root hog, or die
The Presidency, from The Wisconsin State Journal, October 1936.

On November 3, the people of the United States will make the most momentous decision that has come to their suffrage since the establishment of the American form of democratic government. The presidential debate thus far, with public information that furnishes its background, shows conclusively that we are to decide temporarily between democracy and collectivism. Should we decide for collectivism, the blazing of new trails indicates that we shall eventually have to decide for or against communism.

The Roosevelt program has departed further from the groundwork of the democratic party than from that of the republican party, because in the early days the Hamiltonians were for a strong central government, while the Jeffersonians were for states' rights and for as little government as possible. Having fled from despotisms, the American colonists shrewdly invested the national government with only such powers as the states relinquished to them, providing in the constitution itself a means of amending that fundamental law whenever two-thirds of the states approved.

Immediately upon his acquisition of office, President Roosevelt ignored his ledge to stand by the democratic national platform "100 per cent", and plunged into collectivist methods administered, not by statesmen, but by theorists, many of whom by more than implication were known as communist sympathizers.

That the president "followed along" is shown by his urgent advice to congress to pass the Guffey bill in spite of constitutional obstacles "however reasonable."

We have Sec. of Agriculture Wallace publicly hoping for the day when the supreme court can be abolished.

Notwithstanding such sound proceedings, in the circumstances, as the bank moratorium and the setting up of FDIC, many of the experiments tried proved utterly futile to solve the problems of the country to which they applied. The reemployment program has left roughly 11 millions unemployed. The slaughter of meat products, and the fallow land program to reduce acreage, at a time when millions of Americans needed food, reduces itself to an absurdity.

Father Coughlin has been taken greatly to task for publicly questioning the veracity of a president of the United States, but if the president is to escape conviction for mendacity, he cannot be acquitted of a poor memory and a vacillating mind.

The far background of communism is the condition created by the advent of machinery to reduce hand production. A high authority says it was founded in the French revolutionary instinct, British economics, and German philosophy. Russia, at the moment a country practically without machinery, was stupidly the first to adopt it. Within a year Lenin knew he had failed, and turned to collectivism. Following Lenin, Stalin is passing through collectivism back to capitalism. There are few real shreds of communism left in Russia. In fact, should Roosevelt win, and make the almost inevitable turn further to the left, this country might reach communism about the time Russia attained democracy.

This remains the only country in which human liberty in a true sense still exists. Our pioneers ran away from despotism and class regimentation. As Rose Wilder Lane, using an early day phrase, puts it, they came here to "root hog, or die". That was the price they paid, and it is the price that always must be paid for the freedom of "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness", for the freedom of men and women to speak, write, publish, and worship as they like, and to pursue their individual inclinations in enterprise so long as they do no damage to the general run of people.

Gov. Landon, republican nominee for the presidency, is a happy choice in such a situation. He is typical of the American who found his own way. He has been reared in the atmosphere, the wind and sun of great mid-western America. He is free from any encumbrances to our predatory individuals and institutions. He knows the farm and the farmer. He knows self-sustaining industry. He has a clear conception of the true Americanism, the real meaning of liberty.

Gov. Landon has made a most significant campaign. He has caused the fireside crooner of Hyde Park to lose his temper and change his tone. He knows and acknowledges that America, within the American roadways, must reach the goal of sufficiency for all without depriving the citizen of those rights which are "self-evident facts".

We shall not go into the details of spoilsmen and incompetents who have been maladministering the New Deal. Every community knows that. Neither are we convinced that the principles and ends sought by President Roosevelt are not honest. But we doubt that he possesses insight, farsightedness or cogency of mind. We believe that the sum total of his efforts thus far are destructive of the very principles that within a hundred years have permitted a wilderness to become the wealthiest nation in the world with the highest average of living conditions. Admittedly we had come upon times distressing to many of our people and unsatisfactory to most of them, but that is no reason to adopt the ideas and methods of nations whose highest moments of prosperity have been far inferior to our worst depressions.

Two years ago a great Englishman, visiting in America, said: "We British would like to borrow your depression."

Landon, level-headed, instinctively democratic, walks with his feet on the ground. He is one of us. He pretends no magic wand, essays so "seven-league boots". With him we can walk safely to still higher ground in the development of the American people.
- posted by pioneergirl at 11:49 PM