The Temple That FDR Built

If you're worried about the state of the Union these days, imagine how much more worried you would be if the incoming president declared during his inauguration, his intent to seize whatever power he thought necessary to end the financial crisis, and then proclaimed a national bank holiday two days later. It happened in 1933. The following excerpt, from a piece the Center of the American Experiment invited me to write in response to the question "How Can Conservatism Better Allay the Economic Fears of Working-Class and Middle-Class Americans?", gives you just a little taste of how revolutionary President Franklin D. Roosevelt's approach to the economic crisis of the 1930's was:

On March 4, 1933, in the midst of a bank crisis during which many of them failed or closed, President Franklin Roosevelt delivered his first inaugural address. The new president stated, "First of all let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

In the same speech, he went on to say,

I am prepared under my constitutional duty to recommend the measures that a stricken nation in the midst of a stricken world may require. But in the event that the Congress shall fail to take one of these courses, and in the event that the national emergency is still critical, I shall not evade the clear course of duty that will then confront me.

I shall ask the Congress for the one remaining instrument to meet the crisis: broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency as great as the power that would be given to me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.

Mere days after completing his address, Roosevelt proclaimed a national bank holiday, effectively closing all Americans out of their checking and savings accounts. His proclamation was followed by the signing of the Emergency Banking Act on March 9.

A few days later, on March 12, 1933, Roosevelt concluded his first "Fireside Chat" by urging Americans to "unite in banishing fear."

On May 7, Roosevelt named the evil America faced: deflation. And, like a well-intentioned and protective father, he wrapped his arms around the American people and comfortingly told them:

Even before I was inaugurated, I came to the conclusion that such a policy [deflation] was too much to ask the American people to bear. It involved not only a further loss of homes, farms, savings and wages but also a loss of spiritual values - the loss of that sense of security for the present and the future so necessary to the peace and contentment of the individual and of his family.

Then, on October 22 of the same year, 1933, during another Fireside Chat, Roosevelt laid out his vision for recovery to the American people. The president planned to build a "temple which, when completed, will no longer be a temple of moneychangers or of beggars, but rather a temple dedicated to and maintained for a greater social justice, a greater welfare for America."

Thus was it that Roosevelt set out to allay the fears of working-class Americans with an active and paternalistic government during the last great economic downturn nearly 80 years ago.

The active, almost paternalistic, role of government in society came of age as a result of FDR's actions during the New Deal. Social security, farm subsidies, a domestic fiat currency, third-party payer health care, and more have their roots in that period. Have no doubt, we are living in the temple FDR built and it is crumbling.