The Goal Is Freedom: Progressive Illiberalism

by Sheldon Richman

The Progressive movement, which dominated the American scene in the years from the turn of the century to United State entrance in World War I, was not primarily a liberal movement, writes Arthur A. Ekirch Jr. in his magisterial work The Decline of American Liberalism. [I]n contrast to former American efforts at reform, progressivism was based on a new philosophy, partly borrowed from Europe, which emphasized collective action through the instrumentality of government. (For previous my articles about important Ekirch's book, see this and this.)

Ekirch sees progressivism as an extension of the concentration of power in Washington, D.C., that had taken place since the Civil War. The embodiment of that centralization was Theodore Roosevelt, champion of the fateful war against Spain, who became president in 1901 after William McKinley was assassinated. Roosevelt as president exemplified to a superlative degree the nationalistic side of progressivism, Ekirch writes. An enthusiastic believer in a strong centralized government, under firm executive leadership, Roosevelt was a patrician reformer who frankly preferred the principles of Alexander Hamilton to those of Thomas Jefferson. While he embraced the elitist's noblesse oblige toward people of lower station, he had only the greatest scorn for the kind of middle-class individualism and liberalism that emphasized minding one's own business both at home and abroad. In foreign affairs Roosevelt, despite a range of interests that was world-wide, was not fundamentally an internationalist in either thought or action. His major policies seldom rose above narrowly nationalistic considerations, and his venturesome diplomacy incited widespread animosity against the Unites States. (It's worth mentioning that Roosevelt is the hero of Karl Rove and John McCain.) As Ekirch suggests, H.L. Mencken did not exaggerate when he likened TR to Frederick the Great and the Kaiser. He was, Ekirch writes, the leader of both progressive and imperialist forces in the United States.

    More than anyone else, he was responsible for Dewey's fleet being stationed at Hong Kong ready for its fateful dash to the Philippines – a voyage that did so much to launch the United States upon the course of imperialism. In domestic affairs, Roosevelt understood the radical temper of the nineties and the intensity of the public revolt against the monopolistic practices of big business. Determined therefore to avert the danger of an agrarian return to Jeffersonian liberalism or of a socialistic expropriation of private property, Roosevelt by a judicious mixture of trustbusting and benevolent regulation helped to safeguard American big business.

Ekirch draws attention to the fact that government intervention was the source of big-business expansion, a point overlooked by most historians: Thus, tariffs and government subsidies continued to be an important factor in preventing foreign competition with American business. President Henry O. Havermeyer of the American Sugar Refining Company claimed with some exaggeration that 'The mother of all trusts is the customs tariff bill.' Perceptively, Ekirch adds, Also vital to big business was Unites States patent law, with its provisions granting exclusive rights to an inventor for seventeen years; this enabled companies to buy up and hoard patents, using such control to maintain a monopoly. In identifying tariffs and patents as agents of monopoly, Ekirch echoed an earlier individualist critic of government interference with the free market, Benjamin Tucker (1854-1939), editor of Liberty magazine. (On the case against ideas being property, see Roderick Long's article here. A bibliography of articles with links is here.)

For Ekirch there was bitter irony in the fact that government regulation was the greatest single factor in the decline of the very liberal economy that it sought to preserve and protect. Moreover, the progressive type of legislation, instead of encouraging democracy or competitive capitalism, in some ways perhaps, only made the whole economic system more difficult to operate.

Roosevelt is newly idolized these days in part because he is seen as a pioneering conservationist. But Ekirch shows that TR's interest in the environment was closely related to his jingoism: [T]he conservation movement … was in itself largely a nationalistic device popularized with much fanfare and publicity by Roosevelt and his friend Gifford Pinchot, chief of the United States Forest Service. After a century in which rapid exploitation of the resources of the West was encouraged in every way, the United States suddenly faced the prospect of potential exhaustion at a time when it was actively engaging in international rivalry with the other great powers of the world. Imperialism, with overseas markets and colonies was one means of building up the nation's military might, but generally overlooked was the way in which conservation was also intimately related to economic preparedness in the event that the nation might be plunged into a major war.

Approach to Big Business

The Progressive Era was decisive in regard to government's approach to big business. A lack of appreciation of how government stimulated — and distorted — the growth of enterprise kept most people from seeing the proper remedy for the country's economic ills. The range of choices was limited to two: 1) aggressive government action to break up concentrations of wealth and 2) regulation of ever-larger corporations. Missing from the menu was laissez faire: [D]espite growing popular resentment over the favored position of big business, most Americans in the final analysis preferred to avoid a radical effort to solve their problems. Certainly, there were few who dared to propose what might have been the most drastic of reforms — the removal of all government aid to economic enterprise. Instead, the panacea for the hard times of the nineties, as it was again to be the attempted remedy in the 1930's, was a tightening of the bonds that tied politics to economic life (emphasis added). Advocates of this course could find examples in Bismarckian Germany and the England envisioned by the Fabians.

The Progressives had no problem with big business. Indeed, the corporate elite could be found within their ranks, and many business leaders supported Roosevelt's nationalistic progressivism in the 1912 presidential campaign. They assuredly were not for laissez faire. Rather, they thought big business must be paralleled by a consolidation of regulatory powers in a centralized national government. Thus they favored replacing antitrust law with a national incorporation act, which would establish a corporate regulatory commission similar to the Interstate Commerce Commission. (Small business favored antitrust enforcement. No one called for laissez faire.)

Progressive policies embodied an underlying philosophy repugnant to Jeffersonianism. As Ekirch describes this philosophy, Society in the future would have to be based more and more on an explicit subordination of the individual to a collectivist, or nationalized, political and social order. This change, generally explained as one of progress and reform, was of course also highly important in building up nationalistic sentiment. At the same time, the rising authority and prestige of the state served to weaken the vestiges of internationalism and cosmopolitanism and to intensify the growing imperialistic rivalries. In their statist cause the progressives, who were now appropriating the name liberal, enlisted Social Darwinism, economic determinism, and relativism. According to this outlook, the old Jeffersonian truths were no longer truths. A new day called for new principles.

If Ekirch's work can be said to shine in one particular area, it is in understanding of the connection between domestic policy and foreign affairs. Historians, who make too rigid a distinction between foreign and domestic policy, he writes, have overlooked this intimate relationship between the aggressive foreign policy of the progressives and their emphasis on nationalism in home affairs. …[I]n such instances as the progressives' increasing acceptance of compulsory military training and of the white man's burden, there were obvious reminders of the paternalism of much of their economic reform legislation. Imperialism, according to a recent student of American foreign policy [R.E. Osgood], was a revolt against many of the values of traditional liberalism.

In the progressive milieu, who defended liberalism? Ekirch writes: [D]efense of liberalism was left in the hands of a dwindling minority of its traditional adherents, aided by a strange mixture of libertarians, which included radical socialists as well as old-fashioned conservatives. In the presidential election of 1912, Woodrow Wilson's New Freedom seemed to promise a return to older ways. Wilson criticized Roosevelt's platform and defended the limitation of governmental power. But, Ekirch concludes, the New Freedom was destined to suffer its own contradictions, and it was also cut short perhaps by American entrance into World War I. By the conclusion of that crusade, the confusion and rout of the liberals would be all but complete.

http://fee.org/library/detail/the-goal-is-freedom-progressive-illiberalism

Book Review of "The Great Lakes Fake Water War"

Review by Wayne Lusvardi

"There is no potato law, or Coca-Cola law, [but] there is water law." - Jim Olson, environmental attorney battling Nestle Co. water bottling of Great Lakes water

Peter Annin, a journalist with Newsweek and the Institute for Journalism and Natural Resources is worried about who is going to win the purported water war for the Great Lakes. In his new book, The Great Lakes Water Wars, published by the environmentally activist Island Press, Annin tips his hand early in the book as to who, and what, frightens him:

* Subsidized farmers
* Dry land farmers
* Private bottled water enterprises
* International entrepreneurs interested in exporting was in super tankers to Asia
* Sunbelt water agencies with endless Romanesque-style aqueducts diverting huge volumes of water
* Urban voters in Chicago and elsewhere and their bickering politicians
* Small towns like Lowell, Indiana that could morph into suburbs like those surrounding Los Angeles after they "grabbed" water from Owens Lake or the Colorado River

The above interest groups Annin identifies could pretty much serve as a proxy for the constituencies of the Republican Party. In short, Annin is suspicious that the Business Class is going to win a highly contrived water war that might lead to the Great Lakes ending up like the Aral Sea in Uzbekistan - an inland sea shrunken to the status of a lake and eco-wasteland resulting from Stalin's central planning in the 1950's.

Annin's paradoxical solution to such an apocalyptic scenario for the Great Lakes is "The Compact," an international agreement for water diversions which he is pushing on his website at http://greatlakeswaterwars.com. In other words, centralized government control over the Great Lakes is the solution - despite that such a solution was what ruined the Aral Sea. Centralized regulation and planning is advocated by Annin despite that as of 2006 no agency figures exist as to how much water is consumed in the Great Lakes Basin or whether there is need of such a managing body. The author proudly claims that the Great Lakes contain enough water to cover the lower forty eight states with 9.5 feet of water! Annin even admits "there is no shortage of Great Lakes water," only a shortage of water management (p. 11).

Annin's perspective is reflective of what is called the Knowledge Class which deals in the production and distribution of knowledge. It is comprised of journalists, media, academics, environmentalists, educators, non-business lawyers, and government bureaucrats, of which Annin is one of its literal and figurative "water carriers." Sociologically speaking, the Knowledge Class is characterized by: anti-business ideology, a tendency to identify its class interests as reflecting the general welfare of society, and a dependency for its livelihood on government payrolls or subsidies and foundation grants. The Knowledge Class has an interest in the distributive machinery of government, as against the production system.

It is thus no surprise that on the book jacket The Great Lakes Water Wars is given accolades by many prominent representatives of the Knowledge Class such as law and environmental professors and former government environmental resource managers who claim it to be the "definitive book" on Great Lakes water. The greatest threat, in the eyes of those in the Knowledge Class, is that somehow Lake Superior is going to turn into Lake Coca-Cola (to paraphrase the quote at the onset of this review).

What The Great Lakes Water Wars seems to be angling for is the eventual establishment of a governing body over all the lakes that could regulate and redistribute all its resources according to its enlightened knowledge of the general welfare. This would entail an extra layer of government that would piecemeal out the benefits from the water resources as it, not existing Federal, state or local governments, sees fit. In sum, Annin's book appears to be a manifesto for the establishment of a water czar and inter-governmental bureaucracy to run the Great Lakes.

This may or may not be a good thing depending on which class perspective forms your worldview. But if the Public Choice school of economics has taught us anything it is that no social class or agency or public interest group has a corner on the public interest.

Water policy and management is mainly driven by cliques and cabals of elitist experts who claim superior insights drawn from the Knowledge Class. Their claims to superior insights of how to manage Lake Superior, or any of the other Great Lakes, are typically spurious and self-serving. We shouldn't believe any of them. No water czar or bureaucratic entity has sufficient knowledge or selflessness to make policy for others, especially unchecked by the balancing of the courts, legislatures and executive levels of government.

Peter Annin's covertly politicized book on the Great Lakes is well-written and has all the elements of successful award-winning journalism:

* A magnified sense of the apocalyptic (the "desiccation" of the Aral Sea as analogy for the Great Lakes)
* A claim to represent the welfare of the masses against the Big Cities and the sprawling suburbs
* The demonization of Big Business (Nestle Co., water entrepreneurs, etc.).
* The implied claim of a quasi-religious legitimacy for those elites who aspire to make water policy for the masses (quotes from the high priest of environmentalism Aldo Leopold and a consciousness of the "old-growth forests as ecological talismans of the people," and the "Sacred Sweet Water Seas").

The title of Peter Annin's book The Great Lakes Water Wars is a metaphor for a class war over the resources of the Great Lakes couched as an environmental catastrophe about to happen. The book is an important one and thus it must be viewed with a critical eye to see if it holds water.

"America Alone" – Book review

Reviewed by "Ken"

A political polemic by Mark Steyn

“Mark Steyn for President”, I wanted to shout as I closed this book with the last sentence still ringing in my subconscious. Mr Steyn is a master writer who presents his case with an impelling cogency and a fiction-writer’s sense of timing and structure. My emotions were manipulated from deep hopeless depression through hatred and fear, to pride, elation and hope, while I fought an irrepressible desire to giggle or even laugh out loud.

This book should be mandatory reading for all adults (not that anything should be mandatory).

The theme doesn’t stray too far from the standard rightist formula; small government, self-actualisation, gun ownership, abortion, patriotism, military pride etc. but what makes it different is the meticulously researched statistical appraisal of the rise of Islam in the western world. Mr Steyn links the Muslim invasion of the west to the small concessions that the west’s sensitivity to multiculturalism has invoked: the metamorphosis of the ‘Christmas Season’ into the ‘Holiday Season’, the right to wear clothing that disguises identification and restricts vision when driving, suggestions that the Union Jack be altered to remove the white cross of St. George because he fought against Muslims during the crusades, and many similar stupidities.

But mostly this book is about demographics. I am not a statistician, nor do I have access to teams of researchers, but if the figures quoted are even within ‘Cooee’ of being correct they point to a bleak future for the non-Islamic world.

If this book were just about the demographics of an Islamic future, it could have an enormous impact and possibly even influence the politics of immigration, procreation, and multiculturalism, but, unfortunately, it is also a strong platform for Mr. Steyn’s politically-right agenda. This is bound to conflict with some readers’ sensitivities and colour their analysis of the more important issue; issues that are based not on opinion or personal philosophy but on demographic facts.

In the western world, we live for the most part in a politically middle-of-the-road society because, I would suggest, the strong arguments of left and right result in a compromised solution that can be lived with by both sides albeit with associated frustrations that things could be done better. This seems to me to be a healthy arrangement which avoids extremes and allows people of both persuasions to work on their ideas in the relatively safe environment of compromise.

Although it is hard to find fault with the idea that we should ultimately be responsible for ourselves, it is also in our nature to want to protect weaker members of our clan. The problem with applying the former idea to every situation is that it denies access to the latter by any test of philosophical consistency. Ultimately, one side are afraid of the other because they envisage unpalatable legislation if they are given their head. The left see the right as “…gun-totin’, sister-marryin’, foreigner-despisin’…” and I might add, knuckle-draggin’ rednecks. The image of that type of person owning legislation scares leftists. Despite Mr. Steyn’s rational disputation of each of the above stereotypes, the image of the gum chewing, self-righteous, xenophobic cop is a powerful one. The right, of course, fear that the left would breed a nation of parasitic no-hopers who would erode the standard of living and degrade society into an anti-entrepreneurial, crime-ridden, apathetic, and nihilistic state.

The upshot of these fears is that extremists of both persuasions will – and should – continue to voice their opinions and let us in the middle get on with our lives.

It is the very fact that Mark Steyn is lumped in with the right wing advocates that will dilute this very important book’s influence. It should be more widely read than by the already converted or the leftist looking to score points. Both such readers will approach the book with a prejudice that will only be confirmed by the sections they choose to focus on.

As I said at the outset, one is tempted to believe that Mark Steyn actually has the answers to these compelling observations but there are anomalies in his rationale.

He talks on the one hand about the probability of Muslim countries becoming nuclear powers with no conscience about blasting London off the face of the earth. On the other hand he states that all of the excess money from oil in Saudi Arabia is being sent overseas to build a Muslim infrastructure. Why would you spend all of your billions to build the biggest mosque in the world in London and then bomb it and all of its followers out of existence? We know that Muslim extremists don’t seem to distinguish between infidels and themselves when it comes to prime targets but there does appear to be a basic conflict of interests here.

In the final chapter Mr. Steyn does give a bulleted list of methods to counteract the Muslim threat and I must agree with him that they do make sense and should be given serious consideration.

On the other hand, strange and unforeseeable things happen to statistical predictions when they approach ultimate fulfilment. A backlash movement by moderate Muslims has already become apparent in the UK. It is anybody's guess what will really happen.

Congratulations, Mr. Steyn for a courageous look at our potential future.

FDR and Mussolini: A Tale of Two Fascists by Srdja Trifkovic Many Americans would be horrified at the thought of discussing Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Benito Mussolini as anything but moral and political antipodes: democrat versus dictator, peacemaker versus aggressive bully, good versus bad. Fifty-five years of bipartisan hagiography have placed FDR in the pantheon of American saints, roughly at number two between Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, and way ahead of the slaveholding Founding Fathers. It is not surprising that he is a role model to a liberal establishment that also reveres “Dr.” King and John Brown. But the fact that Republicans such as Newt Gingrich also invoke Roosevelt as a role model indicates the extent to which his legacy is unthinkingly accepted across the political spectrum. Genuine conservatives, on the other hand, may argue that FDR and Mussolini were in fact rather similar. They will point out both men’s obsessive focus on strong, centralized government structures, their demagoguery, and especially their attempt to overcome the dynamics of social and economic conflict through the institutions of the corporate state. For all their apparent similarities, however, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was a more deleterious figure than Benito Mussolini, and his legacy proved to be more damaging to America than Il Duce’s was to Italy. This is not a case of good versus bad, or of two equal evils, but of bad versus even worse: Roosevelt was a more efficient, and certainly more successful, fascist than Mussolini. Although he seemed to be a prime candidate for Bolshevism, and in fact became a leading socialist agitator and journalist in the years prior to the Great War, there was no hard ideological core to Mussolini—except, ultimately, his nationalism. This core loyalty prompted him to reject the socialists’ internationalism, pacifism, and neutrality at the beginning of the war in 1914 and to join other nationalists in demanding Italy’s entry into the war. About to be expelled from the Socialist Party for belligerence, he defiantly declared: “My cry is a word that I would never have pronounced in normal times, and that today I raise loudly, with my full voice, with no attempt at simulation, with a firm faith, a fearful and fascinating word: WAR! It was all there: the passion, the theater, the martial bravado, the burning heart. His parting shot, before being drafted, was the birth cry of fascism: “Now that steel has met steel, one single cry comes from our hearts: Viva l’Italia!” By early 1918, as a wounded veteran and the influential editor of the anti-socialist Popolo d’Italia, Mussolini exclaimed: “We, the survivors, we who have returned, demand the right of governing Italy!” As a wave of revolutionary aftershocks swept across Europe following the Bolshevik coup in Russia, Mussolini was increasingly seen as a Man of Destiny who could fit his own demand for a dictator “ruthless and energetic enough to make a clean sweep.” A “clean sweep” against what? Against the establishment, the mediocre middle-class, middle-of-the-road liberals and democrats, the political heirs to the Risorgimento, long devoid of moral fiber and convictions, who allowed Italy’s “victory” against Austria to be “mutilated” when Dalmatia went to the newly created Yugoslavia at Versailles. But also against the left, whose instincts and whose frame of mind none understand so intimately, and none can hate so passionately, as its former initiates. In early 1919, Mussolini started turning his rhetoric into political action by creating the nucleus of a party in Milan. It consisted of disillusioned war veterans, republicans, and former socialists and anarchists. Mussolini called his force Fasci di Combattimento, invoking a symbol of ancient Roman togetherness and authority. At rallies, surrounded by fascist supporters wearing the black shirts that had been adopted originally by anarchists, Mussolini caught the Italians’ collective imagination. His physique was impressive, his style of oratory superb, his attitudes highly theatrical. His ideas were contradictory, his facts often wrong, but his words were dramatic and his metaphors so apt and striking that he captivated the crowds. Fascism grew and provided an antidote to the looming threat of Bolshevism, but by its abandonment of traditional codes of behavior in the struggle against socialism it came close to its red opponent, using not only its ideas of social justice and its vocabulary of simplified clichÈs but also its social base. The ecstatic Naples crowd that responded to Mussolini’s threat to march on Rome in 1922 with the chant of “Roma, Roma, Roma” was largely proletarian. The die was cast a week later when fascist militias advanced upon the Eternal City. The biggest gamble of Mussolini’s career paid off when the liberal-democratic government collapsed and King Victor Emmanuel III sent the longed-for telegram. But the ease with which Mussolini took power reflected the weakness of the liberal system rather than his own strength. There was no real “march on Rome”: The city was there for the taking. The rise of Mussolini was welcomed by many Italians not because of the ideological appeal of fascism—still vaguely defined at the time—but because it seemed to offer practical solutions to two specific problems: the “red menace” at home and the “mutilated victory” abroad. From the outset, Italy’s international status was perceived as the criterion by which the fascist experiment would stand or fall. Mussolini freely acknowledged this, but his activist foreign policy reflected a faulty grasp of foreign affairs that went beyond impatience with the old diplomacy. He confused strategy and policy. His emphasis on “action” conflated ends and means in semantic imprecision until the means, the acquisition of strength, became an end in itself. When the rhetoric of the regime became identified with a statement of ends, Italian policy became the prisoner of that rhetoric. This became obvious in 1935 with the stupid and unnecessary Ethiopian adventure, which reflected Mussolini’s vanity and his lack of true statesmanship. Italy’s alliance with Germany was made possible, and in a sense unavoidable, by the Abyssinian war. This affair preoccupied the Western powers and Italy for more than a year, and it helped conceal the nature of the real threat to peace in Europe. Unwittingly, Mussolini did a favor to Hitler by drawing attention away from him. In the end, the split between Italy and her former allies could not be repaired—and Hitler was the beneficiary. The withdrawal of Germany and Italy from the League of Nations marked the final abandonment of the Europe of Versailles. Not only was the style of Italian foreign policy changed, but its substance as well, which was reflected in Mussolini’s (not Hitler’s) coining of the term “Rome-Berlin Axis.” The Spanish civil war infused an ideological element into the picture. By pitting Germany and Italy against the left and against the Western democracies, it created an impression of ideological solidarity. The presumed strategic community of interests between Italy and Germany remained unclarified, and this ambiguity had sweeping consequences in later years. Mussolini was prepared to fight to secure a resurrected Mediterranean Roman Empire and gain access to the oceans; Hitler ultimately strove for nothing short of Weltmacht. Italy’s aims were “rational” and limited, but in their pursuit Mussolini was erratic and inconsistent. He eventually limited his options to the point where he had to make an alliance with the infinitely stronger German dictator, whose goals were unlimited—and therefore irrational—but who displayed great skill and “rationality” in their execution. This was Italy’s calamity and Mussolini’s personal doom. He did not trust Hitler (as his frequent outbursts to his foreign minister and son-in-law Galeazzo Ciano amply testify), but he allowed himself to be bullied and cajoled into obedience time and again. Mussolini’s greatest failure as a statesman and as an Italian was his abandonment of autonomy to Hitler. He entered a war he could never win, and he did so for eminently unfascist reasons, afraid that the spoils would be Germany’s alone. Even if Hitler had been successful, Italy would have existed on Germany’s sufferance, not on its own strength. With his senseless, infantile dream of imperial glory—on which he finally parted company with his hitherto supportive subjects—Mussolini painted himself into a corner. The only exit was into German captivity—in Otto Skorzeny’s plane in the summer of 1943, and into that retreating Wehrmacht column in the spring of 1945, from which he was taken to a communist firing squad and the Milanese meat hook. But for his dreams of imperial expansion, Il Duce, Italy’s man of destiny, could have remained a hero at home and abroad until his death. Until Abyssinia, Mussolini was hailed as a genius and a superman on both sides of the Atlantic, primarily because of his economic and social policies. When FDR was inaugurated in March 1933, the world was praising Mussolini’s success in avoiding the Great Depression. Roosevelt and his “Brain Trust,” the architects of the New Deal, were fascinated by Italy’s fascism—a term which was not perjorative at the time. In America, it was seen as a form of economic nationalism built around consensus planning by the established elites in government, business, and labor. American leaders were not very concerned with the undemocratic character of Mussolini’s regime. Fascism had “effectively stifled hostile elements in restricting the right of free assembly, in abolishing freedom of the press and in having at its command a large military organization,” the U.S. Embassy in Rome reported in 1925. But Mussolini remained a “moderate,” confronting the Bolsheviks while fending off extremists on the right. Ambassador Henry Fletcher saw only a choice between Mussolini and socialism, and the Italian people preferred fascist “peace and prosperity” to the “free speech and loose administration” that risked bringing Bolshevism to power. Secretary of State Frank Kellogg joined Fletcher in labeling all opposition groups as “communists, socialists, and anarchists.” The chief of the State Department’s Western European Division, William Castle, declared in 1926 that “the methods of the Duce are not by any means American methods,” but “methods which would certainly not appeal to this country might easily appeal to a people so differently constituted as are the Italians.” As the political and social effects of the Great Depression hit Europe, Italy received mounting praise as a bastion of order and stability. “The wops are unwopping themselves,” Fortune magazine noted with awe in 1934. State Department roving Ambassador Norman Davis praised the successes of Italy in remarks before the Council on Foreign Relations in 1933, speaking after the Italian ambassador had drawn applause from his distinguished audience for his description of how Italy had put its “own house in order . . . A class war was put down.” Roosevelt’s ambassador to Italy, Breckenridge Long, was also full of enthusiasm for the “new experiment in government” which “works most successfully.” Henry Stimson (secretary of state under Hoover, secretary of war under Roosevelt) recalled that he and Hoover had found Mussolini to be “a sound and useful leader.” Roosevelt shared many of these positive views of “that admirable Italian gentleman,” as he termed Mussolini in 1933. The most radical aspect of the New Deal was the National Industrial Recovery Act, passed in June 1933, which set up the National Recovery Administration. Most industries were forced into cartels. Codes that regulated prices and terms of sale transformed much of the American economy. The industrial and agricultural life of the country was to be organized by government into vast farm and industrial cartels. This was corporatism, the essence of fascism. It may be argued that Roosevelt simply did what seemed politically expedient. But contemporaries knew what was in the making. Some liked it: Charles Beard freely admitted that “FDR accepts the inexorable collectivism of the American economy . . . national planning in industry, business, agriculture and government.” But detractors existed even within his own party. Democratic Sen. Carter Glass of Virginia denounced the NRA as “the utterly dangerous effort of the federal government at Washington to transplant Hitlerism to every corner of this nation.” FDR’s New Deal united communists and fascists. Union leader Sidney Hillman praised Lenin as “one of the few great men that the human race has produced, one of the greatest statesmen of our age and perhaps of all ages.” Big-business partisan Gen. Hugh Johnson wanted America to imitate the “dynamic pragmatism” of Mussolini. Together, Hillman and Johnson developed the National Labor Relations Board. They shared a collectivist and authoritarian aversion for historical American principles of liberty. Like fascist and communist dictators, Roosevelt relied on his own charisma, carefully and deceitfully developed, and the executive power of his office to stroke the electorate into compliance and to bludgeon his critics. His welfare projects went far beyond aid to the poor and wound up bribing whole sectors of American society—farmers, businessmen, banks, intellectuals—into dependence on him and the state he created. Through subsidies, wrote Richard Hofstadter, “a generation of artists and intellectuals became wedded to the New Deal and devoted to Rooseveltian liberalism.” Their corrupted descendants still thrive through federal endowments for the arts and humanities and in politically correct, federally funded academia. The only practical difference between FDR and fascist dictators was that he was far less successful in resolving the economic crisis. He made the Depression worse and even prolonged it. When he was elected, there were 11.6 million unemployed; seven years later, there were still 11.3 million out of work. In 1932, there were 16.6 million on relief; in 1939, there were 19.6 million. Only the war eventually ended the depression. Ah, the war. During the campaign of 1940, FDR repeatedly promised to keep the country out of war and then did everything in his power to push America into the mayhem. In March 1941, he rammed the Lend-Lease Act through Congress, although selling munitions to belligerents and conveying them were acts of war and contrary to international law. During the Atlantic conference, FDR entered into an illegal and unconstitutional agreement with Churchill that America would go to war if Japan attacked British territory in the Far East. He said, “I may never declare war; I may make war. If I were to ask Congress to declare war they might argue about it for three months.” This was an impeachable offense. He allowed undercover British agents to operate freely and illegally within the United States. His unprovoked belligerency toward the Japanese as well as the Germans helped cause the attack on Pearl Harbor—which he may well have been fully aware of in advance—even as he vilified and persecuted the critics of his policies as “Nazis” and “traitors.” World War II nevertheless remains “the holy war of the American establishment,” as Joe Sobran has called it. It legitimized the emergence of the United States as a global superpower, contrary to the Constitution and to the American tradition. Between 1941 and 1945, Washington became the command-and-control center of the ultra-centralized, unitary state that today seeks “benevolent global hegemony.” Just as the New Deal created the bureaucratic Leviathan and destroyed those vestiges of the Old Republic that had survived Lincoln, FDR’s war turned America into a “superpower” obliged to carry the burdens of democracy and human rights forever—first to Seoul and Saigon, then to Bosnia and Kosovo, and on to missions yet unimagined, to new Hitlers and “victims of genocide” still unknown, until it destroys itself. “It seems to me,” wrote H.L. Mencken in his private diary on April 13, 1945, the day after FDR’s death, “to be very likely that Roosevelt will take a high place in American popular history—maybe even alongside Washington and Lincoln . . . He had every quality that morons esteem in their heroes.” FDR built a cult of personality just as Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin did. Power depends on such a cult. His current sainthood would have appalled many of his contemporaries, even if it would not have surprised them. “He was the first American,” wrote Mencken, “to penetrate to the real depths of vulgar stupidity. He never made the mistake of overestimating the intelligence of the American mob.” For those Americans who love the Old Republic, Franklin Roosevelt—not an irrelevant Mussolini—was and remains the enemy. When Mussolini left the stage 55 years ago, the Italian nation was still its old self. Over two decades of fascism had left Italian society and its key institutions—family, Church, education, arts, culture, local communities—largely intact, or even strengthened. Il Duce was, in the end, all smoke and little fire, too humane to murder people on any large scale or to re-engineer seriously the country which he did love, albeit in a flawed way. FDR left the stage only weeks earlier, but his legacy is alive and well in the destruction of America’s families, faith, tradition, education, arts, culture, and local communities, and in the burgeoning globalist empire embodied in Dr. Albright. FDR’s “vision thing” has become a global bane. It leaves no country unscathed, Italy included, as the rubbish on Italian TV and radio, the newly arrived alien multitudes in bad and even not-so-bad parts of Milan, and the dismally few bambini in its maternity wards attest. This bane will just as surely destroy Italy as it will destroy America unless the supporters of truth, faith, and tradition on both sides of the Atlantic organize and fight to recover their neighborhoods, their schools, and their families for the sake of themselves, their nations, and our common civilization. http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/Chronicles/August2000/0800Trifkovic.htm

Evangelical Left All Shook Up About Affordable Housing

Book Review by Wayne Lusvardi of Making Housing Happen: Faith-Based Affordable Housing Models by Jill Suzanne Shook, editor and co-author. Chalice Press, 2006 $34.99:

Through her new book, Jill Shook, a housing activist in Pasadena, California, has become the de facto spokesperson of the Evangelical Left's new social movement to combat the so-called "affordable housing crisis", mostly focused on the U.S situation. The book jacket contains endorsements by many leaders of the Evangelical Left - Tony Campolo, Ronald J. Sider, and oddly has a preface by Dr. John Perkins, who doesn't fit the label. Given that the November 2006 elections have energized the political Left, Shook, who fashions herself as the next Jane Addams, may very well be used as one of the centerpieces of the Democratic Party's missionary ventures to evangelical Christianity. As such her Biblically-populist book is important but problematic both on empirical and theological grounds.

In Shook's hometown of Pasadena the reality of housing affordability is the reverse of what Shook portrays. One-third of the population by the U.S. Census is low income, mostly migrants from Mexico (God bless them). If there truly was an "affordable housing crisis" for the poor, how could one third of the populace afford housing in such an upscale suburban community? By doubling-up in housing and gobbling up the lowest rung on the housing affordability ladder, migrants have driven up rents and have driven the working class out of affordable housing.

Contra Shook's notion that scattered gentrification drives the poor out of affordable housing, California court decisions such as Serrano vs. Priest (1971) and urban riots partly organized by those on the political Left have made migrants into a protected class in neighborhoods in the first concentric ring surrounding Los Angeles. Moreover, Shook has no comprehension that her advocacy of inclusionary housing, "smart-growth," rent control, and her opposition to gentrification actually will worsen the affordable housing crisis rather than lessen it.

Theologically problematic is Shook's disguising of the neo-Marxist advocacy model of Saul Alinsky and the Industrial Areas Foundation as what she calls the Biblical "Nehemiah Strategy" (Chap.15). The theological underpinning for her cafeteria of affordable housing models is mostly based on the Old Testament concept of "justice," by which she means wealth redistribution by coercive government. Shook and her co-authors fail to tell readers that nearly all of the "faith-based" affordable housing case studies in her book relied on government funding.

Shook is oblivious to Jesus' observation that "man does not live by bread (or housing) alone." As such she doesn't recognize that religiosity (i.e., Max Weber's Protestant Ethic) can be conducive to housing affordability in a capitalist society. Her advocacy of compulsory "inclusionary housing," which diminishes the value of land of small property owners (not real estate developers) without "just" compensation runs against the commandment "thou shall not steal." Even Shook's Biblical preference for homeless immigrants runs against the moral of the scriptural story of King David taking a sheep from a rich man to give to a traveler in II Samuel 12.

A responsible Christian approach to such a complex issue as housing affordability in a modern society should entail the necessity of economic and sociological competency but also an understanding that our best efforts may lead to unintended consequences for which one needs to rely on humility, grace and repentance. How so many affordable housing advocates from such institutions as Fuller, Denver and Gordon-Cornwell Theological Seminaries, Chalice Press, and many para-church organizations could unquestioningly contribute to and endorse this Marxist-based model of housing is indicative of how the Evangelical Left have already successfully infiltrated and co-opted formerly conservative Protestant institutions. Whether Shook's social movement, which will likely be funded by the new Democratic Congress, will run into opposition by The Minutemen and the property rights movements remains an open question.

California housing prices are twice what they are in some other large U.S. cities because of huge Greenie-inspired restrictions on development. Anyone sincerely concerned about housing costs would therefore be devoting major energies to rolling back such restrictions. I do not need to guess that the shaky one will not be exerting any energies in that direction, however - JR

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.