from History News Network, via CommonDreams:
Published on Thursday, September 13, 2007 by History News Network
Is Fear Going to Work for Bush Again?by Ira Chernus
“Republicans care more about catching Democrats than catching terrorists,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel (Ill.), chairman of the House Democratic Caucus. “They have spent years taking Roosevelt’s notion that we have nothing to fear but fear itself and given us nothing but fear.” Republicans manipulate us with fear. Democrats free us from fear, following in the footsteps of the iconic liberal, FDR.
Really? Let’s check a few facts.
First, Roosevelt never said “We have nothing to fear.” He said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror.” It’s a common mistake. Lots of people like the sound of “We have nothing to fear.” They’d love to believe it.
But FDR never would have said that. He always told the voters they had something to fear. He spent his political life naming those sources of fear — only occasionally was it “fear itself” — and convincing the public that he was tough enough to stand up to the terrors and defeat them.
As a young state legislator in New York, FDR had hardly any positive program. He made his name fighting against the evil power brokers of Tammany Hall. By the time he became president, of course, the enemy was the depression. If FDR had said, in that first inaugural address, that the U.S. had nothing to fear, no one would have believed him. When he said the only thing to fear was fear, no one took him literally. Everyone knew what they were really afraid of: poverty.
And FDR’s famous speech was a stirring call to arms against this new enemy, a plea to treat the depression “as we would treat the emergency of a war.” He was already skilled at the language of warfighting. He had learned it from an expert, his revered Democratic mentor, Woodrow Wilson,.
FDR also learned from Wilson that the first casualty of war is truth, and the second is civil liberties. To gain public support for an unpopular war, Wilson mounted the largest propaganda effort the federal government had ever seen. To win the war, Wilson and his administration appropriated unprecedented power for the federal government — including the power to throw people in jail for writing or speaking out against the war (made legal by the Espionage Act and Sedition Act). Wilson’s success taught Roosevelt that the art of manipulating public opinion was essential to being a great president. No one ever did it better than FDR. ......(more)
The complete piece is at:
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/09/13/3821/
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