In the latest National Review, I take a look at David T. Beito’s book The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights. Excerpt:
Pick at random any book about the New Deal, and it will contain no mention of his policies of censorship, mass surveillance, and intimidation and persecution of political opponents. It likely will concede that his decision to imprison 100,000 Japanese Americans in internment camps was wrong but excuse his refusal to act against Jim Crow as if it were an unfortunate reality forced upon a benevolent patriarch who wished he could heal the nation.
David Beito’s The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights is a welcome break with such rosy nostalgia. In nine succinct and deeply researched chapters, he explores how Roosevelt and his allies masterminded “mass surveillance of private telegrams, crackdowns on free speech, inquisitorial investigations, sedition prosecutions,” and other abuses — while blithely facilitating segregation and violence in the South.
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