Tower about the plight of queue-jumping asylum seekers and those who have trained with the likes of al-Qaeda, the Australian people will continue to turn a deaf ear. So they should.

Dr James McConvill is author of "In the Pursuit of Truth: Reflections on Law, Life and Contemporary Affairs" (Sandstone Academic Press, 2006)

Senator George Allen Insider breaks her Silence to reveal 18-month Investigation on the Senator

Senator George Allen is being politically assassinated. Over twenty years of outstanding political leadership and service is being erased by slander – researcher, talk show regular, author and columnist Kathy Antrim

Washington, DC— As political smear tactics reach an all-time low, independent researcher Kathleen Antrim reveals findings from her 17-month long investigation on Senator George Allen to “provide American voters with an unvarnished, honest look at this individual, warts and all.”

Antrim noticed a growing discontent in citizens who are fed up with the corruption, double-speak, and perceived hidden agendas of our government officials. Therefore, she decided to get an insiders view of Presidential forerunner George Allen and share her unvarnished findings in her upcoming book- good or bad- tentatively entitled Actions Speak Louder than Words.

Antrim has been granted unprecedented and unlimited access to the Senator, his wife, children, family, close friends, staff and colleagues for the past 17 months; resulting in hundreds of hours of interviews, which include accompanying Allen in his motor home on his 2,500-mile Listening Tours in 2005 and 2006. “He completely opened up his life to me,” says Antrim.

Antrim wanted to keep her findings secret until the launch of her book, but because of the accusations of Allen using racial slurs and threats (including one of a decapitated deer being stuffed in the mailbox of a black family) in the 1970’s and 1980’s, Antrim has decided to come forward. Allen told The Associated Press on Monday that Mr. Shelton’s accusations were “ludicrously false”.

Like sharks on a feeding frenzy, media outlets such as like Salon.com are positively gleeful in their misleading attacks. Antrim wonders, “Where is the police report that any victim would file if this deer incident happened? There is none. Where are the victims of this alleged incident? There are none. The police lieutenant in charge during the 70's believes it's a myth. Even the head of the Louisa County chapter of the NAACP admitted they had no knowledge of any such incident happening.”

Antrim find it incredibly convenient and suspect that Dr. Ken Shelton never said a word about this incident during the last 20 years of Allen's political career, but in the first election since the only other person who could refute his allegations has died suddenly, now Shelton is coming forward. Antrim comments, “It's disgusting and despicable that they are playing the race card against Allen, a man that grew up in an integrated family and considers many of his father's teammates family. Allen and his siblings consider [Hall of Famer Deacon Jones] their big brother."

Antrim concludes “I have remained independent and unbiased in my interviewing, documentation, and research.” If the media wants to know who George Allen is as a man and as a leader – I hope they ask questions before they take 30-year-old, never reported allegations, as fact.”

Three New Deals: Why the Nazis and Fascists Loved FDR

BOOK REVIEW:   " Three New Deals: Reflections on Roosevelt's America, Mussolini's Italy, and Hitler's Germany, 1933-1939". By Wolfgang Schivelbusch. Metropolitan Books, 2006.   Review by David Gordon

Critics of Roosevelt's New Deal often liken it to fascism. Roosevelt's numerous defenders dismiss this charge as reactionary propaganda; but as Wolfgang Schivelbusch makes clear, it is perfectly true. Moreover, it was recognized to be true during the 1930s, by the New Deal's supporters as well as its opponents.

When Roosevelt took office in March 1933, he received from Congress an extraordinary delegation of powers to cope with the Depression.

   "The broad-ranging powers granted to Roosevelt by Congress, before that body went into recess, were unprecedented in times of peace. Through this "delegation of powers," Congress had, in effect, temporarily done away with itself as the legislative branch of government. The only remaining check on the executive was the Supreme Court. In Germany, a similar process allowed Hitler to assume legislative power after the Reichstag burned down in a suspected case of arson on February 28, 1933." (p. 18).

The Nazi press enthusiastically hailed the early New Deal measures: America, like the Reich, had decisively broken with the "uninhibited frenzy of market speculation." The Nazi Party newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, "stressed 'Roosevelt's adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies,' praising the president's style of leadership as being compatible with Hitler's own dictatorial Führerprinzip" (p. 190).

Nor was Hitler himself lacking in praise for his American counterpart. He "told American ambassador William Dodd that he was 'in accord with the President in the view that the virtue of duty, readiness for sacrifice, and discipline should dominate the entire people. These moral demands which the President places before every individual citizen of the United States are also the quintessence of the German state philosophy, which finds its expression in the slogan "The Public Weal Transcends the Interest of the Individual"'" (pp. 19-20). A New Order in both countries had replaced an antiquated emphasis on rights.

Mussolini, who did not allow his work as dictator to interrupt his prolific journalism, wrote a glowing review of Roosevelt's Looking Forward. He found "reminiscent of fascism … the principle that the state no longer leaves the economy to its own devices"; and, in another review, this time of Henry Wallace's New Frontiers, Il Duce found the Secretary of Agriculture's program similar to his own corporativism (pp. 23-24).

"Roosevelt never had much use for Hitler, but Mussolini was another matter. "'I don't mind telling you in confidence,' FDR remarked to a White House correspondent, 'that I am keeping in fairly close touch with that admirable Italian gentleman'" (p. 31). Rexford Tugwell, a leading adviser to the president, had difficulty containing his enthusiasm for Mussolini's program to modernize Italy: "It's the cleanest … most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I've ever seen. It makes me envious" (p. 32, quoting Tugwell).

Why did these contemporaries sees an affinity between Roosevelt and the two leading European dictators, while most people today view them as polar opposites? People read history backwards: they project the fierce antagonisms of World War II, when America battled the Axis, to an earlier period. At the time, what impressed many observers, including as we have seen the principal actors themselves, was a new style of leadership common to America, Germany, and Italy.

Once more we must avoid a common misconception. Because of the ruthless crimes of Hitler and his Italian ally, it is mistakenly assumed that the dictators were for the most part hated and feared by the people they ruled. Quite the contrary, they were in those pre-war years the objects of considerable adulation. A leader who embodied the spirit of the people had superseded the old bureaucratic apparatus of government.

    "While Hitler's and Roosevelt's nearly simultaneous ascension to power highlighted fundamental differences … contemporary observers noted that they shared an extraordinary ability to touch the soul of the people. Their speeches were personal, almost intimate. Both in their own way gave their audiences the impression that they were addressing not the crowd, but each listener as an individual." (p. 54)

But does not Schivelbusch's thesis fall before an obvious objection? No doubt Roosevelt, Hitler, and Mussolini were charismatic leaders; and all of them rejected laissez-faire in favor of the new gospel of a state-managed economy. But Roosevelt preserved civil liberties, while the dictators did not.

Schivelbusch does not deny the manifest differences between Roosevelt and the other leaders; but even if the New Deal was a "soft fascism", the elements of compulsion were not lacking. The "Blue Eagle" campaign of the National Recovery Administration serves as his principal example. Businessmen who complied with the standards of the NRA received a poster that they could display prominently in their businesses. Though compliance was supposed to be voluntary, the head of the program, General Hugh Johnson, did not shrink from appealing to illegal mass boycotts to ensure the desired results.

    "The public," he [Johnson] added, "simply cannot tolerate non-compliance with their plan." In a fine example of doublespeak, the argument maintained that cooperation with the president was completely voluntary but that exceptions would not be tolerated because the will of the people was behind FDR. As one historian [Andrew Wolvin] put it, the Blue Eagle campaign was "based on voluntary cooperation, but those who did not comply were to be forced into participation." (p. 92)

Schivelbusch compares this use of mass psychology to the heavy psychological pressure used in Germany to force contributions to the Winter Relief Fund.

Both the New Deal and European fascism were marked by what Wilhelm Röpke aptly termed the "cult of the colossal." The Tennessee Valley Authority was far more than a measure to bring electrical power to rural areas. It symbolized the power of government planning and the war on private business:

   "The TVA was the concrete-and-steel realization of the regulatory authority at the heart of the New Deal. In this sense, the massive dams in the Tennessee Valley were monuments to the New Deal, just as the New Cities in the Pontine Marshes were monuments to Fascism … But beyond that, TVA propaganda was also directed against an internal enemy: the capitalist excesses that had led to the Depression…"  (pp. 160, 162)

This outstanding study is all the more remarkable in that Schivelbusch displays little acquaintance with economics. Mises and Hayek are absent from his pages, and he grasps the significance of architecture much more than the errors of Keynes. Nevertheless, he has an instinct for the essential. He concludes the book by recalling John T. Flynn's great book of 1944, As We Go Marching.

Flynn, comparing the New Deal with fascism, foresaw a problem that still faces us today.

    But willingly or unwillingly, Flynn argued, the New Deal had put itself into the position of needing a state of permanent crisis or, indeed, permanent war to justify its social interventions. "It is born in crisis, lives on crises, and cannot survive the era of crisis…. Hitler's story is the same." … Flynn's prognosis for the regime of his enemy Roosevelt sounds more apt today than when he made it in 1944 … "We must have enemies," he wrote in As We Go Marching. "They will become an economic necessity for us." (pp. 186, 191)

http://mises.org/library/three-new-deals-why-nazis-and-fascists-loved-fdr