Change and the New Deal

Voters in their zealousness for "change" have given us a President and legislature hungry to bring back the old failed policies of the FDR administration.

There is no doubt that the policies of “New Deal” were blatantly statist and centralized Government power. Essentially Roosevelt’s policies declared war on the Jeffersonian legacy of individualism and decentralized government.

As historians have repeatedly revealed, the origins of these policies came from soviet literature in communist publications lauded by intellectuals and progressives some of which had earlier sailed to Europe and traveled to Russia and met with Joseph Stalin. Many of these “travelers” as Amity Shlaes calls them in her book “The Forgotten Man” sympathized with communism and felt that many aspects of it could be successfully implemented back home. Many of these travelers such as, Raymond Moley, Rex Tugwell, and Adolf Berle became part of FDR’s Brain Trust. Others actually were appointed to cabinet level positions in FDR’s administration.

Harry Hopkins, one of FDR’s advisors and one of the principle architects of the “New Deal” was a communist sympathizer and a suspected Soviet agent. Hopkins, a Brain Truster, supervised the WPA and held the position of Secretary of Commerce from 1938 to 1940.

Then there were those who were outright communists themselves. One such example can be found in Lauchlin Currie, an economic adviser to President Franklin Roosevelt , Alger Hiss in the State department, Harry Dexter White a high ranking official in the Department of Treasury, etc.

The New Deal virtually destroyed laissez-faire capitalism in this country which was already under assault by interventions implemented by Woodrow Wilson such as the Federal Reserve and the federal income tax. But it was changes made by FDR’s administration that made the quantum leap towards statism and centralization.

Now under the leadership of FDR’s contemporary cronies we are promised “change” once again. What change? Promising to take more control of private and publicly traded financial institutions, as Obama, Bernanke, and Geithner are calling for, virtually taking over every part of the economy is “change” that would make FDR and his Brain Trusters proud.

“Change” so brazenly socialist that even Vladimir Putin took notice warning the Obama administration of the dangers of socialism.

“In the 20th century, the Soviet Union made the state’s role absolute,” Putin said during a speech at the opening ceremony of the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. “In the long run, this made the Soviet economy totally uncompetitive. This lesson cost us dearly. I am sure nobody wants to see it repeated.”

One thing is for sure the most prominent features of socialism and fascism is government inserting itself into private institutions.

The Obama administration has taken the “New Deal” to new heights never imagined in FDR’s day. “Change” maybe, but certainly nothing new. It is the same failed philosophies that the travelers brought back from Soviet Russia and were implemented by FDR. FDR used the crisis of the Great Depression as a segue for implementing sweeping socialist changes. Rahm Emmanuel, Obama’s chief of staff, agrees “Never let a good crisis go to waste.” There is nothing new here folks, Obama’s “change” is nothing more than a modern reincarnation of FDR’s New Deal, ushering in a new wave of outmoded collectivist idealism.