ambassador to Italy, Breckenridge Long, was also full of enthusiasmrnfor the “new experiment in government” whieh “worksrnmost successfullv.” Henry Stimson (secretary of state underrnHoover, secretary of war under Roosevelt) recalled that he andrnHoover had foimd Mussolini to be “a sound and useful leader.”rnRoosevelt shared many of these positive views of “that admirablernItalian gendeman,” as he termed Mussolini in 1933.rnThe most radical aspect of the New Deal was the NationalrnIndustrial Recover)- Act, passed in June 1933, which set up thernNational Reeoverv Administration. Most industries werernforced into cartels. Codes that regulated prices and terms ofrnsale transformed much of the American economy. The industrialrnand agricultural life of the country was to be organized byrngovernment into vast farm and industrial cartels. T’his was corporatism,rnthe essence of fascism.rnIt may be argued that Roosevelt simply did what seemed politicall}’rnexpedient. But contemporaries knew what was in thernmaking. Some liked it: Charles Beard freely admitted thatrn”FDR accepts the inexorable collectivism of the Americanrneconomy . . . national planning in industry, business, agriculturernand government.” But detractors existed even within hisrnown party. Democratic Sen. Carter Glass of Virginia denouncedrnthe NRA as “the uttcrl)- dangerous effort of the federalrngovernment at Washington to transplant Hitlerism to every cornerrnof this nation.”rnFDR’s New Deal united communists and fascists. Unionrnleader Sidney Hillman praised Lenin as “one of the fewrngreat men that the human race has produced, one of the greatestrnstatesmen of our age and perhaps of all ages.” Big-businessrnpartisan Gen. Hugh Johnson wanted America to imitate thern”dynamic pragmatism” of Mussolini. Together, Hillman andrnJohnson developed the National Labor Relations Board. Theyrnshared a collectivist and authoritarian aversion for historicalrnAmerican principles of liberty.rnLike fascist and communist dictators, Roosevelt relied on hisrnown charisma, carefully and deceitfully developed, and the executivernpower of his office to stroke the electorate into compliancernand to bludgeon his critics. His welfare projects went farrnbeyond aid to the poor and wound up bribing whole sectors ofrnAmerican society—farmers, businessmen, banks, intellectualsrn— into dependence on him and the state he created.rnThrough subsidies, wrote Richard Hofstadter, “a generation ofrnartists and intellectuals became wedded to the New Deal andrndevoted to Rooseveltian liberalism.” Their corrupted descendantsrnstill thrive through federal endowments for the arts andrnhumanities and in politically correct, federally finidedrnacadeniia. The only practical difference betw een FDR and fascistrndictators was that he was far less successful in resolving therneconomic crisis. He made the Depression worse and even prolongedrnit. Wlien he was elected, there were 11.6 million unemployed;rnseven vears later, there were still 11.3 million out ofrnwork. In 1932, there were 16.6 million on relief; in 1939, therernwere 19.6 million. Only the war eventually ended the depression.rnAh, the war. During the campaign of 1940, FDR repeatedlyrnpromised to keep the country out of war and then did everythingrnin his power to push America into the mayhem. InrnMarch 1941, he rammed the Lend-Lease Act through Congress,rnalthough selling munitions to belligerents and conveyingrnthem were acts of war and contrary to international law. Duringrnthe Ariantic conference, FDR entered into an illegal andrnunconstitutional agreement with Churchill that Americarnwould go to war if Japan attacked British territorv in the FarrnFast. He said, “I may never declare war; I may make war. If Irnwere to ask Congress to declare war they might argue about itrnfor three months.” This was an impeachable offense. He allowedrnundercoN’cr British agents to operate freely and illegalKrnwithin the LInited States. His unprovoked belligerency towardrnthe Japanese as well as the Germans helped cause the attack onrnPearl Harbor—which he may well have been fully aware of inrnadvance —even as he vilified and persecuted the critics of hisrn|5olicies as “Nazis” and “traitors.”rnWorld War II nevertheless remains “the holy war of thernAmerican establishment,” as Joe Sobran has called it. It legitimizedrnthe emergence of the United States as a global superpower,rncontrarv to the Constitution and to the American tradition.rnBetween 1941 and 1945, Washington became therncomniand-and-control center of the ultra-centralized, unitaryrnstate that toda’ seeks “benevolent global hegemony.” Just as thernNew Deal created the bureaucratic Leviathan and destroyedrnthose vestiges of the Old Republic that had survived Lincoln,rnFDR’s war turned America into a “superpower” obliged to carnrnthe burdens of democracy and human rights forever—first tornSeoul and Saigon, then to Bosnia and Kosovo, and on to mi.ssionsrnyet unimagined, to new Hitlers and “victims of genocide”rnstill unknown, until it destroys itselfrn”It seems to me,” wrote H.L. Mencken in his private diary onrn.pril 1 ^. 1945, the day after FDR’s death, “to be very likely thatrnRoosevelt will take a high place in American popular histon,’—rnmaybe even alongside Washington and Lincoln . .. He had everyrnquality that morons esteenr in their heroes.” FDR built arncult of personality just as Mussolini, Hitler, and Stalin did.rnPower depends on such a cult. His current sainthood wouldrnhave appalled many of his contemporaries, even if it would notrnhave surprised them. “He was the first American,” wroternMencken, “to penetrate to the real depths of vulgar stupidih’.rnHe never made the mistake of overestimating the intelligencernof the American mob.” For those Americans who love the OldrnRepublic, Franklin Roosevelt—not an irrelevant Mussolini —rnwas and remains the enemy.rnWhen Mussolini left the stage 55 years ago, the Italian nationrnwas still its old self Over two decades of fascism had left Italianrnsociety and its key institutions—family, Church, education,rnarts, culture, local connnunities —largely intact, or evenrnstrengthened. II Duce was, in the end, all smoke and little fire,rntoo humane to murder people on any large scale or to re-engineerrnseriously the country which he did love, albeit in a flawedrnway.rnFDR left the stage onl)’ weeks earlier, but his legacy is alivernand well in the destruction of America’s families, faith, tradition,rneducation, arts, culture, and local communities, and inrnthe burgeoning globalist empire embodied in Dr. Albright.rnFDR’s “‘ision thing” has become a global bane. It leaves norncountry unscathed, Italy included, as the rubbish on Italian ^FVrnand radio, the newly arrived alien multitudes in bad and evenrnnot-so-bad parts of Milan, and the dismally few bambini in itsrnmaternitv’ wards attest. This bane will just as surely destroy Ital’rnas it will destroy America unless the supporters of truth, faith,rnand tiadition on both sides of the Atlantic organize and fight tornrecover their neighborhoods, their schools, and their familiesrnfor the sake of themselves, their nations, and our common civilization.rn18/CHRONICLESrnrnrn