Emulating FDR is a Horrible Idea

Another Jonah Goldberg writing, via Glenn Beck email blast.

**SPECIAL REPORT: Emulating FDR is a horrible idea**

This is the final special report in a week-long series with author Jonah Goldberg, investigating how Liberal Fascism is trying to control your life from the cradle to the grave. Don't miss tonight on TV as Glenn spends a full hour with Jonah Goldberg at 7 and 9pm ET, only on Headline News. And look for a recap of this series, the TV segments and the special reports will all be included in Monday's newsletter.

Emulating FDR: A horrible idea
By Jonah Goldberg

"America has a dictator," Benito Mussolini proclaimed, watching FDR from abroad. He marveled at how the forces of "spiritual renewal" on display in the New Deal were destroying the outdated notion that democracy and liberalism were "immortal principles." "Roosevelt is moving, acting, giving orders independently of the decisions or wishes of the Senate or Congress. ... A sole will silences dissenting voices." That almost sounds like Harry Reid talking about Bush.

Mussolini reviewed FDR's book, Looking Forward proclaiming the author a kindred spirit. The way Roosevelt "calls his readers to battle," he wrote, "is reminiscent of the ways and means by which fascism awakened the Italian people." "Without question," he continued, the "sea change" in America "resembles that of fascism." Indeed, the comparisons were so commonplace, Mussolini's press office banned the practice. "It is not to be emphasized that Roosevelt's policy is fascist because these comments are immediately cabled to the United States and are used by his foes to attack him."

The German press adored FDR. In 1934, the Vlkischer Beobachter, the Nazi Party's official newspaper, described Roosevelt as a man of "irreproachable, extremely responsible character and immovable will" and a "warm-hearted leader of the people with a profound understanding of social needs." Hitler sent FDR a letter celebrating his "heroic efforts" and "successful battle against economic distress." Hitler informed the U.S. ambassador, William Dodd, that New Dealism was also "the quintessence of the German state philosophy."

The New Dealers were not so much mimicking the Soviet Union, Fascist Italy or Nazi Germany. They were attempting to recreate what they had built -up under Woodrow Wilson's war socialism. Today we have no historical memory of how brutal the Wilson Administration was, nor do we realize that many Progressives supported the war not so much because they championed its foreign policy aims, but because they yearned for the "social possibilities of war," in the words of John Dewey, the 20th century's premier political philosopher.

The war provided an opportunity to force Americans to, as journalist Frederick Lewis Allen put it, "lay by our good-natured individualism and march in step." Or as another progressive put it, "Laissez faire is dead. Long live social control."

It was this spirit which informed FDR's administration. By 1944 he made good on Wilson's conviction that the US constitution was outmoded and in need of replacing with a new "living constitution." FDR's proposed innovation was a new "economic bill of rights" which included:

>The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation.

>The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.

>The right of every family to a decent home.

>The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.

You read correctly, the right to 'recreation'.

With the intellectuals on their side, Wilson recruited journalist George Creel to become a propaganda minister as head of the newly formed Committee on Public Information (CPI).

Mr. Creel declared that it was his mission to inflame the American public into "one white-hot mass" under the banner of "100 percent Americanism." Fear was a vital tool, he argued, "an important element to be bred in the civilian population."

The CPI printed millions of posters, buttons, pamphlets, that did just that. A typical poster for Liberty Bonds cautioned, "I am Public Opinion. All men fear me!... [I]f you have the money to buy and do not buy, I will make this No Man's Land for you!"

Meanwhile, the CPI released a string of propaganda films with such titles as "The Kaiser," "The Beast of Berlin," and "The Prussian Cur." Remember when French fries became "freedom fries" in the run-up to the Iraq war? Thanks in part to the CPI, sauerkraut become "victory cabbage."

Under the Espionage Act of 1917 and the Sedition Act of 1918, Wilson's administration shut down newspapers and magazines at an astounding pace. Indeed, any criticism of the government, even in your own home, could earn you a prison sentence. One man was brought to trial for explaining in his own home why he didn't want to buy Liberty Bonds.

The Wilson administration sanctioned what could be called an American fascist, the American Protective League. The APL - a quarter million strong at its height, with offices in 600 cities - carried government-issued badges while beating up dissidents and protesters and conducting warrantless searches and interrogations. Even after the war, Wilson refused to release the last of America's political prisoners, leaving it to subsequent Republican administrations to free the anti-war Socialist Eugene V. Debs and others.

The left claims that president Bush seeks to do something like this with the war on terror. But look at the evidence. No newspapers closed down, a sum total of three detainees water-boarded, two hard core terrorists who happen to be American citizens have had their habeus corpus rights "infringed." After 9/11 President Bush asked the American people to go shopping, not to give up capitalism.

Meanwhile, on the left, self-styled progressives keep trying to recreate the New Deal and the progressive era. New York Times columnist pines for a "new progressive era." Barack Obama gushed about how he was re-dedicating his campaign at the University of Wisconsin where the Progressive movement was born. Hillary says she's not a liberal but a "modern progressive."

Now, obviously, none of the current crop of self-described progressives are eager to replay the darkest chapters of the past. But we make a mistake when we assume that we can cherry pick only the good parts of our past to re-create.
Jonah Goldberg is the author of the New York Times bestseller Liberal Fascism.

Folks, if you have been following the Glenn Beck email blasts I have been copy/pasting here, ya gotta agree this is probably the most scariest and eye opening.

Here is the transcript of Wall Street Journal's Stephen Moore on the Glenn Beck Radio Program. I will provide some snippets of what Mr. Moore calls Obamanomics. Think taxes are bad now? If what Mr. Moore says is true, "President Obama" would make it worse. Read on and see what I mean.

• Obama raises the roof...and taxes

• Audio Available:

• February 20, 2008 - 12:28 ET
• GLENN: Hello, you sick twisted freak, welcome to it. The next President of the United States is going to be Barack Obama and our new national anthem is... I think, I'm just guessing is -- I mean, why not. Let's be honest. This is a kick-butt national anthem. I like it better than ours. I don't know what the words mean, but -- and don't send them to me because I'm not going to open e-mail. But -- no, I'm not. No, I'm getting yelled at that I should open up the -- I'm not. I don't want to know what the word -- look, you don't want to know what Barack Obama's policies are. I don't want to know what the words are of this cool national anthem. Sure, it's Soviet, sure, it's probably something about Lenin and, you know, great Stalin killing all the people in the middle of the -- you know. Anyway, I don't want to know it. I just like the way the music sounds, and isn't that all that's really important here? It's hope and change. I like that. This music makes me feel good. Why worry about the details of what the words mean?
• Stephen Moore is with us. He's the chief editorial writer for the economic part. I don't even know. What is your title, Stephen?
• MOORE: Hello, Glenn.
• GLENN: How are you? I never know your title.
• MOORE: I am the senior economics writer for the Wall Street Journal editorial part.
• GLENN: That's way too complex.
• MOORE: That's not important.

• MOORE: Well, we call it Obamanomics and it will be this week and basically we looked at the Obama economic program and it is -- you know, I describe it, Glenn, as the nanny state on steroids.

• MOORE: Well, you have it. He's going to -- you know, people say that Barack Obama is all style and no substance. That's not -- well, he's a lot of style, but the truth is he's telling us what he's going to do if he becomes President on the economy. He's going to raise taxes through the roof, especially if the evidence comes to over $200,000. Of course, those are the people Glenn who are the wealth producers and the job creators. Two thirds of the people, these rich people that he continues to say have to pay more taxes, those are the small businessmen in America. Those are the people who create the jobs.

• GLENN: That if -- you know they are giving away all these tax rebates to people who never -- you know, they didn't pay taxes. If you would just say, hey, everybody gets 1% back of what you paid, if I got 1% of my taxes back, you cut me 1%, I would create jobs with that money.
• MOORE: Yeah, but I've got some good news for you, Glenn. You are not going to have 1% back. You'll probably end up paying about 15% more and that's because the top income tax rate would go, under the Obama plan, from -- today it's about 35% to 40%. But then if you make over $100,000 which isn't, you know, a whole lot of money these days, he also gets rid of --
• GLENN: Remember when $100,000 used to be something.
• MOORE: Yeah, those were the good old days. He gets rid of the cap on the Social Security tax. Right now you pay Social Security tax on income up to $97,000. He would say get rid of that cap. So that's an additional 12% tax that you'd pay. So your marginal tax rate is going to go up to above 50%. We haven't seen tax rates like that in this country since the bad old days of the 1970s.
• GLENN: Wait, wait. But in the bad old days of the 1970s and this is what drives me crazy. In the bad old days of the 1970s, we had all of those loopholes.

• MOORE: Well, that's the other interesting point. I listened to Obama last night and he did go -- I don't know if you listened to him, Glenn, but he went on and on and on and on and one of the things he keeps talking about is getting rid of the special interest groups in Washington. Well, I've lived in this town for 20 years. I'm all in favor of getting rid of the special interest groups but if you raise the tax rate up above 50%, you are going to see legions of special interest groups. You are going to create a new tax shelter industry in this town. I mean, the corporate K Street crowd is going to multiply four fold.

• MOORE: It does because, you know, the original idea behind Social Security was, in fact -- this is amazing statistic. When FDR first instituted Social Security in 19, I believe it was 1936, the first tax was 1% on the employer, 1% on the employee on the first $4,000 of income. Today it's a 15% tax and it's on income up to $100,000 and Obama would just get rid of it. He would essentially transform Social Security, which is supposed to be an insurance program, a retirement pension program, into just a welfare program. And Lord knows we've got enough of those in Washington.
• GLENN: Okay. Now, you also say, so the combination here would raise the highest marginal tax rate on wage and salary income in the U.S. to 52%. That's 39.6 income tax, 2.5 Medicare. Do you think that's going to sit there? 10.2 Social Security tax. For those living in high income tax areas such as California, New Jersey, New York, the combined tax increase could rise to nearly 60%.
• MOORE: Right. And the real problem there, Glenn, I mean, that's a scary number. What makes it doubly scary is that all over the world other countries are cutting their taxes. I mean, there are now 20 countries in the world that have flat taxes of less than 25%. How will American companies and businesses going to be able to compete when they have tax burdens that are twice as high as the companies we're competing against.

• MOORE: Yeah. I was listening to Barack Obama last night and he kept talking about all these wonderful things the Government is going to do for us. If you can't pay your credit card bill, the Government's going to help you. If you can't get health insurance, the Government's going to help you. If you can't get into college, the Government's going to help you. On and on and on. And I'm thinking, you know, it reminded me of what Ronald Reagan used to say, that the Government's big enough to give you everything you've got, is big enough to take everything you've got.
• GLENN: Yeah. It will just be a slave state really. For a lot of people it will just be a slave state. They will take everything from the producers, they will take everything and give it to the nonproducers.

• MOORE: One of the things that Obama has in his plan is something called patriotic corporations and so he divides the country into patriotic corporation and, quote, nonpatriotic corporation.
• GLENN: So FDR. This is so FDR.
• MOORE: I mean, who is going to decide who is a patriotic corporation? By the way, Glenn, I don't think your company's going to be labeled patriotic.
• GLENN: No, I can guarantee it. And you know what's funny? They all say, oh, wrapping yourself in the flag, oh, the PATRIOT Act. Like if you vote against the PATRIOT Act, you are somehow not a patriot. He wants to make patriotic companies!
• MOORE: Yeah. Well, this reminds me of Mussolini. [more here]
  

What Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama Have in Store

This is from an email blast from the Glenn Beck program. Since this is in the actual email and not a link to an article I will provide all of it.

**SPECIAL REPORT: What Hillary and Barack have in store**

This is the second special report in a week-long series with author Jonah Goldberg, investigating how Liberal Fascism is trying to control your life from the cradle to the grave. Don't miss part three tonight on TV: Government Knows Best at 7 pm and 9pm ET, only on Headline News. And look for another special report in tomorrow's newsletter.

What Hillary and Barack have in store
By Jonah Goldberg

The most common left wing definition of fascism is "when business runs the government." Historically, this is basically nonsense. But that hasn't stopped liberals like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from saying it over and over again.

But if we are going to go by that definition, conservatives in the U.S. are hardly the fascists. The principled conservative position is that the free market should rule the day. Businesses are never "too big to fail" and corporate welfare is folly. In all honesty, we must admit that many Republicans fail to live up to these conservative principles. But what are liberal principles? They are simply this: corporations should be "progressive." Government should regulate corporations heavily as a means of using big business as another branch of the state. Hillary Clinton wants "public-private partnerships." She believes that businesses must collude with government in providing universal healthcare to the point where it's impossible to tell where the government begins and business ends. She has contempt for entrepreneurs and small business. When it was pointed out to her that "Hillarycare" would hit small businesses while enriching big corporations, she replied that she couldn't worry about every under-capitalized business in America. Barack Obama, meanwhile, talks incessantly about how government must police the "patriotism" of corporations. His definition of "patriotism" in this regard seems extremely elastic.

We've seen something like this before. Woodrow Wilson implemented a form of "war socialism" during WWI. Big Business and government worked seamlessly together under the auspices of the War Industry Board. Industry rigged the system for its own benefit, with the approval of government. When the war ended, the American people rejected Wilson's war socialism, but Progressive intellectuals didn't. They proclaimed "we planned in war" and, hence, felt they should be allowed to plan the economy during peacetime as well. They looked enviously at Fascist Italy and, even more so, the Soviet Union. These were the sort of grand "experiments" they wanted to conduct here at home. "Why," Stuart Chase asked in his 1932 book, A New Deal (which many credit with originating the phrase) "should the Russians have all the fun of remaking a world?"

They finally had their chance under the New Deal, where FDR - a veteran of the Wilson Administration - tried to recreate what the Progressives had wrought during the war. When Hugh Johnson -- the head of the National Recovery Administration, the centerpiece of FDR's New Deal - took office in 1932, one of the first things he did was hang a portrait of Mussolini on his wall and started handing out pro-fascist literature to FDR's cabinet.

The left has told us that the New Deal rescued the little guy, the "forgotten man." But in reality it prolonged the Great Depression and served as a boon to Big Business.

For example, Clarence Darrow was charged with studying the effects of the NRA. In "virtually all the codes we have examined," he reported, "one condition has been persistent . . . In Industry after Industry, the larger units, sometimes through the agency of . . . [a trade association], sometimes by other means, have for their own advantage written the codes, and then, in effect and for their own advantage, assumed the administration of the code they have framed." We may believe that FDR fashioned the New Deal out of concern for the "forgotten man." But as one historian put it, "The principle seemed to be: to him that hath it shall be given."

The fundamental mistake Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, John Edwards and company make is that they assume "clamping down" on corporations will lessen the role of big business in politics. The reality is exactly the opposite. Microsoft had nearly no lobbyists in Washington DC until Washington DC decided to go after Microsoft. Now, Microsoft has an enormous lobbying operation. Walmart is the same story. Once big business discovers that it's profit margins are determined in Washington, big business focuses on Washington.

Perhaps more importantly, really big corporations like regulations. Coca-Cola can pass its costs onto the consumer. But smaller business are not only hurt by regulations, they are also prevented from competing with the big boys because those regulations serve as a "barrier to entry."

The great "fascist bargain" with big business goes something like this: The government promises corporations market share, a lack of competition and reliable profits in exchange for compliance with its political and ideological agenda. Today big corporations hold up their end of the deal. They buy into global warming (often at a profit) they agree to all the tenets of diversity-mongering and affirmative action. They cast themselves as "Progressive" corporate citizens and in exchange we get economic policies that punish entrepreneurs and inhibit free markets.

This is as it should be according to the Progressives, the New Dealers and today's Democratic Party. And whether you want to call it fascism is up to you, but it fits what liberals have been saying about fascism to a T.

Jonah Goldberg is the author of the New York Times bestseller Liberal Fascism.