FDR in 1936

How History Rhymes

Consider these words from FDR, in his State of the Union, on January 3, 1936—a year where autocracy was on the move in the world, and right-wing corporate interests were attacking the New Deal as “un-American,” hoping to undo it all in the coming election:

“Within democratic nations the chief concern of the people is to prevent the continuance of the rise of autocratic institutions that beget slavery at home and aggression abroad. Within our borders, as in the world at large, popular opinion is at war with a power-seeking minority….

“They seek the restoration of their selfish power. They offer to lead us back round the same old corner into the same old dreary street…they engage in vast propaganda to spread fear and discord among the people—they would “gang up” against the people’s liberties…

“The principle that they would instill into government if they succeed in seizing power is well shown by the principles which many of them have instilled into their own affairs: autocracy toward labor, toward stockholders, toward consumers, toward public sentiment. Autocrats in smaller things, they seek autocracy in bigger things….”

“If these gentlemen believe, as they say they believe, that the measures adopted by this Congress and its predecessor…have hindered rather than promoted recovery, let them be consistent. Let them propose to this Congress the complete repeal of these measures…

“Shall we say that because national income has grown with rising prosperity, we shall repeal existing taxes and thereby put off the day of approaching a balanced budget and of starting to reduce the national debt? Shall we abandon the reasonable support and regulation of banking?…”

“Shall we say to the children who have worked all day in the factories, ‘Child labor is a local issue and so are your starvation wages; something to be solved or left unsolved by the jurisdiction of 48 states?’…

“Shall we say to the laborer, ‘Your right to organize, your relations with your employer have nothing to do with the public interest; if your employer will not even meet with you to discuss your problems and his, that is none of our affair?’…

“Shall we say to the unemployed and the aged, ‘Social security lies not within the province of the federal government; you must seek relief elsewhere?’…

“Shall we say to the men and women who live in conditions of squalor in country and city, ‘The health and the happiness of you and your children are of no concern of ours?’…

“Members of Congress…[i]f this is what these gentlemen want, let them say so to the Congress of the United States. Let them no longer hide their dissent in a cowardly cloak of generality. Let them define the issue. We have been specific in our affirmative action. Let them be specific in their negative attack…

“But the challenge faced by this Congress is more menacing than merely a return to the past—bad as that would be. Our resplendent economic autocracy does not want to return to the individualism of which they prate…They realize that in 34 months we have built up new instruments public power. In the hands of a people’s government this power is wholesome and proper. But in the hands of political puppets of an economic autocracy such power would provide shackles for the liberties of the people….

“Their weapon is the weapon of fear. I have said, ‘The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.’ That is as true today as it was in 1933. But such fear as they instill today is not a natural fear, a normal fear; it is a synthetic, manufactured, poisonous fear that is being spread subtly, expensively, and cleverly by the same people who cried in those other days, ‘Save us, save us, lest we perish.’..

'“In the light of our substantial material progress, in the light of the increasing effectiveness of the restoration of popular rule, I recommend to the Congress that we advance; that we do not retreat.”