FDR’s Progressive Administration Emulated the Fascists of Europe
Another parallel between fascism and progressivism was their shared faith in the process of experimental trial and error, modeled on the scientific method, as a means of developing better forms of societal organization. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, whose politics were heavily influenced by progressive ideas, boasted that he was not wedded to any preconceived notions concerning social policy, but rather that he measured an idea’s worth by the results it achieved.
“Take a method and try it,” he said in 1932. “If it fails, admit it frankly and try another. But above all, try something.” His primary guiding principle was “bold, persistent experimentation.” The result, unfortunately, is the modern American welfare state.
New Republic co-founder Herbert Croly put it this way: “If there are any abstract liberal principles, we do not know how to formulate them. Nor if they are formulated by others do we recognize their authority. Liberalism, as we understand it, is an activity.” The Italian Fascists put it still more succinctly: “Our policy is to govern.”
Unlike Germany and Italy, however, American fascism was shaped by many special factors including our geographical size, ethnic diversity, Jeffersonian individualism, and a strong liberal tradition. As a result, American fascism was milder, more friendly, more ‘maternal’ than its foreign counterparts. Author Jonah Goldberg described it is ‘liberal fascism’” – a phenomenon characterized by “nannying, not bullying.”
In the early decades of the 20th century, it was called progressivism.
FDR adviser Rexford Guy Tugwell said of Italian fascism: “It’s the cleanest, neatest, most efficiently operating piece of social machinery I’ve ever seen. It makes me envious.”
New Republic editor George Soule, who avidly supported FDR, noted approvingly that the Roosevelt administration was “trying out the economics of fascism.”
Consistent with the totalitarian roots of fascism and progressivism alike, was the progressives’ dismissal of America’s traditional system of constitutional checks and balances as an anachronistic impediment to social progress. Progressives reasoned that such restraints on power would only slow the process by which the governing elite could implement their programs to refashion society in accordance with their own progressive vision.
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