Strange Death of Franklin Roosevelt - Emanuel Josephson |
One of the gravest injuries done the nation by the Marxist New Deal is the decay that it has wrought in the people's moral fibre. There has been a certain measure of decay, some rotten apples in the barrel, from the start. Gradual and insidious changes were brought about by legal and political termites, the disciples of Bismarxian propaganda, who have gnawed at the law and Constitution. This slow process was accelerated in Wilson's Administration. But in Roosevelt's regime, an overnight abrogation of the Constitution was effected on the grounds that it was antiquated. There developed a total disregard of all law by the very public officers who were sworn to uphold it. A destructive transformation was effected in the entire governmental organization that has converted it into the worst type of tyrannic autocracy in which the whim and caprice of every petty bureaucrat is a dictate from which there is no appeal.
In short, government by law and Constitution have ceased to exist. The United States has become as tyranny-ridden and corrupt a land as those of the pashas and viziers. Citizens have no longer any legally defined rights or privileges. There has been substituted for government by law, dictation by insolent, autocratic and irresponsible bureaucrats from whose arbitrary and unprincipled dictates there is no appeal; and rule by favoritism and an unabashedly dishonest officialdom. As a consequence of the disregard of principle and law, the practice of law has degenerated to the practice of "reaching" and bribing key bureaucrats.
This conception has gone so far, even in our courts, that New Dealers themselves are beginning to protest against it. Thus U.S. Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, one of the sponsors of the New Deal placed on the Bench in connection with the packing of the Court, protested against the open collusion involved in the decision handed down by Judge Ben Moore in the CIO test case of the provision of the Taft Hartley Law on the use of union funds for campaign purposes. This section of the law is intended to prevent partial disfranchisement of some members of the unions by compelling them to contribute through union campaign funds to the election of candidates favored by the Labor Barons but opposed by themselves. Undoubtedly an element of this protest was directed to the failure of Judge Moore to disqualify himself because his old firm is employed by the United Mine Workers, CIO.
Equality before the law has ceased to exist. Such equality is decried as unfair and inconsiderate of "human rights". The average employer, the landlord, the investor and the person who has saved his money are criminally suspect and are held guilty in many directions, even if proved innocent. But the laborer, the poor and the improvident are generally held innocent no matter what they do—if they do not transgress against Dynastic interests or Labor Barons.
Property rights have virtually ceased to exist for the average citizen. In the quest for monopoly and dictatorship via Communism, labelled "New Deal", there has been spurned the sound commonsense counsel of Abraham Lincoln to a delegation of union officials who called on him after the New York Draft Riots:
"Property is the fruit of labor; property is desirable; is a positive good in the world. That some should be rich shows that others may be rich, and hence is just encouragement to industry and enterprise. Let not him who is houseless pull down the house of another, but let him labor diligently and build one for himself, thus by example assuring his own shall be safe from violence when built".
In these few commonsense statements applying the "Golden Rule" to property rights, Lincoln reduced to absurdity the fundamental Marxist and New Deal doctrines on property rights. But the Dynasty's malevolent purposes are better served by Marx's insane concepts, which they propagandize and foster in law.
Where there is no honesty in government, none can be expected in private life. Diligent, industrious, principled and provident individuals who provide employment, housing and other necessities of life for their fellow-men are pilloried by law and the government, as criminals on a priori grounds. They are deprived of the benefit of justice and honesty, and the protection of Constitution or law, by corrupt, demagogue officials and servile, venal and self-serving judiciary. In many instances, such as rent control laws, landlords are declared guilty of violating, retroactively, laws which did not exist at the time of the acts in question; and viciously are penalized therefore. A form of "lettre de cachet" has become a favorite "New Deal" device for dealing with those not in its favor.
The dishonesty of the situation is so patent it can not be overlooked by the rising generation. It is a natural consequence that juveniles hold in contempt law, honesty and decency that are so shabbily treated by their elders. Rampant juvenile delinquency is an inevitable result. The corruption, shiftiness, immorality and dishonesty of high public officials, from the President down, adds powerful stimulus to the delinquency of the younger generation.
When the President of the United States brazenly and unabashedly lies to the whole nation in fireside chats, then when he is confronted with his lies adopts the Jesuitical attitude that "the end justifies the means", and is acclaimed for the brazenness of his lying by a servile entourage and press, he is not encouraging honesty in the younger generation. When his folks deport themselves scandalously and with depravity, they are not setting an example of morality for impressionable youngsters.
Children can not be expected to grow up honest, moral and law-abiding when they see about them in public life nothing but dishonesty, corruption and contempt of decency and law; and when they are taught to believe that all public officials must be expected to be crooks. It is useless to appoint commissions to study the prevention of juvenile delinquency, as long as this situation prevails.
A child is not as devious in his mental processes as are so many of its elders. When a man is robbed of his earnings and wealth by law on the pretense of "distributing wealth", they recognize the arrant thievery involved. Rightly they can not see that such thieving is different from thieving on any other pretext. Youngsters are not capable of the casuistry that differentiates between holdups of the nation by corrupt autocrats who have seized its government, and the mugging and if necessary, killing of a man on the street to steal his possessions. They too engage in "distributing wealth" in their favorite direction, themselves.
When Labor Barons, goons, racketeers and thugs have the full blessing of the law in their systematic holdups and betrayal of the nation, what is more natural than that the youth should seek to emulate them in their preying on the community? Why work for a mere wage when by strong-arm tactics one can attain the "eminent" and "enviable" rank of Labor Baron, or his satellite, stand above law and order, levy tribute from both labor and industry, and dictate to the nation?
When impressionable youngsters see their teachers and professors employed as fronts by Labor Barons who dishonestly seek to force industry to pay workers for work that they have not done—by featherbedding, by "portal to portal" pay claims, and seek to bankrupt industry by assessments and levies, by restrictions and work rules, by disregard of property rights and law, and by fake wage claims; when they hear those self-same professors undertake to ethically justify this blackmail; and when they see the prostituted professors cynically appointed "neutral arbitrators" or "commissioners representing the public" in situations that involve them, they are not learning honesty or principle.
When children witness prostitutes engaged in the practice of their art while being maintained on public charity and Relief in hotels on a higher scale of living than can be attained by the average worker ($500 a month and more) and their occupation and mode of life condoned and commended by government "welfare" agencies; when they see crooks and swindlers aided in repaying their thefts with government Relief funds; and when they see people who can afford mink coats and cars, shamelessly receiving aid from Relief agencies—they are being offered little inducement or example to lead honest decent lives.
In short, a life of dishonesty, immorality, crime, force and violence, rather than that of a law-abiding citizen, has become the highest attainable ambition of the youth of the nation. Is it not natural that violence and crime are steadily increasing, and that the world is fast travelling the road to rule by force that prevailed in the Middle Ages?
If force and violence are to be the rule of life of the New Deal, wherein lies its vaunted security? Can there be any security under such a rule, except for the strong-arm man and the thug when at the height of his strength and virility? Are not Marxism and its corollary, the New Deal, rapidly carrying society back to its most primitive state of slavery to force?
Only a return to the principle and freedom of true democracy can save the nation from this atavism.