Posted on 12/30/2006 6:46:50 PM PST by G. Stolyarov II
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his "Commonwealth Club Address" (1932), articulated his desire for a government of expansive economic powers – used to hold back "economic oligarchy" and assure positive "economic rights." Roosevelt considered public welfare considerations to overshadow individual sovereignty in importance; he was ready to use government power to force individuals to behave in the “public interest.” Ronald Reagan, unlike Roosevelt, recognized that government was the problem – not the solution– in economic crises, and that its authority over the economy must be curtailed to secure the freedom of entrepreneurs and all hard-working, self-directed Americans. In his First Inaugural Address (1981), Reagan represented the American heritage– arguing against restraints on free enterprise and defending individual sovereignty, natural rights, and limited government.
Roosevelt saw government as a social contract between the rulers and the governed; under it, "rulers were accorded power, and the people consented to that power on consideration that they be accorded certain rights.” But Roosevelt did not consider the rights granted under such a contract to be eternal and immutable: “The task of statesmanship [is] redefinition of these rights in terms of a changing and growing social order. New conditions impose new requirements upon government and those who conduct [it].” To Roosevelt, the very principles on which government is based ought to change with the times.
Roosevelt claimed that an older equality of opportunity had been eroded; he asserted that “equality of opportunity as we have known it no longer exists” and that “we are steering a steady course toward economic oligarchy...” For Roosevelt, government was the solution to this problem; “the task of government in its relation to business is to assist the development of an economic declaration of rights, an economic constitutional order.” Government ought to equalize opportunity where financial oligarchs' activities had given some people tremendous advantages over others. Roosevelt hence advocated redefining rights to encompass positive "economic rights." Rather than adhere to the older definition of the right to life as a negative right to be free of active violations of one's physical integrity, Roosevelt believed that every man "has also a right to make a comfortable living... Our government... owes to everyone an avenue to possess himself of a portion of that plenty sufficient for his needs...” Rather than viewing a right to property as a right not to have one's property coercively taken away, Roosevelt redefined it as "a right to be assured... in the safety of [one's] savings”. Under the new "right to property," government could interfere with some people's property to "protect" others'; Roosevelt especially advocated “restrict[ing] the operations of the speculator, the manipulator, even the financier” to shield people's savings.
Roosevelt saw individual sovereignty as subordinate to a "public welfare" defined in terms of the new "economic rights." He did not believe that each man ought to be left alone to pursue his own interests; rather, people– especially successful ones– ought to "sacrifice this or that private advantage; and in reciprocal self-denial must seek a general advantage”. Roosevelt unambiguously wished to restrain those whose business practices and personal interests did not conform to his vision of an equitable society: “whenever.. the lone wolf... declines to join in achieving an end recognized as being for the public welfare... the government may properly be asked to apply restraint”.
Roosevelt's view of government was at odds with the ideas of John Locke– on which many of America's founding documents are based. Locke's social contract is not between rulers and the ruled, but rather among the individuals comprising a commonwealth, entered into to protect pre-existing natural rights. According to Locke, “[t]he only way whereby anyone... puts on the bonds of civil society, is by agreeing with other men to... unite into a community... in a secure enjoyment of their properties” (Second Treatise on Civil Government). Roosevelt thought that rulers grant rights to their subjects under the social contract, but Locke emphasized that such rights stem from eternal natural law predating all governments. Furthermore, Locke recognized that the "chief end... of men's... putting themselves under government is the preservation of their property” (Second Treatise on Civil Government), an end Roosevelt was ready to subvert whenever assuring "equality of opportunity" demanded it– limiting the property of some to protect the savings of others.
Unlike Roosevelt, Reagan was not optimistic about government's ability to solve social problems. Criticizing inflation, economic stagnation, and government restrictions on individual freedom and economic development, Reagan recognized that “[i]n this present crisis... [g]overnment is the problem”. Reagan opposed crushing tax burdens levied by government on productive citizens. Yet even the revenue thus obtained had "not kept pace with public spending”; rather, a mounting deficit imperiled America's economy and future. In order to restore economic growth, Reagan proposed “removing the roadblocks that have slowed our economy and reduced productivity”; he especially recommended getting "government back within its means" and "lighten[ing] our punitive tax burden”. Less government, not more, was needed to restore prosperity. Reagan's desire for removing government economic restraints is reminiscent of Andrew Jackson, who sought to abolish “complicated restrictions which now embarrass the intercourse of nations” and wanted commerce "to flow in those channels to which individual enterprise– always its surest guide– might direct it” (“The Majority is to Govern”).
Reagan– contrary to Roosevelt– did not consider entrepreneurs and men of wealth to be responsible for America's crises. Quite the contrary, he recognized their crucial, even heroic role in facilitating a life and standard of living worthy of Americans. He saluted “entrepreneurs with faith in themselves and faith in an idea who create new jobs, new wealth, and opportunity” and desired for them freedom to innovate for everyone's benefit. Unlike Roosevelt, who wished to restrain and restrict some– especially businessmen– to grant a specious "equality of opportunity" to others, Reagan recognized that “[t]he solutions we seek must be equitable, with no one group singled out to pay a higher price.” Reagan wanted to grant entrepreneurs the same protections under the law that all other Americans had. Reagan's respect for entrepreneurs and his recognition that entrepreneurship is a social good– not an evil– are consistent with Andrew Carnegie's insight that “[n]ot evil, but good, has come... from the accumulation of wealth by those who have the ability and energy that produce it” (“Wealth”). Carnegie would have detested Roosevelt's attempts to perfect society and "equalize" opportunity by penalizing the best and most productive Americans: “We might as well urge the destruction of the highest existing type of man because he failed to reach our ideal as to favor the destruction of Individualism, Private Property, the Law of Accumulation of Wealth, the Law of Competition; for these are the highest results of human experience...” (“Wealth”). Reagan, like Carnegie, recognized that individuals– when left free to use their property as they wish– generate far more social good than an intrusive, regulatory, redistributive welfare state.
Reagan also sought to limit the government that Roosevelt wanted to expand. He recognized that America is "a nation that has a government– not the other way around”. American government, Reagan realized, does not have unlimited powers subject to changing circumstances. Rather, “[o]ur government has no power except that granted it by the people"; Reagan wished to "check and reverse the growth of government, which shows signs of having grown beyond the consent of the governed.” Reagan repudiated Roosevelt's idea that government must expand due to modern society's increasing complexity: “[W]e have been tempted to believe that society has become too complex to be managed by self-rule... But if no one among us is capable of governing himself, then who among us has the capacity to govern someone else?” His words directly echoed Thomas Jefferson: "Sometimes it is said that man cannot be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others?” (Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address). Reagan shared with Jefferson a vision of permanently limited government, which “shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned” (Jefferson’s First Inaugural Address).
Reagan's vision of individual freedom, limited government, and respect for entrepreneurial activity reflects the American heritage as conceived by Locke, Jefferson, Jackson, and Carnegie. Reagan wanted government restricted to its proper functions while respecting everyone's property rights and leaving all people free to pursue prosperity and happiness. In contrast, Roosevelt violated the very basics of the American heritage, denying the primacy of individual self-sovereignty, rejecting the eternity and immutability of individual natural rights, and giving government full license to expand in conformity with social changes.
FDR was a true Socialist.
True, but he knew how to fight a war. (Although, to be fair, most Americans did, back then.)
"The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America."
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his State of the Union Address on January 4, 1935. A moment later, he declared, "The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief."
He was in action, plus he was surrounded by communists.
later read
Pure lip service. He continued to dole out the relief for another 12 years. He gave us the Social Security ponzi scheme, too.
To say this is not to suggest that the two men were fundamentally similar; they had a much different understanding of the proper function of government. FDR's highly flexible view of good government closely mirrors the "living Constitution" school of constitutional interpretation among liberal jurists. But not all New Deal reforms were a bad thing. (The FDIC for the banking industry leaps to mind.) It was LBJ's Great Society that radically redefined the relationship between the individual and the state, to a point that FDR's spiritual progeny would hardly recognize.
Indeed. FDR's "Court Packing Bill" was about getting a "living document" majority on the court. His New Deal programs kept getting shot down by the originalist majority.
Marking.
Great piece, Gennady. A little judicious pruning and the addition of an anecdote or two to personalize the ideas and you would have an essay suitable for popular media.
If you express yourself extemporaneously as well as you do in print, you have to find a microphone to get in front of.
If he had send a single Marine regiment over to throw the Germans out of the Rhineland in 1935, the general staff would have bumped off Herr Schicklegruber, and locked up his buds.
Soviet Union took advantage of German agression to take half of Poland, then took advantage of US need for massive ground forces to beat Germany and Japan to take the rest of eastern Europe.
Japan would have been less likely to go it alone. Their agression was excited by the weakness or preoccupation of the colonial nations, Britain, Netherlands, and France.
At the end of WWII the Soviet Union installed a Soviet Officer as head of "North Korea". That guy's son runs that particular madhouse today. The Soviet Union also turned over Japanese weapons to Mao tse Tung, a noted child molester/paedophile, whose heirs run that madhouse today.
Could have saved some 50 million lives by committing a single Marine Regiment.
Marine invasion of Iwo Jima was useless, being too far from Japan to provide fighter escort. Although US bombers did make a few emergency landings there, most landings were "for training". The few crews saved by having that airfield were nowhere near compensation for the Army and Marines who died.
D-Day was a horrific blunder. The British wanted to do a night landing to sneak ashore. The US wanted an afternoon landing so US firepower could smash the defenses. The compromise: land at dawn for no stealth, and no chance to use firepower before the first wave. The US plan to go straight at the exits to the beach were horribly costly at Omaha beach. Eventually, a destroyer shot up enough beach defenses, and the surviving soldiers winkled around the remaining defenses, in a manner contrary to their orders, so the exits to the beach were eventually taken.
The Germans marveled at how the US showed up for battle in 1944 with the same tanks they had first fielded in 1942... with the US economic plant, they were astounded that we didn't have a tank with better armor, better guns. Instead brilliant people like Patton and Abrams had to come up with tactics that used minor advantages like reliability, speed, and faster turrent rotation speeds, to beat the German tanks.
Aberdeen proving grounds didn't want to field the 90mm antitank gun. They put out reports stating that the 3 inch gun was superior to the German 88mm gun. Eventually the US 90mm gun was fielded, on Pershing tanks too late to have an effect, on M-36 tank destroyers, and most embarrasingly, on towed guns which were routinely smashed after their first shot revealed their position. Patton thought the 90mm towed guns were so worthless he pulled their crews, and used them to guard prisoners.
Alas, FDR was even more incompetent at running the military than he was at running (ruining) the economy.
No, he didn't know how to fight a war, but the US was still strong enough after his 8 year recession to win anyways, but he had to sell out Eastern Europe and China to get the Soviets to cooperate.
How strong was the US compared to Germany and Japan? One measure of the strength of an economy at that time was the number of Cyclotrons. Germany had 2. Japan had 1. The US had 30. Still, with his blundering, his dithering, and FDR's subordination of US interests to Britain and the Soviet Union, we had a tough go of it for 4 years. 395,000 US casualties are a pretty severe black mark on FDR's record.
FDR could claim his beliefs on Locke, Hobbes, or Rosseau..ultimately what matters is results. FDR turned over the treasury (and the US gold supply) to private bankers, he ushered in the era of big federal government, wasteful federal programs that he never scaled back despite claiming to do so, engaging in war against Germany when Japan alone had attacked us (and leading to hundreds of thousands of lost American lives), and sticking us with an inefficient and unworkable SS system that we must contend with today. FDR is the most overrated President in the 20th century. He bailed out the US by selling our country to private bankers whom we have been indebted to ever since. Go visit Ft. Knox- very little of the gold there is owned by the US govt.
As for Reagan, he lost no American lives. He won the Cold War through diplomacy and exploiting USSR's fundamental economic weakness. He managed to cut taxes, expand federal revenues, and increase govt. services; he would have balanced the budget had the Dem Congress not rejected his Grace Commission proposals. He brought an economy back from the dead without turning our remaining fortunes over to private bankers, like FDR. I'd be glad to argue this ad nauseum- FDR was one of the worst presidents in US history; Reagan was quite likely the best in modern times.
ping
Thanks for your insight.
bump
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