Steel Cage Match

Some of you might think it's alarmist of Liberals to suggest that the Conservatives might prefer destroying Social Security to saving it. If you feel this way, I'd advise you to check out this article from the Claremont Institute. Mr. Masugi, writing on their behalf, sets up President Bush's second term inaugural as a chance for him to respond to and reject FDR's 1944 State of the Union speech.

FDR (aided by Woodrow Wilson) transformed the earlier understanding of equality by making the Declaration an instrument of class warfare and a means of overthrowing limited government.

Bush's challenge is to overthrow the FDR legacy. It appears he knows what he's doing. In his New Yorker profile of Bush advisor Karl Rove, Nicholas Lemann concludes that "Rove's Republican-majority America would be not just pre-Great Society, and not just pre-New Deal, but pre-Progressive era. Rove's intellectual hero is James Madison."

Nice. I guess we don't have to accuse the Bush administration of building a bridge to the 21th century (no disrespect to James Madison intended). I should also point out that Masugi makes it clear that he expects President Bush to reject FDR's entire legacy (including Social Security, one would assume), not just the 1944 inaugural speech.

Of course the Claremont institute isn't completely satisfied with President Bush's inaugural speech. For one thing he concedes too much to multiculturalism (I have more to say on this subject, but will leave it for another post). For another, he didn't vilify his political enemies as Terrorists, like FDR did.

Having set his goals so high, Bush should remember FDR's admonition in the State of the Union Address he is answering:

'One of the great American industrialists of our day - a man who has rendered yeoman service to his country in this crisis - recently emphasized the grave dangers of "rightist reaction" in this Nation. All clear-thinking businessmen share his concern. Indeed, if such reaction should develop - if history were to repeat itself and we were to return to the so-called "normalcy" of the 1920's - then it is certain that even though we shall have conquered our enemies on the battlefields abroad, we shall have yielded to the spirit of Fascism here at home.'

In the midst of WW II FDR was calling his conservative Republican opponents Nazis. If President Bush wants realignment he will have to pay his Democratic opponents back in kind, as he sets about creating freedom abroad and restoring it at home. Such are the means by which the truths of the Declaration of Independence will be revived. I eagerly await his State of the Union Address.

Of course it's kind of a stretch to suggest that President Roosevelt was condemning republicans as fascists. He was talking about some potential factory owners, while making it clear that other factory owners saw the same dangers he did. To put it in historical perspective, one of the reasons German and Italian companies went along with facism was that it solved all the messy problems of unions and workers rights. It's not hard to believe that some of America's capitalists might be attracted to the same sort of philosophy.

On the other hand, the only connections between Liberal Democrats and Islamic Terrorists is that neither of us thinks much of President Bush. The truth is in their program and in the type of society they want to create, Islamic Terrorists have more in common with Christian Fundamentalists than with Liberal Democrats. But my guess is that the Claremont Institute would rather not see them vilified as terrorist sympathizers.