Ready, it does appear to be the eighteenth day of October twenty twenty three, according to that thing we call a calendar. And guess what this is? The Ocelli effect. Here on a Wednesday. Now, I have not been live on Monday because I've been skipping Mondays and Tuesday because quite frankly, my back got thrown out over the weekend trying to raise money for Dallas. Actually is what happened there, because I went and worked the flea market and
this and that. Anyway, you guys know, I do that stuff on the side because I have to. Why because this radio thing doesn't pay that well. Anyway, Wednesday, all right, middle of the week. Who do I have with me? Well, before I get to who I have with me? The topic tonight is going to be interesting, and it is from a perspective that you know what you guys will be accustomed to, but some of you maybe not. The figure of Franklin delanor Roosevelt, right,
FDR interesting figure for a lot of reasons in history. Now I have pointed too many of the negative aspects of this individual. He is seen as a hero by certain corridors of power, by certain political orientations in America, that's for sure, and definitely a dynamic figure, right, battling his own problems, et cetera, et cetera. Of course, the gee, what is the direct relation to Teddy Roosevelt? Well, yeah, there's that. I mean a lot of things going on with FDR. And what did he have
to deal with besides Joseph Kennedy? Oh wait, did I bring that up too soon? Probably? Anyway, David Beato's with me. And now, the last time that I discussed a book that he authored, it was TRM. Howard, which is funny because there's a Roosevelt connection there, just my name and the TRM Howard book. I brought this up to somebody recently actually regarding the lack of diversity and coverage when it comes to civil rights leaders, and I said to myself, well, yeah, I don't see any mention
of this guy in your collective work. And he is definitely a different factor, you know, a guy who gets into business and this and that. Now we're not focusing on TRM. Howard tonight. Although if you guys check it out and you go back in the archives and you find that one and you want to discuss that, I'm sure that Professor Bato and possibly. I mean, I'd love to talk to others about this, but I know that he'd be more than willing to come back on and talk about that. But
tonight it's not about that. The title of this book that we're going to discuss is The New Deal's War on the Bill of Rights. Now, like I said, it's interesting to me because even though it doesn't go into this in the book, FDR, Well, how about the gold seizure? How about the concentration camps. I wonder if anybody's going to go into that. Uh well, I already I already know the answer. I've read part of
the book, so I did get to this. And by the way, it's in the subtitle, so you know, all I have to do is look at the cover if you go look it up. And by the way, to spell the professor's name, just so you know, it's David T and then Beto. And I'm not sure if I'm pronouncing that correctly, but b E I t O that is the correct way to spell it. In case you want to go search the New Deals War on the Bill of Rights. And yeah, the untold story of FDR's concentration Camps censorship and mass surveillance.
Oh, we had mass surveillance before the Patriot Act. Indeed we did, and indeed we did before FDR. But anyway, Uh, Professor Beto, how are you? I know that? Uh, let's see, I do believe you have retired. You've written some articles recently. I don't know what else you it is you want to mention here, but University of Alabama professor, as as your wife also, you know, and I actually had both of you on the show. I think I'm the only person that brought
both of you on the show at the same time on a podcast. But anyways, how are you doing tonight, sir? Oh, We're doing great. And we had a lot of fun that on that show because we've got a lot of time to just talk about free ranging conversations. That's what I try to do to give people an idea. Now again, I love the fact that, look, first of all, this is a bit of a challenge to history. A lot of people get uncomfortable when discussing FDR. It's
like taboo to go into his well violations on people's rights. The first thing people bring up, of course, is the the internment camps. Let's let's you know, use that term, right, tournament camps, you know, for Japanese Americans. First they bring it up, but also there were Italians, there were Germans that were putting the camps, to my understanding, not as many, not as obviously, but this happened. And yeah, people don't even want to touch that. And meanwhile, there's more to this story,
isn't there. Oh, there's a lot more to it. There's a lot more to it on the issue of internment. I call them, well, I don't call them. It was what FDR called them concentration camps. He used that terminology as late as well, all the way through nineteen forty four he was using that terminology. And I'm not arguing here that these are
analogous to death camps, Holocaust death camps, but they are. They do fit the label, and they're not typical internment camps because yes, you know, the Italians and the Germans were in turned, but you don't have this kind of wholesale incarceration basically based simply on ancestry. They were actually putting Japanese American orphans, people born in orphanages who were Japanese American in these camps.
So you didn't have anything like that with Germans and Italians. And I think there's a willingness of people to condemn, you know, certainly condemn the internment, but FDR is still let off the hook. There's a lot of effort, I think, to see him as a more of a reactive figure forced along by events, by wartime hysteria. And we don't see the Roosevelt of the New Deal when it comes to interment, which is the Roosevelt with his
hand on the tiller, who's leading the charge on internment. The depiction is of a kind of clueless figure that's swept along, and that is not an accurate depiction. A couple of quick questions about that. First of all, isn't it a pragmatic issue that Italians and Germans were not as easily identifiable by
their ancestry. I mean, isn't that just a reality here, because well, first of all, Italians, a lot of our names, well I got a Vallady end of my name, A lot of our names were screwed up when we came to this country, so we might not be easily identified as Italians first of all. Secondly, Germans maybe not identified as Germans or they could be some other people's adjacent to Germany, not necessarily ethnically German. But I mean it sounds terrible, but it's easier to identify Asian people,
is it not. I mean, just by sight. Isn't that kind of the argument that's usually used for that one and two about him being this figure that's swept along. Isn't that partially based on the fact that they make them sympathetic considering the fact that he was handicapped. Isn't that one of the issues here too? Yeah, And I'm not taking away from his, uh, his accomplishments in overcoming those handicaps, you know, and he basically when he had his bout with polio, was it a kind of a low point of
his career. He'd been discredited to a great extent because of a scandal in the Navy, and he really he really clawed his way back quite successfully in doing that. Now, I agree with you that some of this is practicality, uh, but I think racism really plays a role here. Because the Japanese Americans are there, there have been a lot of reaction against them that
there were not against Germans and Italians, you know. You know, for example, basically we had a although they didn't officially call it that, we had a Japanese Exclusion Act. We had a situation where Japanese could Americans could not become naturalized citizens. But you know, the only way they could become citizens is by being born in the US. So you had all these people that you know, if they're born in Japan and they're brought to the US
at one year, there's no way they can become citizens. They are prohibited in many cases from purchasing property. So they really set off as a separate group from from a pretty much from the beginning, dating really from Roosevelt, Roosevelt's cousins administration Teddy Roosevelt, where this was a big controversy of Japanese immigration. Well, to see, that's where I was going to go, is
that Asian policy effectively across all of Asia. I think you could find its roots with his cousins administration exactly, and even previous to that, America not really a friendly place to well Asian people initially, right, I mean, they were one of the exploited groups of immigrants that came in, you know, clearly not exploited to the same degree that African Americans were but uh, you know, in some ways nearly because again another labor population absolutely exploited and
in order to build infrastructure for the thing of the time, which was the railroads. I mean, this is very typical of what goes on, you know. I mean I can tell you about how Look I I'm of Irish and Italian ancestry. I know that my people got exploited at a certain point. We were meant to be cheap labor to build a lot of things like skyscrapers, bridges, stuff like this, and so so I see it as the the cycle of exploitation that goes on in this country. And yes,
indeed race has something to do with it, doesn't it. Yeah, it does. I used to teach years ago, who's teached Avada history. I thought I might get a perm in a position at UNLV. Didn't work out, but I did teach the course. And you see some interesting wrinkles on
this. For example, Nevada's population I think in eighteen seventy or maybe he's eighteen eighty was something like twenty percent Chinese, and you would have the Chinese and the Pioutes, and you know fighting over jobs like you know, bringing wood in to for fuel for the for the miners, that kind of thing.
They would be really at the bottom of the barrel. So you get these you know, these white miners sort of betting on I bet on the Paiute, I bet on the Chinamen, right, and they're fighting each other, pushing that kind of thing. So it's sort of an interesting comparison there. I guess you could make to the Irish and the African Americans and their their rivalry. You know, that's more familiar. I forgot what your question
was basically, but yeah, they were. They were heavily exploited in the chin Chinese were singled out, and the Japanese were kind of loaded onto that later. That was that was the point the other immigrant groups we had a pretty much open borders exactly that that was the point I wanted to make it we're going to keep them out. Yeah, that was exactly the point I
wanted to make. Actually, that was that was what I was laying out there, is that, you know, it seems to me like this is the continuation of and the Japanese just sort of got loaded onto what was initially very very prevalent uh and directed as Chinese people, and and here we go, uh I think it has forgotten in our history that at one point, you know, that racism was pretty extreme. They were thought of as less
than human, et cetera. And that was the reality. Okay, uh so, you know, and again I'm not trying to excuse FDR or or Theodore Roosevelt or exclusionary acts or any of that. I'm not excusing anything. I'm just saying that this was the attitude of the time. And it's weird because these interesting presidential figures are often presented as sympathetic, right because oh, well, they're a product of their time, you know. Okay, that's
great and real helpful and everything. But of course they're a product of their time until they change that time. And look, can I speak to the position that FDR was innecessarily when we have this circumstance that goes on and also what happens with Pearl Harbor. A lot of people have many questions about that still, and our Congress had many questions about it. There were many investigations into that. People may forget that, but that's the truth. There were
a lot of questions even at the time, what really happened there? What was the real circumstance that led to the events of Pearl Harbor, etc. And some people would say, well, look, the backlash of that is what drove FDR to do what he did. But how would you view that? Is that the way that works? I mean, is it a response, well, look, you know, we don't know who's attacking us, who's working with the enemy. Is this an almost reasonable response, you know?
I mean, how do you view that? Well, FDR been predisposed in that direction. He was in nineteen thirty six. He actually said that, well, if we ever have a war with Japan, anyone meeting Japanese ships or relatives of those meeting them had any connection with Japanese ships should be put in concentration camps. So there is a nineteen thirty sixties saying this. Now, I will say this. When Pearl Harbor happened, the initial reaction
on the West Coast even was fairly tolerant. You look at newspapers, like in Los Angeles and San Francisco, you look at local politicians, and they're basically saying things like, well, these are Americans, let's leave them malone. Let's not imitate what happened in World War One. So it's actually kind
of an early attitude of tolerance. Now, what happens is is that FDR kind of stood back, let others take the initiative who had less, you know, who were more for the idea of putting them in camps and that kind of thing, and sort of signed on to it. But he basically gave them encouragement. He never FDR never gave a speech right in December or January or February nineteen forty, you know two, saying look, these are Americans, you know, lay off them. They're patriotic, you know.
He never said anything like that. He never used his incredible charisma. So the actual order, the executive order he signed that began the process of internment didn't come about till February nineteen forty two. Once this, these attitudes has started to build up, in part because FDR sort of gave them encouragement behind the scenes. But the initial attitude was not, you know, calling for
internment. So there's no reason to see that as an inevitable result of Pearl Harbor hysteria because even after the hysteria, people are being pretty reasonable about it. Well, let's rewind a little bit, because let's get into another aspect that's on the front cover of your book, which is mass surveillance? Right? If people never heard of this before? What is the Black Inquisition Committee? Okay, Well, there was a senator from my state, Hugo Black,
later Supreme Court justice. But Black was a career, really started a national career as a chair of a committee called the it was committee to investigate lobbying, and it came to be called the Black Committee. Kind of an an ominous sound, and people critics played up on that and they called it the Black Inquisition. And basically Black was tasked by FDR. He was FDR's most loyal supporter in the Senate. Very effective ally of FDR to go and
investigate critics of the administration. And Black was very much on board with this, and he started to call in these people who were critics of the New Deal, political opponents. There were some scandals he was able to take advantage of involving various things any sort of called them in, but they pushed back
and so his investigation was sort of like not very effective. So Black had the idea, gee, whiz, what if I had access to the private telegrams of these witnesses and just to give you a sense of how important telegrams were at the time, that was more than fifty percent of long distance communication.
These are the email of their time. People will often say things in them they wouldn't say in letters, and they're instantaneous, or they can be because a lot of businesses have you know, they they are on site, they have people sending out telegraphs, receiving them, and every member of Congress
is familiar with this mode of communication, law firms, et cetera. So Black I did, what if I can get access to these telegrams for pet perhaps because he found out that there was a law that the telegraph companies had to keep copies of all telegrams and so, uh, you could get them through subpoena, but it had to be very targeted. I want Joe Smith from you know, I want his telegrams involving this or that. Right.
Well, Black, you know, wasn't going to do that. So he went to the administration, went to the FCC basically administration, and said, look, I want access to these telegrams. I want an order. I want to get them for like a nine month period for for example, all telegrams being sent to and sent from all members of Congress. Going out of Washington. Then he expanded it and he started to include law firms in Chicago and so forth, the heads of these anti New Deal organizations and so forth.
He said, I want to see all these telegrams, and the telegraph companies Western Union was the big ones, said screw you because they didn't have bad reputation, right, But he got them, or they were ordered to do it by the FCC. Basically, so he went in and he got these big books, these copies of all these telegrams. He went through thousands a day, and I had to take a double take. But then I
did the math and it works. He went through about three million private telegrams and would copy sections considered damning and oh oh, what was the parame of the search? It was simply look for he told his staffers and the FCC staffers who helped out, look for anything related to lobbying. What would that be influencing ideas what we're doing now would be lobbying, right, so it
would be anything. So he said, well, if you see personal information, just you know, a virtue your eyes and you know, look for stuff on lobbying. And so then he he he would call in these witnesses, and they didn't know he was doing this. They were never informed, and he would blindside them with Well in June eight, if you sent this and you said this and this telegram, imagine that being done for our private emails. How many of us would be prepared to defend everything we said in
those emails? Okay, Well, I don't imagine that happened here. Yeah, see, I don't have to imagine that now. When I take a look back a matter of fact, the first thing that occurs to me is to telecommunications acts in ninety six and ninety seven, and then what became of that later? Okay, because nowadays, look, law enforcement gets involved.
They pretty much have carte blanche through these various other agreements to go through everything now, which at the time it was like, well, we just need you to keep track of all these things so we have records in case somebody does something terrible and then later on what happens, it evolves, So these things always involved when you have a communication company of any kind involved, you know, I mean, and this is like on the scale of when I'm
thinking about the parallel of what Jagar Hoover is developing at this very time, it's rather interesting, isn't it? Because it's interesting, But if you look at Hoover's phone taps, for example, it's rather minor compared to this in scale right now, they're certainly significant. But he's got like, oh, I've seen the figures at any one time, he's got a couple hundred taps on at any you know, particular time when I'm having Again, I'm not
excusing Hoover. I'm saying a lot of people kind of missed by focusing on Hoover, have missed some interesting things that are going on. Well, what's also very better committee, Yes, what's very underappreciated though with Hoover is his monitoring of the mail. I'm sorry, but that is still really unquantified in my mind, because people don't even know how much mail was being monitored. And they said that it was anybody, you know, I mean, it
was so open. This is what it reminds me of the monitoring of the actual, you know, old postal mail. I know, you know, what are we even talking about anymore? Because everything is email and so on and so forth. But honestly, the fact that people were monitoring everything in the mail at certain points, if you could be a targeted figure back then. Sounds like the same kind of thing, except yeah, I think that
I think that that's a good comparison. One thing I would say in an encouraging neelt though, is that once this this process is sort of getting out of control. And Western Union started to inform people that their telegrams are being searched, and there was tremendous pushback. The assistant Secretary of War, no Secretary Woodrow Wilson's Secretary of War, Newton Baker, found out. He's a
moderate kind of character, not a rabble rouser at all. And he said, when I found that out, if I decided that if I saw lynching of Hugo Black, I would not participate. However, I would do nothing to stop the lyncher putting the rope around his neck. And there was a
massive criticism. There were lawsuits, including by a guy that was the head of the US Chamber of Commerce who found out, and it was a Republican leader named Silas Strong, very prominent law firm still has that name today in Chicago, and Strawn brought suit against this for violating basically, you know, the Bill of Rights, and he won. He won. There were several lawsuits. But the trouble is Black had done the damaging, gotten everything he
needed, and basically these court rulings said, don't do that anymore. You're prohibited from doing it anymore, but we're not. We can't really do anything about what you've already done. Having said that, they were important precedents, so imagine if Joe McCarthy or subsequent committees that had that power, which could have included, you know, using monitoring phone calls and things like that too, because it provided a precedent for that, they were deprived of that.
So it actually ended up in a good way in that sense. Well, it was pushback against it across the political spectrum, including a lot of New dealers, were outraged by this. Well, considering that we still don't have the records of the House on an American activities, you know, records at all, you know, just saying you don't know, it could be a
whole lot more extensive. There was an extensive investigation and they did massive these subpoenas basically that we're very fire reaching sure you know just about any information these people have, and oh yeah, all kinds of people were cited for contempt. So the House Committee and on American activities. I'm not minimizing that by any means. That was very you know, investigations out of control, right, although they didn't have really this power. I think that blackad quite well.
We don't see. I contend that we don't necessarily even know because of the lack of transparency. But look, we could discuss that another day. Let's stick to communications, though, because what is FDR well known for, well, his use of the radio, right, and you know, there's there's something to be said. I know I'm jumping around a bit through your book here, but I think this is necessary to bring up because your chapter, let me get in front of me here a new deal for radio and
a new uniformity. Now, considering that there was a crackdown on dissent and all of that, I wonder how we would roll that into the use of the radio for propaganda for you know, the very classic stuff that they used to play when I was a kid. By the way, a lot of these documentaries featured long bits of his radio discussions and all these things. I note that it doesn't seem to be as prominent today. I think it's because it's highly misunderstood. It's like Hey, look, this should be a podcast
from one hundred years ago almost, but they don't do it. And I'm wondering why. But there's a bit of control on the media and things that goes on here. So how would we give people a look at that as you travel through it in your book? Well, FDR is a master manipulator,
you know. Ironically, in a way, Herbert Hoover was an incredibly important figure in creating the current structure or the structure is that it developed of radio through the Federal Radio Commission. But he was rather a naptin use radio for propaganda purposes. And it was once said that FDR, had he never been a politician, could have been at the top of his top of the pyramid or whatever you want to say, as a successful radio commentator. He
had the voice for it. And I sort of forced myself to listen to all of FDR's recorded speeches. Took a while, and the man was just a master at doing that. He was very good. He using humor. He wasn't like Trump, you know, the bull in a china shop. If FDR is going to get you, he would do it behind the scenes. He would use he would use so many he was very smooth and very effective, and put tried to put things on a higher plane when there was
a lot more going on under the surface. But he was a master manipular of the radio. Now. Initially, when the New Deal came in the radio networks there were two of them at that point, two main ones. There was NBC and CBS, and there were a lot of smaller fry and basically they told they said to the administration, whatever you want, we'll put you on the air whenever you want. You don't have to pay for it.
They were giving Roosevelt pretty much carte blanche, and we're shutting down any sort of anti New Deal voices, and that kind of set the pattern. Roosevelt ended up having a lot of criticism and newspapers, print press was really against him by nineteen thirty four thirty five, but he always had radio in his hip pocket. Then later Roosevelt, as there's rise summrising criticism, he's able to basically force off the air all anti New Deal commentators, at least
all the ones on the major networks. They're smaller regional networks and that kind of thing. They don't reach as many people. So there's some exceptions there, but he's able to do it through something very similar to the Twitter files, basically going in and putting pressure behind the scenes, you know, basically things like pressure on advertisers. For example, Marjorie Meriweather Post, her husband was the ambassador of the Soviet Union, Joseph Davies, very tied with the
administration. So Roosevelt went to Post and basically there was a leading anti Roosevelt commentator, probably the Tucker Carlson was day named both Carter, and they basically forced him to tone down his criticism and then ultimately force him from the air, so that by nineteen thirty eight there are no anti New Deal radio commentators on the major networks, And so Roosevelt has radio under his control very effectively, using things like early versions of the equal time rule, using things about
prohibiting network codes. Did a lot of work through these voluntary codes, prohibiting stations from you know, people from purchasing airtime, you know, if you wanted to purchase airtime, you know, for a political message, that basically was shut down. So there were all these things done through this sun of quasi voluntary system, combined with the FCC, combined with behind the scenes pressure that can't coming together basically created what I call kind of ideological uniformity, but
also kind of uniformity in the way radio looked now. A lot of these small fry there were socialist stations, labor union stations, these weird religious stations. A lot of these were through a culling process both into Hoover and Roosevelt, kind of forced off the air, and you get pretty much radio looking the same everywhere. Well, what you're saying is that, no matter how rich I was, if I wanted to go on and do you know one of these political hit ads like we would see today, right, if you
think FDR's new deal is a good deal for you're you're being fooled. If that word got out that I was trying to run that, first of all, CBS, okay, right, the Columbia Broadcasting System and the National Broadcasting Company NBC, both of them would immediately turn it away because A they didn't need me, and B they were cooperating fully because they wanted access, right, they wanted to be able to run the live stuff that he was going
to do directly, seems like to me. And then you have just other pressures being put on these smaller companies where yeah, they get forced out effectively, because look, if you keep cutting off their revenue from all these independent people that could be putting out messages that they don't like for one reason or another. I mean, and there you go. That leads to a whole lot of interesting abuse. And again, no internet, no television at the
time. You know, here we are, this is the manipulation of the media. And and he couldn't control all the print media. Now today, print media is not as prevalent. Matter of fact, you and I had a little discussion before airtime about what's happening to print media and even their archives disappearing at this point, and you can sanitize any of this. Now it's become, especially in the digital age, it's even easier to do what it is that was being done here. So this is you know again, is
he a man of his time? Certainly? And he used lots of different government institutions to do this, right, I mean, we're not just talking about the regulation of the public airwaves, which has been manipulated by various administrations. And one other odd thought I was thinking here as I was listening to you, is that is framework effectively prevails all the way until the nineteen sixties, because it seems to me like when John F. Kennedy, of course,
it becomes more slick, it becomes more showbiz. When John F. Kennedy is taking over radio and becoming the first TV president, so to speak, right, that style that delivery is still kind of there. FDR style prevails all the way into Kennedy's style when it comes to trying to give these speeches on the radio. It seems like to me, would you say that that remained a standard for a very long time up until only maybe I don't know, a short time ago in our history, even that FDR had set
that standard stylistically one and two. This is an exact mirror of what would happen today, except that this would be done with the digital processes if somebody was to use the you know, use the government basically to shut down free speech, which, by the way, there's many different things here that seem to be anti free speech among the New Deal press. So what are your thoughts there, And I'd like you to go into some of the anti free
speech things that go on. Of course, going back further again, I'm looking at the table contents to guide me a touch here. But going back toward the beginning of the book, again you have the Minten Committee you might want to discuss as well. But but this is interesting here where we see
free speech being shut down. And I don't see a lot of historians relating FDR to shutting down free speech except that, oh, well, you know, he was a wartime president, so therefore, you know, you have to control the message during a war, and I dare say it seems like his his beginnings of doing that are not necessarily steeped in the unfortunate circumstance of just war. So what do you have to say to that? And what I was saying before, well, yeah, I think that to some extent
that continues a little. Nobody really equals FDR. A few years ago, I actually made a comparison though to Trump, where I you know, and I don't think in the end that's true became over time that ended. But in a lot of ways, Radio was sort of FDR's version of you know, Twitter. You know, Trump really rose to prominence through his tweets and through using that medium, and it was unfiltered. He could go around everybody else, you know. In FDR's case, he could go around the print
press. He could go directly to the people through his speeches and his fireside chats, and so I think that that's sort of a unique aspect of this. Basically, I don't think Kennedy had that kind of hostility with the print press. So radio is kind of Roosevelt's way just to go around all of this, all of these people. Yeah, in the strategy definitely Trump like, because that's that's exactly correct. You see, you don't have to have a reporter filter what he says. He's puts it out, which is exactly
what Trump did. Uh No. What I meant is the style of speeches that he was giving are similar to Kennedy still, because that was the template that worked for the president for a long time, right, these prepared speeches that came out that had this, you know, this language of a certain sort that made certain points. You know, I'm here to comfort the nation, all that kind of stuff. I mean that is sort of would avoid
personality, and I don't remember a lot of these guys avoided personalities. And I will say that about FDR one of his He's different than Trump in the sense that FDR would not And I think this would if I would be true, for Kennedy would not get up there and just sort of like Trump does,
right and attack individuals right, personalize it. Right. FDR is very effective in talking about these Republicans, these critics, and of course he mischaracterizes his critics, right, he puts words in their mouth, but he does it with good humor, and he does it without sort of of specifically singling them out. So that's a little bit of a difference, I think. Right, So they're on a higher plane in one sense, they're more abstract
in one sense. Well, Kennedy did it with jokes during the television press conferences right where he would make a joke about some criticism toward him with the reporter standing there. Sometimes remember the you know you, I'm sure you viewed some of the television press pressors he did, right, sure, sure you know so. And he again the television president. Okay, FDR definitely thought of as a radio president because he was on all the time the fireside chats.
We all know that. I mean, anybody who knows the history knows that. When you study communications and you study the history of our political structure, communicating with the public, obviously you have to take note of it. But I was wondering more about the control of free speech again, not just through shutting down opposition to the New Deal. But wasn't there other things going on here? Well? Yeah, there was a senator named Sherman Minton,
who's now mainly remembered because there's a bridge in Indiana named after him. But maybe that's changing now with this book. But Minton was really very effective like Black was. He was younger, but he was a very effective kind of attack dog. I guess you could say for the New Deal, he was the guy that really helped out and you know that provided the energy. You had a kind of elderly senate leadership, and he provided the energy for things
like pushing for the court packing plan and that kind of thing. Very loyal to FDR. Very you know, not a loose cannon at all. And Minton proposed a bill, and frankly, I think it came from FDR the idea. I can't prove that, but I've got some fairly good circumstantial evidence, I guess you could say, but I haven't nailed it down. He proposed the bill because Minton was Black's successor. When Black went up to the Supreme Court, mainly because of his good work for FDR on the Black Committee.
Minton took over his committee and it sort of languished for a while, and Minton tried to revive this investigation. This was after the defeat of Court Packing, so FDR was in a revenge revengeful mood, and so Minton was sort of with him on that. They started to investigate, and again partly because he didn't have the power to get these telegrams. Minton is sort of like frustrated because these guys will come in and he's investigated, and they'll go
toe to toe with them and they'll actually get sympathetic coverage. So Minton is very frustrated, so he decides to propose a bill. He's trying to make a larger point. He thinks against what he sees is fake news, false news, right, same thing as today. FDR talked that way too. He proposes a bill to ban to make it a felony to publish any article quote known to be false. Uh oh, now that sounds an awful lot
familiar. Tough O pose something like that a few years ago, and it's talked since in those that kind of have to though, No, he's not the only one. But he's not the only one. Yeah, yeah, no, I just but see here we go, you know, the the the often sighted thing, right, you know, history doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme, Yeah it does. Because we've heard this before,
haven't we again? Shutting down the scent? So uh, please continue, though, because before we're done, and by the way, we're we're way more than halfway through already. H I want to get into the last part of the book, which I did not read thoroughly, but I want to ask you about it because I'm intrigued by even the uh the the chapter title here, uh, the in the table of contents. So I want to get into it before we before we're done. But you know, this is
a different portrait from what is generally handed to school kids. This is a different portrait than what you usually get in your oh you know, very vanilla sort of a documentary on FDR. Right, this is not the stuff they want to tell you about. They may mention the concentration camps, which I didn't even take a lot of time to focus with you on, but you know, because I figure that's out there, there's plenty of it, But
there's a whole lot more going on here. So I'm really glad that we've gotten a chance to do this, but please continue, because again, I think people don't recognize exactly how extensive the work had to be to shut down dissent. And even though you know, look, maybe it's descent with the New Deal, people have judged it differently in recent years than they used to. Like I said, he was more of a political hero, now sort of seen as this sort of gray figure just kind of yeah, part of
the past we flipped by any longer it seems like, right. I mean, he was supposed to be one of the presidential heroes, so to speak. I remember as I was taught when I was younger, but things have changed over time, and of course history does revise itself as it goes. I mean, I see people massaging Lyndon Johnson into a different figure as we go. And I've got my opinions on that for sure, after having to
study a lot of that stuff extensively. But I think that an honest look once again at some of these figures in American history is necessary, and I'm really glad that people like you are going to keep doing this, which, by the way, says in the beginning of the book that you've been working on this for about ten years? Is that right? Oh? More than that. Actually, I hate to admit it because I said, I'm going to deal a story, and I decided I had to do tons of primary
research. I have to know the secondary literature. I look at all sorts of aspects of it, and I was about to give up on it. My wife said, no, you better continue, and I did. But it was just so overwhelming, and I'm glad I I stuck with it. You're talking about FDR and his popularity. It's still way up there. If you look at presidential polls, he's up there. You know, number one,
very often number two. Woodrow Wilson was still fairly up there, but he's sinking, I think pretty fast, because there has been pushback against him, well as he deserves to, by the way, being somebody was born in the state of New Jersey, I feel fully within my right to say that Woodrow Wilson does not deserve to be in the top of anything in presidential
historians. Although I think FDR, I make an argument that FDR was actually worse even if you don't include Japanese in tournament worse on civil liberties than Woodrow Wilson. I know that's a controversial argument, that's right, but I mean,
I think the evidence is there. Woodrow Wilson, you could say, you know, he appointed a lot of people like oh Palmer and these Gregory and these other people, you know, smashing civil liberties during World War One, But he would occasionally he would sort of step in and say, hey, you know, do you really have to do this? Isn't this going a little too far? And his subordinate would say, no, I have to do it, and Wilson would defer to them, so we sort of
let them run wild and didn't do anything. Now, his attitudes weren't that great in civil liberties, but in some ways they were better than some of his subordinates. The reverse was true with FDR would he would put pressure on subordinates who pushed back. And that's one of the things why civil liberties the story is not as bad as it could have been, only because he had subordinates who would push back. And that's what you see with the Mitten Committee.
Mitton proposed his bill and guess what, almost universal opposition, including from leading New dealers, including from the press, including from congressman that you might remember, like oh, I don't remember a manual seller and some of these other figures McCormick, these new dealers. They would push back and they say this is going too far. And that is one thing that you saw during the era that you do not see now to the same extent. Right left
coalitions for free speech right, well, they don't. Maybe they'll come back, but you know, things that shake up over Israel and all that. But I'm not too optimistic. I don't see it as being No, I don't think so either. We have ways to go before people stop stepping on the other side of the line to oppose somebody on their side. Nowadays,
it's kind of a free rider problem. I would say, right, you'll only defend free speech for your side exactly, and the result of that is, because you won't defend it for others, you weaken the You create a free rider problem in a sense where people are free riding off of you who disagree with you, and it sort of weakens the whole opposition to any censorship or control well right, and to me, it weakens the legitimacy of anybody's
argue when they're in opposition to anything, because it's like, Okay, you're in opposition to this because this is your opponent. Uh. That that's the only reason. Otherwise, if it was your guy, it would be fine. I mean, I know I'm putting it on a very basic level, but that that is the reality of it. Back at this point in time
in our history. Uh, that was not necessarily the case. Although Woodrow Wilson, again having speaking speaking as somebody who lived in Woodrow Wilson housing projects who went to schools with his name on it, Okay, I studied him as a figure and presented oppositional viewpoints to Woodrow Wilson while living in New Jersey as a kid. So you know, it's like, hey, look this guy hired Henchman. Do you understand this? You know, like if Royd
had a nail. Did you ever read Freud's analysis of Wilson? I did not, but but please enlighten me. Oh yeah, there was a guy named uh it was a book. It was a book by about Wilson, and it was the introduction was by guy ambassador to the Soviet Union named Bullet and who didn't like Wilson either or didn't like Wilson either. And so this book Freud Psychle analyzes Wilson and basically says, this guy's got a Christ complex.
And I mean he really goes to town. People don't know about the book, but if you just google it, you know, you just some wonderful things in it. He has. He has Wilson on the couch, and he's merciless toward it. I you know what I think, I read like like references to it in another book, come to think of it, because in the fact that you just said Christ complex, I remember that coming
up before. Uh yeah, yeah. He would lecture the people at the Versailles Conference about, you know, our Lord Jesus Christ has laid out this world. You know this, you know. He would give them these flowery lectures and people like Clem and So would look at Lloyd and these cynics would look at Lloyd George and they'd roll their eyes. Right this, this guy's a babe in the woods here. This guy does not understand the realities.
Yeah, I know, and that and that's that sums up Wilson. But look again, not the guy we're talking about tonight, necessarily, but in comparison, no, it's very that's a hard argument. That FDR could be worse. But all right, anyway, we'll put that aside. That would make the argument perhaps perhaps, But all right, now here's something I don't know about. Uh and and you you title it this way, and it's toward the end before your conclusion, which is the forgotten sedition trial fiasco.
Now, I don't know anything about this off the top of my head. So uh Now, I know that the sedition is a popular word as of late. People talk about the you know, the insurrection, the sedition. People have been charged with sedition in recent years, have they not. It is one of these things to bring up. But I don't know about this part of FDR's history. So please give me give me a thumbnail of of
of what's in that after, if you wouldn't mind. Yeah, I didn't plan this, but you know, sedition is suddenly a thing again, sedition trials. I didn't see it coming, but boy it came. It did hit me with a you know, Okay, my timing's pretty good on this.
This was one of the largest, if not I believe, the largest mass trial in the history of Washington, d C. And it basically started with this reporter from the Washington Post cooperating with sympathetic prosecutors in the federal government and certainly the people elements in the Roosevelt administration, including Roosevelt himself, who basically started to It started small, but after Pearl Harbor it really heated up,
partly because Roosevelt put a lot of pressure on his Attorney general and said, when are you going to indict these people? Now Roosevelt wanted to indict people like the publisher of the Chicago Tribune, Robert McCormick. They wanted He wanted to indict these major medium miles, moguls. He wanted to indict members of Congress, you know who. What was their sin? Their sin was
that they had opposed his policy before Pearl Harbor. Now, all these people after Pearl Harbor said basically, we're in this war, we support the war, right But he didn't. He didn't. That wasn't good enough for FDR. So he wanted to prosecute them. His attorney general was pretty good at fending him off. Who was you know who also opposed the Japanese in tournament his own Attorney General, Francis Biddle, and fending him off to some extent.
But then finally they decided to prosecute these sort of smaller fry, these guys that would edit like a small newsletter in Kansas, right that was anti Roosevelt or you know, maybe had some anti Semitic aspects, These sort of rural people. These other people, they didn't even know each other, and they were most of the most part and accused of being part of a worldwide Nazi conspiracy to create a Nazi government in the United States. And it was
just bogus. I mean, they scooped up some people with the boone and stuff like that and put them in this mass trial. But they would prosecute people like initial prosecution was included. This is the biggest name, the guy that was the publisher of the New York Enquirer, which later become the National Enquirer. They brought all these people in into this mass trial in Washington from all around the country, accused them of participating together in a conspiracy and went
to town force edition and they was a big headline news. And gradually there was more and more opposition to it. Even the Washington Post, which had cheered it on, came out against it eventually and compared it to the Moscow Trials of the nineteen thirties, and there was significant opposition to it. Initially there was a lot of support because I was, well, the government can't be lying. Boy, they've caught this big conspiracy here. Well, I
was going to ask for that was looked into. There was nothing there. Well, I mean esscentially. The judge died. It was such it was such a mess. He couldn't take an maybe, you know, maybe just put him in. He had a heart attack and died and they never replaced him, and they basically the whole thing collapsed. They never had heard it. They dismissed the charges ultimately, but it dragged on for a couple of years. Well here's they formally dismissed the charges. So here's the thing.
Because you you are somebody who is well studied in a diverse, uh arena of history. I mean, you're you're, you're all over the place. So I'm curious because coincidentally or not coincidentally, but you know, at the same time that they're making this charge, there were groups that were trying to do this. I mean, there there was this this whole thing that was filmed in New York City in Madison Square Garden of these people that talking pretty
openly about doing this. So were they attaching it to that, you know conspiracy that movement that you know, because there is a white nationalist movement that was attempting to do this at one point. Were they trying to attach these people who were in opposition to Roosevelt to that or were they creating a different conspiracy of sorts here? That's what I'm trying to ask, because it does seem as though there were people that were pressing for this idea in that time
period. And then, of course, you know, once war was engaged with, you know, World War two, once the United States enters it, and a lot of that stuff kind of gets real quiet because nobody wants to do that in public now if Germany's the enemy, right, kind of drove it underground. But I mean there were these movements, right, So I mean, is this them trying to graft it on to the existing movement or were they suggesting a completely different conspiracy or could you even make heads or
tails of that? Well, I think they are trying to graft it on to it. Initial the initial sedition prosecution did not include those kinds of people, and then eventually they reformatted it after it was already getting a lot of criticism and brought in a lot of these guys that, you know, you could say to various degrees, you know, were were pro Nazi, right,
you know, some booned people, that kind of thing. There was a guy that there was a party called the American Destiny Party, which was kind of you know, I guess you could say had had those aspects to it. So you did, you did attempt to sort of bring these people in, but then they would include these guys like there was this guy, like I said, who had a newsletter in Kansas. He was an old populist right, and ended up after Pearl Harber saying we got to beat these
Japanese. I'm behind the president, but was very critical of when he had some anti Semitic views as well. So it was a mix of people. Of course, you had native anti semitism in the United States as well. It was very prevalent anti Semitic statements by Roosevelt, quite a few of them.
Well there was really now so that kind of brought these people in, and I think what FDR with the Hope was by some people Biddle was just you know, trying to pease FDR, but the left people that supported sedition trials thought well, maybe we can show that these people had some sort of
connection with more mainstream people. It's very much like today. They wanted to bring in people like Representative Hamilton Fish, they wanted to bring in people like Charles Lindberg, they wanted to have them prosecuted, very similar today, and some of them saw, well, maybe these people will implicate them and we'll be able to go after the big fish. That's what FDR wanted to do, but Biddle, to his credit, held him off. So I think
that that's something that's going on here. It's very similar today. Right, Well, we'll get these J six defendants and then we're gonna get you know, Ted Cruz or whatever. Right, you have people with that kind of hope, right right, And I think that that was going on here. So it's, you know again, it's law enforcement doing what law enforcement does.
They take in the smaller guy, try to flip him to get the bigger one exactly, and that's you know again, some people would say, oh, that's all politics, but no, that's also standard law enforcement. That's what you do. You get somebody who's clearly you know, working, who might have the ability to reach and get to an upper echelon person, so that you can nail down that upper echelon person because you're willing to let
go the little guy. I often make the drug explanation here because I'm familiar with that world, and the idea is that, yeah, you get the low level guy, and if he knows the distributor, you let him go so you can get the distributor, and if you can get the distributor, you get the guy who's the importer, and so on up the chain until you can finally go a Rico trial. And that's what they'll try and do.
But is it realistic? And was he not just turning against people for the sake of propaganda or was it just to put on a public face. Because here's my last question. Uh, and it's about Joe Kennedy, Because Joe Kennedy is let go by FDR right, and why because what does everybody always cite? Well, it was because he sided with Chamberlain on appeasement for
Hitler. But isn't that always supposed to be the explanation? Yeah? And and and he's you know, ambassadord of the UK, and he's like basically you know, he doesn't want to go to war, so he's he's he's not you know, they're not entirely happy with them, right, He's kind of he's kind of regarded as a loose cannon who's not with the program, which is, you know, we want to get in this war somehow,
and he doesn't. He doesn't think that way. Yeah, that's the context I was going for there, is that basically, if you're in a position
of working for him, it's difficult. It's really interesting that Biddle kept his job because couldn't the president have let go the attorney general, right if he had not appeased him to some degree during this entire you know, fiasco as you describe it, of sedition, which is interesting because again, like you're saying, there's probably a bunch of people that were caught up in this that were just well, they just didn't say the right things, so they got
swept into it, and it kind of takes away some of the sting from the actual sedition. Something that is sedition, something that is somebody working, you know, with an enemy to give aid and comfort to an enemy, et cetera, which I think is actually more kin to the definition of treason, but whatever, we're still in the same ballpark, Okay, So you know it's it's crazy though, and nobody thinks about this interesting though that you
did. Your timing is very good with it, because indeed we're seeing the same sort of thing where it's like, well, let's see if we can get the big group guys, uh, you know, by taking down some of these others that happen to be there, et cetera, et cetera. Which you know, I've got mixed feelings about the J six people, honestly, because some of them I think were just you know, swept up in the moment and not bright enough to realize what they were swept up into.
And others I think might have had, you know, greater aspirations. And you know, since I'm not directly involved with law enforcement, I don't have the investigation in front of me or all the communications, I can't see it all. But something is not right about what's going on in some of these cases, and often politics plays a role. But anyway, that's my thoughts, not as that's got nothing to do with David Beato his thoughts here. It's just I'm bringing it up since you brought it up. Well, I
mean that is that is a very you know, interesting point. My argument is that sedition is such a malleable term like rico. The rico is similar all very valuable term, and nine times out of ten what you see is there's you know, they use it as a catch all kind of thing. And I think that's what you're finding in Ja six now, where there were bad actors there. My argument is, then prosecute them. If they're guilty
of vandalism, if they're guilty of assault, go after them. Right, But you're getting people that are you know, thrown in jail for over twenty years that weren't even there. So I mean it gets a little dicey, you know. Can you advocate some theory about the constitution that's regardless seditious? You know, I would prefer let's stick to some basics. Right, you're guilty of theft, you're guilty of violence, be prosecuted for that. Move on. Where are we going to go after the Daza protesters? Now?
It just gets ridiculous. Where exactly where is the injured party? Where is the damaged property? Because that's basically what it comes down to with law enforcement, and that's what it should be. But you know again, I'm a libertarian of some sort of stripe, a weird stripe, but a libertarian basically
anyway. All together, though, this is an interesting portrait of FDR that you present here, and I wonder if you wouldn't give it a little summation here, and I'll provide the link in the show notes for you guys for the podcast, so that you can go ahead and purchase the book. I definitely advise it, which, by the way, the way that Professor Beta writes, I like it. It's not I don't know how to describe it,
but look, it doesn't wind up going over your head. I don't have this feeling like I'm reading a book by a professor, okay, which is a good thing to me, right, because I don't like being lectured to, which is very weird. I feel like I'm being lectured to by books. Yes, Chuck, you're a weird guy, but it does happen
where you're kind of being lectured to. That's not it. There's a very interesting story that's laid out here which I did not complete, and I'm going to complete because it's a fascinating portrait and present some things that I guarantee you will not see in a lot of the very sanitized viewpoints of this particular his oracle figure. So it is through the Let me let me get this up in front of me real fast here, because it's there. It is through
the Independent Institute. I'll give you, guys the link for that, and I'll also give you the because you can buy it there. But also I'm gonna give you a link. I guess it's on Amazon as well and a
few other places. Yeah, it's available on Amazon, which means you'll be able to probably get the kindle or the paperback version appears to be available in both from what I can see, but either way, I would strongly suggest it and also take a look at the other work that we talked about on the show on TRM Howard, which is a rather undercovered, not really featured individual in civil rights history, which, believe me, you really should take
a look at it, because he's a different sort of guy. I like him. I like him a lot better than I do a lot of the guys in the sixties, to be honest with you. I mean, I get the idea of peace and nonviolence, but this man had the pragmatic sense to be carrying a gun when you need it to and I like him.
So anyway, there goes my commentary, Professor Paido, Sorry but yeah again the New Deal's war on the Bill of Rights, the untold story of FDR's concentration, camps, censorship, and mass surveillance, because indeed, at my commentary again, mass surveillance existed long before the Twitter files existed, long before Oh what was that guy snowden right, you know who told us about the
NSA. Although you know what, the federal government plays many a role in this book for sure, and shutting down dissent and all that good stuff. And monitoring people's communications. Yeah, that existed before the cell phone too, just so you know. But anyway, how would you give a little summation on this book, like what is your overall sort of not conclusion. I don't I want people to read your conclusion, which I have not yet, but I'm waiting to get there and want to see what it is you conclude
from this work. But I mean, give people an idea of what you would like them to take away partially from this book, so that they still need to read it to get out of the title really says it in a lot of ways. The New Deal's war on the Bill of Rights so focused on that, and of course there's an irony there because FDR is the guy that gave us the Four Freedoms right that four freedom speech, which I sort
of tell the story, you know, put that in some sequence. But basically my argument is that this administration was the most hostile towards the Bill of Rights. I would say, certainly any modern president, and I would include I would include Woodrow Wilson across the board speech privacy, certainly Japanese and Tournament. So I give a lot of examples. There's a lot of primary research. I also look at the racial angle. One of the targets of the
New Dealers was a black Republican in Memphis. At the time blacks could vote in Tennessee in the organized a rally multi racial rallying was shut down by an aly of FDR. Anyway, you covered it for the most part, But let me sort of say one hopeful aspect of this, this is a lesson
for today. I would say, if there's a lesson here that you have many examples of left right coalitions defending the Bill of Rights that you do not see as much today, for example, Norman Thomas, I guess you could say the AOC of his time, and the fact that he's the whether Bernie Sanders of his time. He's the head of the Socialist Party. Socialist Party candidate is a tiger. You're defending civil liberties for conservatives and for others,
and you're going to find that on the left as well. During World War Two, a lot of the critics of the sedition trial were new dealers who
said this has gone too far. So that is a hopeful aspect. And we can find many, many examples in there of pushback, including by the bureaucracy, lower elements of the bureaucracy and the FBI and the Justice Department and in law and so forth, and we need I would like to see more of that, and maybe someday we will see more of that coalitions between the left and the right to say, look, our civil liberties are only going
to be threatened, threatened unless we defend your civil liberties. That would be the asel you used to do that. They don't really do it like they used to. Yeah, no longer. And that's the thing is that, Look, I can feel that hopeful message, but then I feel defeated again. And I'll tell you why, because the left and the right of this day, this era that you're studying here is irrecognizable. It's not even close to what we have today. In my mind, the left and the right
are not reconcilable with what they were then. It seems like to me, I agree with you. You had friendships across the political spectrum. Someone like jhl Menkin kind of a libertarian, really right, You had friendships with everybody. They all loved him, a lot of them did socialists, etc. And you see that Norman Thomas, one of his big friends was the Republican candidate Alfred Land, and they were a tag team for civil liberties. Can
you imagine that with AOC now or even Bernie Sanders. So I agree with you that is a difference, and it's a sad difference. Yeah, definitely. But one more time, just for the record, guys, it is the New Deal's War on the Bill of Rights, the untold story of FDR's concentration camp, censorship and mass surveillance. And the author is David T. Beato b E I t O. I think I spelled it right. I took it down from in front of me But anyway, I definitely recommend this
book. It is very interesting and once again another look and a more honest look, I would say, at this political figure that still does retain a great deal of popularity. The ocell effect is done for tonight. No matter who you are, where you are, when you are, I'm merely o'celly, all of you are indeed the effect. Go ahead and follow the links in the show notes. Wall Street, Window dot Global, Silver, the stock Market, wall Stream, Window dot dot. Perhaps you're invested deeply,
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