Here is the analogy FDR used in his June 28, 1934 fireside chat to justify his New Deal programs. Does this analogy apply to what President Obama is doing today? If not, where does it break down?
"A few timid people, who fear progress, will try to give you new and strange names for what we are doing. Sometimes they will call it "Fascism", sometimes "Communism", sometimes "Regimentation", sometimes "Socialism"...
I believe that what we are doing today is a necessary fulfillment of what Americans have always been doing -- a fulfillment of old and tested American ideals.
Let me give you a simple illustration:
While I am away from Washington this summer, a long needed renovation of and addition to our White House office building is to be started. The architects have planned a few new rooms built into the present all too small one-story structure. We are going to include in this addition and in this renovation modern electric wiring and modern plumbing and modern means of keeping the offices cool in the hot Washington summers. But the structural lines of the old Executive Office Building will remain. The artistic lines of the White House buildings were the creation of master builders when our Republic was young. The simplicity and the strength of the structure remain in the face of every modern test. But within this magnificent pattern, the necessities of modern government business require constant reorganization and rebuilding.
If I were to listen to the arguments of some prophets of calamity who are talking these days, I should hesitate to make these alterations. I should fear that while I am away for a few weeks the architects might build some strange new Gothic tower or a factory building or perhaps a replica of the Kremlin or of the Potsdam Palace. But I have no such fears. The architects and builders are men of common sense and of artistic American tastes. They know that the principles of harmony and of necessity itself require that the building of the new structure shall blend with the essential lines of the old. It is this combination of the old and the new that marks orderly peaceful progress -- not only in building buildings but in building government itself.
Our new structure is a part of and a fulfillment of the old."
Leave your comments below! Where does this analogy not work?
***UPDATE***
E-mail from Steve:
1) Proximity. FDR had ultimate control over those builders because they were working RIGHT NEXT to his residence. If they screwed up, they knew that when he came back from his vacation, they would catch heck. This is why the Founders designed a system in which power is located close to those it affects
2) Trust. FDR trusted the workers because he had control over them; he knew they would have to answer later on for any mistakes they made. The current Federal system is designed to push control as far away as possible from us, to eliminate our control, and hence we have zero trust in our elected officials because they regularly ignore what we want and do what will ensure their re-election.
And from Bill:
While FDR was away the office building was updated with the newest, theoretically superior aluminum wiring. Unfortunately, the proponents of aluminum wiring failed to anticipate that aluminum wiring would have problems with overheating. So while the architects and buiders all had good intentions the building burned down anyway. It looked really nice right up to the time it went up in flames.
