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1. Betrayal of the Old Right,
Lecture 2
The New Deal and World War II

2. Why the Old “Right”?
• Last time, we raised the problem: why does
Rothbard call the Old Right by that name
when Nock and Mencken were classical
liberals?
• Also, some of the anti-war people allied
with the Old Right were Progressives, like
Charles A. Beard and Harry Elmer Barnes.

3. The New Deal
• After FDR became President in March
1933, he proposed a number of radical
measures, such as the NIRA.
• Roosevelt had said in the 1932 that Hoover
was a big spender and that the government
needed to reduce spending.

4. The New Deal Continued
• Roosevelt received an unprecedented grant of
power from Congress when he took office. There
were very few limits on what he could do, except
for the power of the Supreme Court to declare
measures unconstitutional.
• Some supporters of the New Deal, like Rexford
Tugwell, were sympathetic to planning both in
Soviet Russia and Fascist Italy.

5. More New Deal
• Both Hitler and Mussolini were at first
sympathetic to the New Deal.
• The NRA, under General Hugh Johnson,
had some authoritarian elements like those
characteristic of fascism. Johnson condoned
illegal boycotts of businessmen that
wouldn’t conform to “voluntary” NRA
guidelines.

6. Business and the New Deal
• These measures were not opposed by all
business interests. On the contrary, some
businesses supported them, because they
would help eliminate their competition.
• The Swope Plan was an example. Gerard
Swope helped draft the NIRA. He was
president of General Electric

7. Business and the New Deal
Continued
• Also, these measures brought back some of
the wartime measures introduced during
WWI. Bernard Baruch, an influential
administrator during WWI, was the mentor
of Hugh Johnson.

8. Anti-New Deal Movements
• Not all businessmen favored the New Deal.
• Those more inclined to the free market were often
conservative Democrats, like John J. Raskob of
Dupont.
• The conservative business groups founded the
American Liberty League.
• Although Herbert Hoover’s interventionist
measures prefigured the New Deal, he thought
FDR had gone too far. He wrote an attack on the
New Deal, Challenge to Liberty (1934)

9. Anti-New Deal Movements and
the Old Right
• Mencken, Nock, and other members of the
Old Right allied with the anti-New Deal
organizations.
• This is the real answer to our question,
what makes the Old Right “right”. The
movement became more allied to
conservative business interests as the New
Deal progressed.

10. The Alliance
• “In fact, the individualists were in a bind
at this sudden accession of old enemies
as allies. On the positive side, it meant
a rapid acceleration of libertarian
rhetoric on the part of numerous
influential politicians. And, furthermore,
there were no other conceivable
political allies available.

11. The Alliance Continued
• But, on the negative side, the
acceptance of libertarian ideas by
Hoover, the Liberty League, et al., was
clearly superficial and in the realm of
general rhetoric only; given their true
preferences, not one of them would
have accepted the Spencerian laissez-
faire model for America”

12. Moves Toward War
• So far, we have been talking about opposition to
the domestic programs of the New Deal.
• One of the most important points of the Old Right
during the 1920s had been opposition to American
entry into WWI.
• At first, Roosevelt didn’t disagree. He was
interested in domestic reform, not international
affairs. Charles Beard, American Foreign Policy
in the Making, 1932-1940, discusses this.

13. Moves Toward War Continued
• Roosevelt’s policy changed in the late 1930s. He
came to believe that the US should oppose both
the increasing power of Germany under Hitler and
also Japanese imperialism in China.
• A key turning point was the Chicago Bridge
Speech of October 1937 that called for
quarantining the aggressors. Soviet Russia wasn’t
included among the aggressors.

14. Quarantine the Aggressors
• Here is the key passage from Roosevelt’s
speech:”It seems to be unfortunately true
that the epidemic of world lawlessness is
spreading. When an epidemic of physical
disease starts to spread, the community
approves and joins in a quarantine of the
patients in order to protect the health of the
community against the spread of the
disease.”

15. Collective Security
• The key assumption in Roosevelt’s speech
has been the basis for subsequent American
foreign policy.
• This assumption is that American security
depends on security everywhere. Charles
Beard stressed the importance of this
assumption.
• The Old Right rejected this assumption

16. John T. Flynn
• John T. Flynn was one of the most important
people on the Old Right. He linked criticism of
FDR’s domestic and foreign policies.
• His basic argument was that Roosevelt needed to
have outlets for the government spending he
wanted. Purely domestic spending was too
controversial. Roosevelt needed to picture the US
as threatened by foreign powers in order to get
support for bigger government.

17. Flynn and German Historians
• Flynn was a pioneer in the study of the influence
of domestic considerations on foreign policy.
• In Weimar Germany, Eckart Kehr argued that
domestic considerations influenced German naval
policy in the period 1894-1901. Beard was aware
of his work.
• Later, the anti-revisionist Fritz Fischer also
stressed the importance of domestic interests on
German foreign policy.

18. Flynn Continued
• Here is a key passage from Flynn:
• "We have created a huge national debt to relieve
poverty and idleness and produce recovery. With
the money we have built schools, hospitals,
playgrounds, roads, parkways. But now it is no
longer possible to support such expenditures.
Powerful resistance has developed. . . . But the
spending must go on or the present government
will face a collapse. And hence this one great
imperious call to national defense is invoked"

19. Garet Garrett
• Another important person on the Old Right
was Garet Garrett, who was an editor of the
Saturday Evening Post.
• “Led by a revolutionary elite of
intellectuals,the New Deal centralized
political and economic power in the
Executive, and Garrett traced this
process step by step.

20. Garrett Continued
• As a consequence,the “ultimate power
of initiative” passed from private
enterprise to government, which
“became the great capitalist and
enterpriser. Unconsciously business
concedes the fact when it talks of a
mixed economy, even accepts it as
inevitable.”

21. More Garrett
• Garrett, like Flynn, was also a critic of
Roosevelt’s interventionist policies. He
didn’t ignore the possibility that Germany
might pose a threat to America, but he
thought this should be met by internal
defense rather than foreign involvements.

22. Garrett on Wilsonianism
• Here is Garrett on the dangers of Wilson-
type interventionism:
• “They are defeatists who develop the
beautiful thought that if America will now
put her strength forth in the world, instead
of keeping it selfishly to herself, the
principle of evil can be chained down. . . .

23. Garrett on Wilsonianism
Continued
• Suppose we had reconquered Europe for
democracy, and the principle of evil were
chained down. What should we do about
the peace? Leave it to Europe? We did that
once [without success]. . . . Should we stay
there to police it? Or should we come home
and stand ready to go back to mind or mend
it when something went wrong?"

24. The End of Isolation
• Roosevelt followed a confrontational policy
toward Japan. According to the revisionists, such
as Tansill and Barnes, Roosevelt’s aim was to
provoke a Japanese attack so that America would
enter the war in Europe through the “back door”
of Japan.
• Roosevelt was relying on the fact that Germany
and Japan had signed the Axis Pact.

25. The End of Isolation Continued
• The most powerful anti-interventionist
organization was the America First Committee.
Flynn was the head of the New York chapter.
Lindbergh was the Committee’s most famous
speaker.
• Once Pearl Harbor was attacked, the AFC
dissolved. The leadership thought that war in
Europe was inevitable and made no attempt to
separate the war in the Pacific from the European
war.

26. The Pearl Harbor Attack
• Hitler declared war on the US, so Roosevelt
got his wish to enter the war.
• Why did he do so? In part because there
was no attempt by the US isolationists to
confine the war to Japan.
• If Hitler hadn’t declared war, Roosevelt
intended to ask Congress for a declaration
of war against Germany anyway.

27. Revisionism During the War
• Once the war started, the activities of the Old
Right in opposing FDR’s foreign policy were
curtailed.
• However, people on the Old Right thought that
Roosevelt had provoked Japan. Herbert Hoover
held this view.
• In 1944, John T. Flynn published The Truth
About Pearl Harbor and in 1945 The Final Secret
of Pearl Harbor, charging that Roosevelt had
provoked the Japanese attack.