David Beito: Was FDR a Tyrant?

Why has President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s dark side been hidden?

Scholars consistently rank FDR as one of America’s greatest presidents. The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey ranked him number two, below Lincoln, and respondents to the Siena College Research Institute studies have ranked him number one in six out of seven survey years. 

Perhaps it’s understandable that the longest-serving president who saw the country through the Great Depression and a World War II victory would rank so highly. But do presidential scholars exhibit a major blind spot when it comes to the authoritarian aspects of FDR and his New Deal agenda? That’s what today’s guest argues in his book, The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR’s Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance. 

Those civil liberties abuses, and how they permanently changed America and the relationship between citizen and state, are the subject of this episode. The book’s author, David Beito, is an American historian and history professor at the University of Alabama and a research fellow at the Independent Institute.

Watch the full conversation on Reason‘s YouTube channel or the Just Asking Questions podcast feed on Apple, Spotify, or your preferred podcatcher.

Sources referenced in this conversation:

1. The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR’s Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance
2. The 2024 Presidential Greatness Project Expert Survey
3. Hugo Black Audio-Visual Library
4. FDR’s Four Freedoms Speech

Timestamps:
00:00 Introduction
00:33 FDR’s Legacy: A Closer Look at the New Deal’s Impact on Civil Liberties
02:03 Exploring FDR’s Authoritarian Tactics and Media Manipulation
05:00 The Power of Radio: FDR’s Fireside Chats and Control Over Public Opinion
39:09 The Black Committee: The Beginnings of Mass Surveillance in America
44:38 The Black Committee’s Investigation and Western Union’s Resistance
45:26 The Extensive Telegram Surveillance Operation
48:09 Legal Battles and Public Outcry Against Privacy Violations
51:17 The Minton Committee’s Further Overreach and the War on Fake News
58:13 FDR’s Court Packing Plan and Its Echoes in Modern Politics
01:04:59 Revisiting FDR’s Role in Japanese Internment
01:17:15 The New Deal’s Dark Side: A Critical Reexamination
01:24:59 Reflecting on FDR’s Legacy and Its Implications Today

• Producer: John Osterhoudt

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