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Entry: The Real American Right: Part II Link: http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_real_american_right_part_ii#13677 Post contents: What is badly needed today is a fair and balanced assessment of both FDR and 'the Old Right'. Currently one is lionised and the other is smeared. Rothbard (and Raimondo's) contribution is helping to balance the scales. My guess is that ultimately FDR will be seen as a vain but imaginative politician who gave the American people 'hope' in the midst of the Great Depression (when they really wanted jobs) and 'leadership' in war (when they really wanted peace). We can still make a more balanced judgement, even if, in the overall scheme of things, we believe America and FDR's intervention against the vile Hitler and his regime was all told "a good thing" for mankind. Even if that intervention wasn't quite based on the 100% pure motives as FDR lionisers constantly recycle. A balanced conclusion does not vindicate FDR entirely nor does it mean the isolationists were 'wrong' or FDR somehow unusually farsighted (certainly any farsight he may have had about Hitler was lost on Stalin). A balanced history would note that in real world history venality, vice and virtue can all come wrapped in the same package. It's not "either / or". The isolationists claimed (like Beard and Flynn) that opportunistic militarism followed from the economic failures of the New Deal, especially after the 1937 and on "Roosevelt Depression". Other isolationists, (like Wheeler) often former Progressives, noted that FDR's push for an unprecedented third term and court packing were a threat to traditional constitutional republicanism. The war drive was seen as more of the same. Some believed that the ultimate geopolitical winner of any intervention would be the USSR, and it is hard for any impartial observer to disagree that that is what actually happened. None of these charges are nutty or extreme or somehow or other repudiated by subsequent history. A good test is to imagine the reaction were say George W Bush to discover yet another foreign threat soon after a deep economic downturn. Imagine if Bush claimed that "the war on terrorism" or the dollar crisis required that he stay on for a couple more terms, and imagine if he instituted unprecedented Congressional and Supreme Court changes to ensure his reign. I don't think modern liberals would hold back for a moment in calling him a prospective tyrannt. So it's a bit rich for modern liberals to deny FDR's contemporary critics from making comparable claims against their hero. The isolationists may have been wrong in opposing war with Hitler, or in under-estimating the depravity of the Hitler regime (just as the left to this day has continued to understate the depravity of the communist regimes) ..but their expose of the process used to take America into the so called "Good War" was certainly more right than wrong. Many of the Old Right had previously witnessed how the process of Presidential war making had taken America into WW1, an intervention that certainly had disastrous results, both diplomatically and economically, so they naturally opposed one of Wilson's under-studies (FDR had been Asst Sec of Navy under Wilson) repetition of the act. And one of the things they did predict was that a long term consequence of the intervention would be an erosion of the republic. Many Old Righters expected the erosion to proceed more quickly than it did proceed in fact, but few unbiased observers could claim their fears for the republic were unfounded, or disproved by subsequent history. Those who believe that the intervention was proven correct by history, and by the crimes of Hitler, know that even noble victories come at a price, and unfortunately part of that price has been massive damage to the machinery of the American republic. There is no need for modern paleos to refight the lost campaign against intervention in WW2. Or even claim that the AFC was right all along. The Old Right should be honoured for the things they got right, not buried because of what they got wrong. And of course they were right that in the long run, and in most cases, the case for non-intervention is usually the wisest and safest course for the American republic. WW2 was no 'watershed of history', just because the campaign against the real Hitler was right does not mean that that a perpetual war policy everywhere forever is required. Nor does it mean that the observations and recommendations of the Framers, and the Old Right, need to be consigned to the trash bin. Sent at: 2008 05 16