Should The Military Have Ousted FDR? The Egypt Coup
28 December 2013
By Jacob G. Hornberger
Among the reasons given for the
Egyptian military's ouster of the democratically
elected president of the country, Mohamad Morsi, was
that Morsi was exercising dictatorial powers and
adopting policies that were destroying any chance of
an economic recovery in Egypt. The Egyptian military,
which the U.S. government continues to stand with and
support, says that protecting "national security"
trumped democratic principles.
But the problem is that the generals have a fallacious
understanding of a democratic process.
For one thing, democracy doesn't equate to freedom. In
fact, democracy—or the will of the majority—can be a
grave threat to freedom. In fact, sometimes elected
officials will do everything they can to assume
dictatorial powers.
Thus, it's no surprise that democracy isn't even
mentioned in the U.S. Constitution. It's also why the
Bill of Rights expressly protects the exercise of
fundamental rights from democratically elected public
officials.
Moreover, democracy doesn't guarantee the election of
people who favor policies that are consistent with
economic prosperity. Most of the time, it's the exact
opposite.
The only real virtue of a democratic system is that it
enables people to peacefully change people in public
office.
The idea is that over time, people who are committed
to a free society will figure out ways to ensure
freedom and prosperity within a governmental system in
which people are democratically elected. Ousting an
elected official who is abusing power at the next
election is one option. Another is to come up with
ways that limit the powers that elected officials are
able to exercise, such as with constitutional
prohibitions.
But the best way that educational process can happen
is by letting a democratic system function. The idea
is that hopefully people will learn by their mistakes
and figure out ways to ensure a free society within a
democratic system.
Of course, it's always possible that a democratically
elected president becomes so tyrannical that people
decide that they must violently revolt before the next
election, but it's rare that that happens.
But one thing's for sure: the ouster by the military
and intelligence branch of a government is not a
revolution. It's nothing more than a military coup,
one that is usually designed to protect the income
streams of those who depend on military or political
largess. A coup short-circuits the learning process
that comes with a democratic system. It destroys a
democratic system in the name of saving it or in the
name of protecting "national security."
Consider President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He was
democratically elected president four times. He also
seized upon the crisis known as the Great Depression
to revolutionize America's economic system,
transforming it into a welfare state and a regulated
economy. He did that without even the semblance of a
constitutional amendment, the means that the
Constitution provides the American people to make
fundamental changes to their constitutional order.
One of the most radical programs FDR devised as part
of his "New Deal" for America was his National
Recovery Act, which was duly enacted by Congress and
signed into law by Roosevelt. It placed an extremely
large segment of American business and industry into
cartels, much like what was being done in fascist
Italy under Benito Mussolini.
By any objective standard, FDR was moving America in a
direction away from free enterprise and economic
liberty and toward government control of economic
activity and confiscation and redistribution of
wealth.
When the U.S. Supreme Court declared the National
Recovery Act unconstitutional, FDR's supporters
fiercely condemned the Court. They said that the Court
was wrong to thwart the will of the majority. It was
Roosevelt who had overwhelmingly won at the polls, not
the justices on the Supreme Court.
But it was the Court that was right. The Constitution
set forth the limits on what the majority could do.
Among the limits were: no socialist system and no
fascist system in America. If Americans wanted to
change their system to socialism and fascism, they had
their remedy: constitutional amendment.
But FDR knew that that route would be time-consuming
and difficult. He came up with a different idea: to
pack the Supreme Court with additional justices, all
of whom would be lawyer cronies of his who could be
counted on to uphold the constitutionality of his
fascist and socialist programs.
FDR's court-packing scheme was straight out of a
dictator's playbook. He clearly wanted what a dictator
wants: the unfettered right to do what he believed was
necessary to "save" the country. Like any dictator,
FDR didn't want to be constrained by what he
considered were antiquated constitutional restrictions
on the use of power.
Let's assume that the U.S. national-security state had
been established in, say, 1932. Would the United
States have been better off if the U.S. military and
the CIA had ousted Roosevelt from power and installed
someone who they felt were better suited to be
president, as they did or tried to do in Iran,
Guatemala, Cuba, Chile, and elsewhere, and as the
U.S.-supported military dictatorship in Egypt has now
done?
It could certainly be argued that FDR's economic
policies were no different than those of Chile's
Salvador Allende or, for that matter, than those of
Cuba's Fidel Castro. After all, let's face it:
Roosevelt's confiscation of people's gold was no
different in principle from Castro's seizure of
people's homes and businesses. Moreover, FDR's Social
Security scheme is also a core feature of every
socialist nation in the world, including the communist
countries of Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam, and China.
I think the overwhelming majority of Americans would
say no. Even though the New Deal greatly exacerbated
and lengthened the Great Depression and the suffering
of the American people and even though the socialistic
welfare-state system and fascistic regulated economy
that Roosevelt foisted onto our land have done so much
damage to America, most people would say: Let the
system work and let people figure out what to do about
it.
A military coup against Roosevelt would have destroyed
America's experiment with democracy and would have
short-circuited the educational process that comes
with a democratic system. Democracy isn't perfect but
military coups only make matters significantly worse,
as the victims of military tyranny can attest.
So, why do U.S. officials continue to support coups
and dictatorships in foreign lands, as they are now
doing in Egypt?
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The
Future of Freedom Foundation. He was born and raised
in Laredo, Texas, and received his B.A. in economics
from Virginia Military Institute and his law degree
from the University of Texas. He was a trial attorney
for twelve years in Texas. He also was an adjunct
professor at the University of Dallas, where he taught
law and economics. In 1987, Mr. Hornberger left the
practice of law to become director of programs at the
Foundation for Economic Education. He has advanced
freedom and free markets on talk-radio stations all
across the country as well as on Fox News' Neil Cavuto
and Greta van Susteren shows and he appeared as a
regular commentator on Judge Andrew Napolitano's show
Freedom Watch.
©
EsinIslam.Com
Add Comments