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3 Whisky Happy Hour

Back to the Ring on ‘the FDR Question’

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Last week's episode with Conrad Black defending his pro-FDR thesis generated a lot of reader interest and comments, so Lucretia and I decided to return to the boxing ring to argue out the matter de novo. It will not be a surprise to regular listeners to hear that Lucretia is not persuaded, even by the serious arguments of another of our favorite thinkers after Lord Black, the late scholar John Adams Wettergreen, who argued that FDR's liberalism and policy architecture was different in degree and kind from the liberalism of the 1960s and after.

In fact, fans of Team Lucretia will likely enjoy this smackdown, though we do save time at the end for some quick reflections on the week's main news, including our handicap of who has the greatest faceplant this week: Facebook, Zucker or Zuckerberg, or Caryn Johnson (better known as "Whoopi Goldberg"), and some worrying news about whisky!

Steve gets his revenge at the end, though, with exit music from Prog Rock legend Gentle Giant.

Hosted by Steve Hayward, with guest "Lucretia"

Discussion (10)

  • Boney Cole@BoneyCole

    It’s a diverse world. Canada could never elect a Trump. But the US did not come up with a trucker convoy or it’s equivalent. Maybe between us we can make some headway against a new world order. Of note, the Canadian leader of the conservatives, now deposed, sounded like a secret agent planted by Klaus Schwab.

    By the way, did you know that a young Klaus Schwab met and claimed to have been fundamentally changed by the same radical Brazilian Bishop that inspired Father Bergolio in his youth? Small world.

  • Steven Hayward@StevenHayward
    ReplyingtoBoney Cole

    Boney Cole (View Comment):

    It’s a diverse world. Canada could never elect a Trump. But the US did not come up with a trucker convoy or it’s equivalent. Maybe between us we can make some headway against a new world order. Of note, the Canadian leader of the conservatives, now deposed, sounded like a secret agent planted by Klaus Schwab.

    By the way, did you know that a young Klaus Schwab met and claimed to have been fundamentally changed by the same radical Brazilian Bishop that inspired Father Bergolio in his youth? Small world.

    I'm always instantly suspicious of Latin American theologians.

  • Leslie Watkins@LeslieWatkins
    The Four Freedoms, I think, are reflective of what you guys were saying about Roosevelt’s rhetoric and political thought. The first two—freedom of speech and freedom of religion—derive directly from the philosophy of America’s founding. Freedom to speak. To worship. To be the sovereign of oneself. But the second two—freedom from fear and freedom from want—veer sharply toward the early twentieth-century progressive view that human beings are have the right to expect external assistance for their own lives. Together, the two types of freedoms become a kind of palimpsest of FDR’s historical mindset reframed for the exigencies of his time.
  • Leslie Watkins@LeslieWatkins
    ReplyingtoLeslie Watkins

    Leslie Watkins (View Comment):

    The Four Freedoms, I think, are reflective of what you guys were saying about Roosevelt’s rhetoric and political thought. The first two—freedom of speech and freedom of religion—derive directly from the philosophy of America’s founding. Freedom to speak. To worship. To be the sovereign of oneself. But the second two—freedom from fear and freedom from want—veer sharply toward the early twentieth-century progressive view that human beings are have the right to expect external assistance for their own lives. Together, the two types of freedoms become a kind of palimpsest of FDR’s historical mindset reframed for the exigencies of his time.

    If you may indulge me, I'd like to present a short essay I wrote back in 2007:

    The Idea of Freedom

    If Greece gave the world the idea of democracy and Rome the rule of law, America has given the world the idea of freedom. Freedom not simply from oppression or the restrictions of class or caste or biology, but freedom to: to achieve something for oneself.

    As Rose Wilder Lane, daughter of the American prairie, wrote, freedom is not how we see it now: inherent, preexistent, a gift of birth, like breathing. No, the idea of freedom had to be discovered, in the great raw materials of an unearthed land, seen through the eyes of an Enlightened mind, its expressions reaching to the sky, like the great monument bridges linking east and west, the discovery relayed on foot, on horseback, in wagons, trains, and automobiles, by raft, ferry, riverboat. Not for security, but for self-determination, the possible.

    Lest one romanticize, the idea of freedom also means the freedom to fail, to die unrealized, untested, unchanged. But, also, to confront the bigoted anger of prejudice, first by the one, then by the many, eventually to overcome the idea of it, first within the one and then within the many. For groups are never free. Only individuals are free. And only individuals can reject the idea of America.

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