We are currently entering a period of intense efforts at revisionist history by the Republican Party and the wealthy right wing elitists whom they represent. These efforts are targeted at the man who is widely regarded by Presidential historians as the
second greatest President in U.S. history – Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is necessary to the cause of the right wing elitists because the ideology that they have sold to the American people since the
Reagan Revolution of 1980 is in the process of being exposed for what it always was.
If Barack Obama has a successful presidency while emulating the policies of FDR, that right wing ideology is likely to be dismissed into the dustbin of history, where it belongs. But if they can successfully obstruct President Obama from instituting his programs for economic recovery, then when our nation fails to recover from its economic crisis in a timely manner they will place the blame on Obama and the Democratic Congress, thereby once again making themselves “relevant”.
Their current game plan is to claim that FDR’s New Deal, which pulled us out of the worst depression in our history,
didn’t work – and by extension, that President Obama’s proposed programs won’t work either. FDR was
re-elected by landslides three consecutive times and ranked by historians as the second greatest President in our history because… well, because his signature program didn’t work!
I have recently posted articles on DU showing that
the New Deal did indeed work and describing the lessons that we should have learned from the
failed policies of FDR’s predecessor, Herbert Hoover – whose failed economic policies are almost identical to those we have lived under for the past eight years and more, and which today’s Republican Party would like to continue.
But that’s not what this post is primarily about. FDR is best known for his New Deal (which DID work, btw) and for his leading us to victory in World War II over perhaps the greatest world-wide threat to humanity in the history of the world. Those things are well known to history, despite current Republican efforts to revise history. So, in this post I will
briefly review the evidence that FDR’s New Deal did work. And then I will discuss the
uncompleted humanitarian efforts for which he is less well known, but that nevertheless remain of great importance to us today.
A brief review of the evidence that FDR’s New Deal DID workWhen FDR took office in March 1933 our nation was in the midst of the worst depression in its history. Our annual gross domestic product had been
nearly cut in half since the Stock Market Crash of three and a half years previously.
Unemployment stood at 25%.
Great income disparity existed in our country, with the top 1% of individuals accounting for 17% of annual income and the top 10% accounting for 44% of annual income.
Within four years of taking office, GDP rose to about 90% of where it had been prior to the Stock Market Crash. In FDR’s first term in office our country experienced a 5.3% increase in jobs – the
greatest percent increase in jobs of the past 20 presidential terms, from 1929 to 2009. As a result, the unemployment rate was approximately cut by more than 40% by the end of his first term. By 1941, prior to the onset of World War II, the unemployment rate had declined to below 10%.
The New Deal was so successful that it lasted for several decades, during which median family income
rose steadily (in 2005 dollars) from $22,499 in 1947 to more than double that, $47,173 by 1980. This period has thus been referred to by Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman as the “
greatest sustained economic boom in U.S. history” – a boom that produced a vibrant middle class that only began to decline with the onset of the Reagan revolution in 1980, which began the dismantling of the New Deal. With that, median family income became stagnant (with a brief respite during the latter years of the Clinton presidency) and income inequality began
a precipitous increase, resulting in today’s current record levels.
FDR’S LESS WELL KNOWN HUMANITARIAN RECORDAnti-imperialismFDR is one of our few presidents with an impressive record of anti-imperialism (Jimmy Carter is the next best example I can think of). During a period of two decades, from 1893 to 1913, the United States embarked on a period of overseas imperialism that brought great misery to the peoples of several other countries. So abrupt was this rise of American imperialism that a journalist for the London
Times described it as “
a break in the history of the world”. During this period we overthrew governments of the sovereign nations of
Hawaii,
Cuba,
Puerto Rico, the Philippines (in
a vicious guerilla war),
Nicaragua, and
Honduras.
FDR made clear in his
inaugural address of 1933 that he intended to reverse that process. In announcing his “
good neighbor policy”, FDR said:
In the field of world policy I would dedicate this nation to the policy of the good neighbor – the neighbor who resolutely respects himself and, because he does so, respects the rights of others.
This was later affirmed by FDR’s Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, who said “No country has the right to intervene in the internal or external affairs of another”. Results of FDR’s anti-imperialistic principles included the
withdrawal of U.S. marines from Haiti and Nicaragua in 1934 and the annulment of the Platt Amendment, which defined our imperialistic control over Cuba.
The beginnings of a world order built upon the concept of human dignityIn the midst of World War II and the Nazi genocide,
prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that led to U.S. entry into the war, the leaders of the only two countries in the world that posed an obstacle to Nazi Germany’s lust for world conquest, Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill, met on a ship in the Atlantic Ocean to discuss the great threat facing them and the world.
FDR and Churchill realized the importance of persuading the populations of their countries and other countries to enthusiastically endorse and support the effort to prevent Nazi tyranny from taking over the world. To those ends they realized that tough talk and threats were not sufficient or even desirable. Rather, they recognized the need to lay out a vision before the world that would clearly show the differences between them and their Fascist enemies. Thus, the
Atlantic Charter of August 14, 1941, which announced the following principles:
Their countries seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other
They desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned
They respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live…
They hope to see established a peace which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety… and which will afford assurance that all the men in all lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want
They believe that all of the nations of the world … must come to the abandonment of the use of force….
They will likewise aid and encourage all other practicable measures which will lighten for peace-loving peoples the crushing burden of armaments.
The whole process is described by Elizabeth Borgwardt in her book, “
http://www.historycooperative.org/journals/jah/93.2/br_107.html">A New Deal for the World – America’s Vision for Human Rights”. The gist of the effort is described in the book jacket:
Elizabeth Borgwardt describes how a cadre of World War Anglo-American planners inaugurated the ideas and institutions that underlie our modern international human rights regime. Borgwardt finds the key in the 1941 Atlantic Charter – buttressed by FDR’s “
Four Freedoms” … redefined human rights and America’s vision for the world.
Three sets of international negotiations brought the Atlantic Charter blueprint to life – Bretton Woods, the United Nations, and the Nuremberg trials…. To varying degrees, these institutions and the debates surrounding them set the foundations for the world we know today (that is, until George W. Bush took the reigns of power).
Following the Nazi Holocaust and World War II the recognition of the need for enforcement of human rights in the world became more acute and widespread. The victorious nations of the world, led by the United States, wasted little time in beginning to make the principles proclaimed in the Atlantic Charter into reality. The creation of the United Nations,
conceptualized and led by FDR, was the beginning of that attempt. The preamble to the
Charter of the United Nations annunciated the following purposes for its creation:
to save succeeding generations from the scourge of war
to reaffirm faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person…
(and) in the equal rights of men and women and of nations large and small
to establish conditions under which justice and respect for… international law can be maintained
to promote social progress and better standards of life
Since its inception, the United Nations has furthered the cause of human rights by adopting numerous conventions, such as Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the
Geneva Conventions, the
Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment, the
International Criminal Court, the
Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide, and the
Kyoto Protocol on climate change.
Stephane Hessel, in a speech titled “Reform of the United Nations and International Humanitarian Law”, from “
International Justice and Impunity”, puts in perspective the debt we all owe to the leadership of FDR:
I would like to emphasize that we have an important debt to American civilization, to the United States, not only because we owe it our liberation at the end of World War II. In my opinion, we have an even more important debt to a US president, and I am thinking naturally of Franklin Roosevelt. As we all know, we would not today have the United Nations without his action…
President Roosevelt is the person who imposed the idea of an international organization... Stalin was not very enthusiastic… Churchill did not much believe in it… It was therefore Roosevelt who imposed such an international organization. And not any kind of organization, but rather the first one in the history of humanity that founded its Charter on values and not merely on the desire for cooperation between powerful States… For the first time… the dignity of the human person and fundamental rights regardless of sex, race, color or political opinion, are inscribed in the founding texts of an international organization…
Hessell then proceeds to discuss the large gap between the purposes of the UN and its application in the real world.
FDR’s Second Bill of RightsCass Sunstein, in his book, “
The Second Bill of Rights – FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need it More than Ever”, describes the philosophy that motivated Roosevelt to fight for his radical (at the time) programs to benefit the American people:
To Roosevelt, human distress could no longer be taken as an inevitable by-product of life, society, or “nature”; it was an artifact of social policies and choices. Much human misery is preventable. The only question is whether a government is determined to prevent it…. Foremost was the idea that poverty is preventable, that poverty is destructive, wasteful, demoralizing, and that poverty is morally unacceptable in a Christian and democratic society.
FDR believed in those principles enunciated in our Declaration of Independence that never made it into our Constitution – that all people have the unalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. To him that meant, in addition to the freedom of speech and freedom of religion enshrined in our First Amendment to our Constitution, people also had the right to freedom from want and freedom from fear – and it was the responsibility of government to provide those rights. That philosophy provided the foundation for his New Deal. But he wanted more than that. He wanted the benefits provided in his New Deal to be enshrined as
permanent rights, in what he called “The Second Bill of Rights”. In his
1944 State of the Union message he enunciated that principle:
We have come to a clear realization of the fact that true individual freedom cannot exist without economic security and independence. Necessitous men are not free men. People who are hungry and out of a job are the stuff of which dictatorships are made.
In our day these economic truths have become accepted as self-evident. We have accepted, so to speak, a second Bill of Rights under which a new basis of security and prosperity can be established for all – regardless of station, race, or creed. Among these are:
Opportunity
The right to a useful and remunerative job…
The right to a good education.
The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies…
Security
The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment.
The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health.
The right of every family to a decent home.
The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation.
Incorporation of FDR’s Second Bill of Rights into International Law after his DeathFollowing FDR’s death in 1945, his wife, Eleanor,
led the effort towards international acceptance of numerous elements of FDR’s Second Bill of Rights, incorporated into the
|Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was adopted by the United Nations in 1948. These rights were then expanded further by The
International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights, which was ratified by 142 nations as of 2003. Paradoxically, the United States, where the Second Bill of Rights originated, has not yet signed that Covenant.
Furthermore, the commitment to economic and social rights throughout the world is manifested by their inclusion in the constitutions of numerous countries. And the
European Social Charter, signed by 24 European countries, establishes such rights as the right to work for fair remuneration, health care and social security.
FDR’S LEGACY IN SUMMARYFDR gave us the New Deal, which did much to pull us out of the Great Depression, build a robust middle class, and set the stage for several decades of the “greatest sustained economic boom in U.S. history”.
He then led the effort to defeat the Nazis, following which he led the creation of an international institution the purpose of which was to establish a legal framework to ensure universal human rights and dignity and social progress and prevent war.
He meant all of these things to be permanent. The New Deal was to be enshrined in a “Second Bill of Rights”. And the United Nations was supposed to provide a legal framework to preserve international order, prosperity, and human rights and dignity
permanently. Though FDR’s efforts provided immense benefits to his country and the world, they didn’t quite turn out to be as permanent as he would have liked.
In 1981 our country was taken over by right wing ideologues in the same mold as those who fought against the New Deal in the 1930s. By that time most Americans were too young to remember what the New Deal did for our country, and too ignorant of history to know better. They bought into the idea that the best way to prosperity is to let unbridled greed reign free and kick government out of the picture. That was the same philosophy that brought us the Great Depression of the 1930s, but most Americans were clueless about that.
Income inequality rose to new heights, leading to immense fortunes in the hands of the few, at the expense of the many. The concentration of immense wealth and political power in the hands of the few brought us the
worst president in U.S. history. Not only did our middle class shrink during this period of time, but we ended up with a presidential administration that shredded our Constitution and violated international law at will, to the point where it became meaningless. The nation that had led the creation of international law and human rights was now the biggest violator of those principles on the planet.
But in 2006 and 2008, the American people began to wise up and vote the right wing ideologues out of office. Now the survivors of this claque, in a desperate effort to maintain their relevance and hold on to their shrinking power, are undertaking an aggressive effort of historical revisionism. The New Deal didn’t Work? Yeah, right, it began to stop working in 1981, when the right wing ideologues took over and began to trash it. Luckily we were able to retain some of it, like Social Security and worker’s compensation, or we’d be right back where we were in the early 1930s.
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