Brad McCormick:
> I am not expert here, but I once heard/read that Franklin Roosevelt's
> National Recovery Act (NRA) was perceived by some at the time as
> fascist.
>
> But FDR conjures up the image of "fascism with a human face", and
> I have previously speculated that such may be the best deal
> our population-and-technology-and-just-about-everything-else
> out of control world can hope for.
>
> Another thing about the FDR example: I read somewhere that Herbert
> Hoover's reason for not intervening more actively in the 1929
> economic crisis was that he believed that if America could
> not pull itself up by its own bootstraps then it deserved to
> collapse, rather than being propped up by massive government intervention.
> Hoover clearly *could* have acted more "fascistically" (as FDR was to do),
> since Hoover had organized America's rescue of Europe after WWI
> (I forget what that program was called...) -- which possibly tipped
> the balance for the survival of capitalism there vis-a-vis the
> communist popular uprisings in Germany etc.
There is a tremendous difference between glorifying the state and putting
its interests above those of individuals, as Hitler, Mussolini and Stalin
did, and doing what FDR did to try to "prime the pump" and get the US
economy moving during the Great Depression. American political philosophy,
as I understand it, is founded on the primacy of individual interests over
those of the state. It is often carried to what non-Americans like myself
see as ridiculous extremes, as in the case of the right to bear arms and pay
your own medical bills. But my point is that both FDR and Hoover came out of
a similar philosophical milieu. Neither were in any sense fascists. Where
they differed was in the degree to which they were willing to try new
approaches to solve large-scale economic problems. In this regard, FDR was a
thoroughly up-to-date man, whereas Hoover was still stuck on the
laissez-faire economics of the 19th Century. You couldn't really blame poor
Hoover, because all of his exposure was to old ideas, not new ones. In terms
of old ideas, by doing nothing, he was doing everything right. By the time
FDR came along, Keynesian ideas were already having an impact even though
the General Theory was not published until he had been President for some
three years.
I'm not saying that Brad is doing this, but for anyone to suggest that FDR
or Hoover or any other US president behaved, or could have behaved, as
fascists, is to indulge in historic revisionism. Undoubtedly, Presidents
are, and were, part of powerful oligarchies, but oligarchies which shared
the American belief in restricting the powers of the state to the minimum
needed to maintain a cohesive society and look after American interests
abroad.
Ed Weick
Visit my rebuilt website at:
http://members.eisa.com/~ec086636/
