Critical Biography of Franklin D. Roosevelt

Despite its title, "Fascism Comes To America," this multi-page web work is a critical biography of President Roosevelt. It's far from being the comprehensive and largely balanced work by Conrad Black, but it is revealing. Its author, Professor Ralph Raico, starts off by highlighting Mr. Roosevelt's patrician upbringing, his undistinguished academic record, and his early unambitiousness outside of politics. Since this is a critical biography, the author does not lace hints of Mr. Roosevelt's future greatness as a politican into this part of the biography. Instead, Prof. Raico hints at a prominent feature of the future President Roosevelt's personal style: an unusual combination of ethical slipperiness and moralizing streak. It's hard to avoid the impression that the alpha and the omega of Roosevelt's ideology was the substitution of Demon Greed for Demon Rum.

According to Prof. Raico, the forging of Roosevelt's later performance style took place during his appointment as Undersecretary of the Navy during Woodrow Wilson's administraton. At that time, Franklin Roosevelt was not only Anglophilic, but also intensely pro-war. While he was undersecretary, he developed the habit of "delivering the goods," sometimes behind the back of his boss, while breaking the rules and even laws. The latter, he bragged about right after the war's end. Anyone who has studied the characteristic kind of pragmatism Americans showed during World War 2 may recognize an echo of Roosevelt's own style.

One incident during his tenure is worth highlighting because it may very well be the anchor for the War on Drugs:

It seems that the naval base at Newport, Rhode Island, had become a center for such things as excessive drinking, prostitution, and drug dealing as well as homosexual activity. It was principally this last that disturbed a number of prominent local citizens. Roosevelt set up a secret investigating team, called "Section A – Office of the Assistant Secretary," to uncover and root out the licentious miscreants. He stipulated that there was to be no written communication regarding the case. Instead, his appointees were to report to him from time to time in person.

Since it is exceedingly difficult, in the nature of things, to obtain evidence of consensual sexual acts, the diligent inquisitors employed the default method in such cases – entrapment. Homosexuals were enticed by the use of "straight" sailors, some as young as 16, who allowed lewd acts to be performed upon them. When this became known, there was outrage in Newport. In Washington, a naval commission, headed by an old friend of Roosevelt's, was formed to probe the question. One member of Section A testified that he had, indeed, reported the relevant facts to Roosevelt; the other member was excused from testifying on account of "illness." Franklin himself vehemently denied any knowledge of the immoral methods used by the secret team he had set up – in essence, his claim was that his attitude had been "don't ask, don't tell." In the end, the naval commission exonerated him, thus saving his career.

Prof. Raico mentions in passing that Roosevelt, during Prohibition, consumed alcohol regularly; such a practice was standard amongst the uppers and near-uppers in 1920s America. One of the unanswered questions about that era is whether or not the phrase "above the law" acquired a particular heat during Prohibition.

The controversial question of whether or not President Roosevelt was a "secret Communist" is handled deftly by Prof. Raico. The professor points out that, as of the first Roosevelt Administration, the Communist Party of the United States was regularly hostile to President Roosevelt; the latter treated Communism with disdain. (This disdain may explain why there were so many closet Communists in the entire Roosevelt administration. A man who thinks that Communists are nice nut-cases is not going to see them as any kind of a threat.) As Prof. Raico makes clear, any seeming sympathy for Communism was actually chumminess with Stalin. He also notes that the policy of the U.S. government not recognizing tyrannical nations was an innovation of President Wilson in 1913, and was contrary to earlier U.S. tradition.

With regard to any Rooseveltian sympathy for fascism, Prof Raico presses the case through illustrating President Roosevelt's actions, but Franklin D. Roosevelt's character leaves certain doubts. Was the Roosevelt administration, during peacetime, somewhat fascistic merely because fascism was trendy in the early 1930s? Given the man's slipperiness, this explanation for the 1930s dabble with fascism is both consistent with that part of Franklin Roosevelt's character and is simpler. The man was usually a trend-chaser and his pronoucements were habitually vague.