Children of Roosevelt

"It was on the dignity of the Senate that Augustus and his successors founded their new empire…. In the administration of their own powers, they frequently consulted the great national council, and seemed [italics in original] to refer to its decision the most important concerns of peace and war…. The masters of the Roman world surrounded their throne with darkness, concealed their irresistible strength, and humbly professed themselves the accountable ministers of the Senate, whose supreme decrees they dictated and obeyed…. Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by names; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the Senate and the people would submit to slavery, provided they were respectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom." —Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire [*]

What the November elections accomplished was the usual trickery, the people voted for the other party and the other party gave the people a little room to breathe. Both party oligarchies knew it was necessary, one party rule is problematic for two-party collusion to effectively work. The amount of time that the new majority party can partake of the public’s goodwill born out of desperation is something that does not worry our politicians as much as it once did in the history of the country. The politicians are anachronistic in terms of what really drives our garrison state, war. We can thank Franklin Roosevelt for this, for whether Democrat or Republican the politicians and the people are all children of Roosevelt.

While the role of the politicians is indispensable to the Caesar as guardians of the people the people themselves are caught in the circumstances of our time. Forty percent of Americans were not born during the revolutionary world movements of the sixties. The rebellious spirit in the form it took forty years ago seems anathema to people now. The funkiness has been replaced by a need for purification with an emphasis on proper diet and strict rules of behavior. This became evident when many on the left ridiculed conspiracists and denounced the anti-war people who rallied around the fraudulent Howard Dean. People no longer seem to understand that movements of the grassroots are not pretty and hardly pure especially in the early stages. People today place a great emphasis on what are rightly good pursuits, staying exercised, eating healthily, abstention from harmful substances. In any case, people are only doing today what seems best for them to do individually. The consequence is that rebelliousness which is always more than a little dirty is ruled out by the greater need for personal purity.

Many on the left get their information from those who write in the present from a Rooseveltian liberal perspective. Essentially this is the notion that from 1945 onwards every administration has been consistent in foreign policy and yet somehow it was the right thing for America to have fought the second world war (which is why we have the foreign policy that we do). That, while certainly America was wrong to embargo Japan, particularly finally, of oil, it was wrong of Japan to attack Pearl Harbor. That we had to fight Japanese imperialist aggression. That our entry into the Pacific war and Europe’s war were "necessary." (Chomsky).

The major complaints about America’s foreign policy come from what America did after World War II when people were propagandized away from reading the works of true liberals of the time who resisted America’s foreign intervention in Europe or Japan. Today people will point out the excessive bombing campaigns by the allies on Dresden, or, the atom bombs dropped on Japan, or our internment of the Japanese. But the basic premise, that America was right to engage in Roosevelt’s war is never challenged. People are unfamiliar with the eloquent arguments against American interventionism in the prophetic writings true liberals who were derisively labeled revisionists by the "new liberals." They wrote of what would befall this nation and the world if America ended its policy of neutrality which was the platform that won Roosevelt the election in 1932. Most people do not remember or do not know that Americans were sick of war after the the first world war and voted for Roosevelt specifically because of his anti-war platform and his promise that he would keep America out of one.

While America’s internment of the Japanese in this country is well known few Americans are aware of Roosevelt’s order endorsed by the liberals of his time for the melting of book plates. By government order all books that dealt with American foreign policy from 1937 were either not allowed to be re-printed or allowed to go to press at all. It is literally true that of all the books in print in 1940 almost none are now available except for the Bible, dictionaries and encyclopedias and some classics or textbooks. Roosevelt said he needed the metal derived from printing. It was an absurd order but an effective one. The writers who were against Roosevelt and his foreign interventionism were blacked out of our historical readings.

People today might find it a moot point. World War II is over, Hitler was horrible, it is good he was "stopped" (sound familiar?). That he was replaced by Stalin and American imperialism with equally grave consequences is sometimes considered but requires double-think because the notion that America had to enter the European war is thought of as correct. Besides, Hitler by now is an industry, whether he was a vegetarian or a meat eater is somehow important enough for another book. We are after all,children of Roosevelt. We may complain about America’s foreign policy since 1945 but rarely examine it from 1932.