Coolidge's Lasting Contributions

Calvin Coolidge accomplished feats which proved to strengthen the United States long after he left office. In matters of domestic policy, his victories were in the matter of race relations and in the matter of carefully managing the money which belonged to the citizens; in matters of foreign policy, he eased tensions among the nations by means of the Dawes Plan and the Kellogg-Briand Pact.

Long before occupying the White House, Coolidge was an acknowledged expert at fiscal policy. He was resourceful at finding ways to reduce government spending. Historian Amity Shlaes writes:

It was as president that Coolidge's saving proved so exceptional. Coolidge hacked away at the federal budget with a discipline tragically missing in his well-intentioned predecessor, Warren G. Harding. Coolidge vetoed fifty bills and turned down new spending, even for projects such as farm subsidies and construction of rural roads that would have immensely benefitted the region from which he hailed.

By foregoing the short-term gains which might arise from federal funds for agriculture or road-building, Coolidge made possible larger and longer-term gains which were reaped when these sectors were allowed to grow organically. Likewise, the growth of electrification under Coolidge was greater precisely because he did not enact something like the Rural Electrification Act. While many citizens obtained electrification under Coolidge between late 1923 and early 1929, relatively few people gained electrification after March 1933, despite Congress's approval of Roosevelt's Rural Electrification bill.

Coolidge was constantly working to reduce the nation's debt. The result was that taxpayer dollars were not being used to pay interest. Coolidge understood that having a debt reduced the nation's productivity, and that paying interest was a waste of money. During Coolidge's administration, unemployment was low and went lower.

Between August 1923 and March 1929, the economy encouraged invention and growth. Inventors found opportunities to bring new technologies to market. Average citizens were able to obtain these new goods and the standard of living increased for Americans of all classes.

Coolidge served for sixty-seven months, finishing out Harding's term after Harding died in early August 1923 and remaining until March 1929. Under Coolidge, the federal debt fell. Under Coolidge, the federal budget was always in surplus. Under Coolidge, unemployment was 5 percent or even 3 percent. Under Coolidge, Americans wired their homes for electricity and bought their first cars or household appliances on credit. Under Coolidge, the economy grew strongly, even as the federal government shrank. Under Coolidge, the rates of patent applications and patents granted increased dynamically. Under Coolidge, there came no federal antilynching law, but lynchings themselves became less frequent and Ku Klux Klan membership dropped by millions. Under Coolidge, a man from a town without a railroad station, Americans moved from the road into the air.

Perhaps Coolidge's one regret was Congress's refusal to pass the antilynching bills which he encouraged. He worked around this partisan opposition by finding other ways to advance African-American civil rights. He was the first incumbent president to give a commencement address at a historically Black college when he spoke at Howard University in 1924.

In sharp contrast to Woodrow Wilson, who was an enthusiastic supporter of the KKK, Coolidge made fun of the Klan, and was clear in his speeches that would support the right of African-Americans to vote, even as he supported their other civil rights.

Imperialism - Or Not

Many nations have built empires over the centuries: the Persians, Greeks, and Romans did it in ancient times; the Spanish and British did it in more recent centuries. An empire is a collection of kingdoms or countries, under the leadership or control of the imperial nation.

The United States, however, did not get into the empire-building business. Having worked to gain its independence from an imperial power, the United States asserted, in the words of the Monroe Doctrine, that its role would be to prevent imperial interference in, or takeovers of, independent nations.

To be sure, history books typically make the claim that, while the United States did not build a traditional empire, it did engage in economic imperialism. While this claim is impressive, it is also specious. The trade relations which the United States formed during the last half of the nineteenth century and the first half of the twentieth century were largely voluntary and mutually beneficial.

The results of the Spanish-American War in 1898, a bit of the alleged American imperialism, were in fact deliberate steps to prevent the formation of an empire. Discussions of the territories involved - Guam, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines - centered around the notion that these entities were to be put on a path to independence.

Newspapers inside the U.S. at the time reveal that discussions of sovereignty for these former Spanish colonies were front and center. On June 11, 1904, The New York Times, under the headline "President Planning Filipino Home Rule," published the following:

Secretary Taft received the Philippine Commissioners at the War Department today, and in the course of a speech intimated that in the even of Mr. Roosevelt being elected President the Filipinos might soon enjoy home rule.

Taft was, at the time, Secretary of War, but had served as Governor-General of the Philippines until late 1903. Roosevelt was at the time finishing up McKinley's term, and would soon be elected to the Presidency on his own. There was a strong anti-imperialist movement in the United States, and leaders of that movement, including Lyman Abbott, lobbied the government to ensure that the Philippines would not become part of an American empire, but instead would be independent.

The fact that Dr. Abbott, the acknowledged champion of the idea "The Philippines for the Filipinos," comes here at this time as the invited guest of the President, and that he publicly declares that he aims to set in motion public sentiment favorable to the self-government of the Philippines, however, is taken to mean that he believes the President may be won over to this view in question, and there is a disposition to expect that not long after Roosevelt enters on his term as President of the United States in his own right by virtue of his election, should the November election result favorably to him, he will take a position indicating the ultimate relinquishment of the Philippines as an absolute dependency.

As it turned out, it took a little longer to grant full sovereignty to the Philippines. Woodrow Wilson's racist views delayed the matter, as did World War One and World War Two. But in 1934, Congress approved a measure to put the Philippines on a ten-year path to independence, and despite the hardship of WWII in the Pacific, the United States kept that promise, and the Philippines did indeed become a free nation because of America's work in liberating it from the Japanese.

But the eventual granting of Philippine independence was already a foregone conclusion in 1904. The New York Times continues:

It is known that in this view of the expedient disposition of the problem Secretary Taft share the hope that there may be ultimate self-government by the Filipinos.

Thus it becomes clear that the United States, far from engaging in any form of imperialism, worked in fact to establish the Philippines as an independent nation-state, a goal clearly articulated by American policy makers in the late 1890's, written into law by Congress in 1934, and realized in the 1940's. As Dinesh D'Souza writes:

The United States was itself once a colony of Great Britain. After World War II, the United States used its influence to compel Britain and France to grant independence to many of their colonies, giving America an anti-colonial reputation. Even now Americans don't think of themselves as colonialists; on the contrary, we see ourselves as champions of self-government and liberty.

Not only the Philippines, but also Cuba established itself as an independent nation-state after the Spanish-American War. Again, voices inside the United States prevented the formation of an empire.

Saving the Economy, Again

The narrative of any nation can be told as a series of dangers which threaten the country, and a series of escapes by which the land and its people are returned to safety. Typically, histories conceptualize those dangers armies attacking the nation from without, subversives destabilizing the nation from within, weather inflicting floods or droughts, or diseases and plagues which sicken and kill the people in large numbers. Often a hero organizes the rescue.

At least since Karl Marx, but even earlier, we know also that economic dangers play a motivating role in history. While a doctrinaire Marxist claims economics as the chief or even sole engine of history, it is less controversial to hypothesize that economics are among the main movers.

In 1920, the United States found itself enduring economic hardship. Although the war had been over for more than a year, its lingering effects included massive debt and an anemic trade relationship with Europe. But the war was not the only reason for a weak economy. Damage had been done to the nation’s financial system even prior to the war. The Wilson administration had eagerly implemented the sixteenth amendment, violated the property rights of American citizens by cruel and bitter taxation. Woodrow Wilson had also intervened into the sphere of personal choice by private citizens: the Federal Trade Commission, allegedly organized to protect consumers, reduced competition between businesses and thereby increased prices; the Federal Reserve System exerted control over the economy, reducing choice and creating risks which would eventually lead to the Great Depression.

While it is easy to condemn these actions in hindsight, it must be remembered that some members of the “progressive movement” - the movement which instituted these actions - were perhaps sincere, if gravely mistaken, in their desire to do something helpful for the average American. Not all of them were cynically manipulating the laws and the economy in order to gather power to themselves.

The net result was that by mid 1920, the ordinary citizen was not enjoying the hoped-for blessings of peace. The war was over, but the economy was crippled. In fact, America’s involvement in the war had been direct for only one year, and indirect involvement had been, if anything, profitable for the American economy in the years prior to the nation’s official entry into the war in 1917. Describing Wilson’s postwar economic misery, Amity Shlaes writes:

The country was expecting a revival, but instead the economy worsened before Americans’ eyes. Debt plagued many companies. Even Henry Ford was struggling under a giant burden of debt. Frederick Gillett told Amherst alumni at the Hotel Commodore in New York that February that “the present is one of the most critical times in the whole history of our country.” The federal war debt was $21 billion alone and the entire federal debt more like $25 billion; ten times the debt before the war. State and federal taxes both had escalated in recent years. Senator Borah had once said he could not imagine the top rate on income tax going over 20 percent; now the top rate was over 70 percent.

Two poisons were killing the economy: debt and taxes. 1920 was an election year, and, of course, the economy would be a major issue in the political campaigns. What the American voters wanted to was to move forward - to get past the burdens of high taxes, to get past the task of paying of the national debt, and to move into the prosperity which lay beyond. It is in part a rhetorical flourish to cast this as a “return” to the past, while simultaneously depicting it as a move into the future. In either case, or in both cases, citizens knew that they were bearing the burden of Wilson’s progressivism, with its high tax rates and micro-management of their personal decisions.

In this context the word “normalcy” was born. Although the word had been in use since at least 1857, Warren Harding is often credited with at least popularizing, if not inventing the word. Ordinary voters wanted a life not filled with wartime urgency, not burdened by taxes and by national debt, and free from interfering government regulations. On May 14, 1920, Harding, campaigning for the presidency, catapulted the word into fame. In Boston, at the Home Market Club, several speakers addressed the crowd, including Calvin Coolidge. Harding spoke later in the day. Coolidge and Harding expressed similar views, but Harding’s speech would be the one to became famous as he introduced the word. Amity Shlaes recounts the event:

Harding went at the same matters more deftly. He defended the free market more robustly and assailed “the false economics which lure economic control to utter chaos. The world,” Harding said, “needs to be reminded that all human ills are not curable by legislation.” Rather than shouting or demanding discipline, Harding appealed to common sense. It was daunting to see how Harding’s gracious humor could melt even the stiff Boston crowd. “If I lived in Massachusetts I should be for Governor Coolidge for President,” he jovially allowed. “Coming from Ohio, I am for Harding.” Harding’s rhetorical style was often criticized, but this time the alliteration soothed rather than distracted.

The speech which Harding delivered that day became a turning-point in American political rhetoric, and a turning point in United States history. Harding’s use of the word ‘normalcy’ connected the best of the past with the best of the future. The nation had lived through a roller-coaster ride of progressivist interventionist policies. Even if well-intentioned, those policies had produced the political and economic equivalent of nausea: too much roller-coaster.

Such was the state of the nation in 1920. The successful campaign of Harding for the presidency was a sign of the voters’ desire for “normalcy” - a chance for moving forward from Wilson’s nightmarish bureaucracy, a chance for moving forward into an environment in which each citizen would have a chance - a chance for political expression, a chance for economic opportunity. Harding, as president, began to unfold that opportunity. Harding’s premature death, and an overplayed scandal of much publicity and little substance, got in the way of Harding’s concept of expanding freedom.

In terms of policy, the Harding administration and the Coolidge administration can be seen as largely continuous. In terms of the politics with which those policies were implemented, there was a significant difference in style. Which one was more effective remains a matter of research for historians. But the cumulative efforts of both offered a sense of hope to the average citizen. Opportunities seemed suddenly plentiful, after the barren days of the Wilson administration. Historian David Greenberg writes:

Apart from taxation, Coolidge also made strides in his second term in minimizing the regulation of business and finance. In his fourth annual message to Congress, on December 7, 1926, he issued a call “for reducing, rather than expanding, government bureaus which seek to regulate and control the business activities of the people.” To the objection that workers, consumers, and other citizens needed safeguards, the president replied, “Unfortunately, human nature cannot be changed by an act of the legislature. … It is too much assumed that because an abuse exists it is the business of the national government to remedy it.”

The mechanisms by which Coolidge and Harding created opportunities for citizens were simple in principle: cut taxes, cut spending even more, and reduce the national debt. These principles created prosperity for all Americans.

In creating economic benefits for all Americans, Coolidge and Harding went sharply against the grain of the Wilson administration. While Woodrow Wilson had worked to keep Blacks out of universities, mercilessly mocked the Republican Party’s habit of appointing African-Americans to significant federal posts, and re-segregated civil service jobs such as those in the Post Office to keep “Negroes” from working near other people, Coolidge and Harding both spoke courageously in favor of anti-lynching laws. While Woodrow Wilson referred publicly to Blacks in racial epithets which are too crude to mention in this blog, Coolidge was the first sitting United States president to give a commencement address at a “Historically Black College” or “Historically Black University” when he spoke at the graduation ceremonies at Howard University. African-Americans understood Coolidge’s bold stance against the KKK and voted for him in large numbers in 1924. Coolidge’s campaign mocked the Klan with its deliberately misspelled slogan, “Keep Kool with Koolidge!”

Historian Robert Ferrell explains how the Harding and Coolidge policies created wealth, jobs, and prosperity for all citizens, of all races, of all classes, in all parts of the country:

In holding down government expenditures and saving enough money to retire the debt, Coolidge employed several devices, one of which was the Bureau of the Budget. The very fact that the bureau’s statisticians and accountants were screening the proposed expenses of cabinet departments and the independent agencies gave comfort to the parsimonious president. The bureau’s experts also could watch for special proposals by those well-known spendthrifts, the members of Congress. When the president presented his annual budget he could feel fairly sure that it was as low as he properly should go, and not a crazy quilt of special-interest propositions.

The Coolidge and Harding administrations successfully used free market policies to combat racism, to offer opportunities to Americans of every class and region, and to generate prosperity for the nation generally. The laissez-faire policies of Coolidge and Harding cannot be blamed for the Great Depression: although the exact causes of the Depression are still debated, they seem to emanate generally from Wilson’s Federal Reserve Board and from tariff and taxation policies which distorted the organic and natural trends of the market.

In any case, Wilson’s policies left the nation in economic shambles in 1920. Harding and Coolidge are properly seen as revitalizing not only the nation’s economy, but also revitalizing civil liberties in general.

Woodrow Wilson, Herbert Hoover, and Race

The presidency of Woodrow Wilson marked a low point for African-Americans and their struggle for civil rights. Prior to taking office, Wilson, as president of Princeton University, had worked to deter Blacks from applying to Princeton; if they applied, he worked to ensure that they were not admitted. Addressing Princeton alumni, Wilson criticized President Theodore Roosevelt for appointing African-Americans to federal offices; Wilson used a crude racial epithet to describe Roosevelt's appointees.

Occupying the White House after Theodore Roosevelt - Wilson took office in March 1913, Roosevelt left in March 1909, with Taft serving a term in between - Wilson sought to undo the Republican Roosevelt's integration. In fact, Wilson would not only undo Roosevelt's appointments of Blacks to federal offices, but Wilson would also go on to undo the integration of the federal civil service which had been in place since Reconstruction. Wilson imposed segregation on various agencies within the government, e.g. the post office, which had been integrated for decades.

Beyond removing African-Americans from federal posts, and beyond re-segregating the civil service, Wilson went further. He publicly praised the KKK. This horrified not only Blacks, but millions of Americans - people of all races, religions, and ethnic background. His affirmation of the Ku Klux Klan was the final bit of evidence which confirmed that Woodrow Wilson was a hate-filled and bigoted racist.

Just as Wilson had worked to undo the desegregation of Teddy Roosevelt and William Taft, so Wilson's successors - Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover - worked to reintroduce integration to the federal government and civil rights to the Blacks. Harding and Coolidge both advanced a legislative agenda which included antilynching bills. Hoover worked to reintegrate federal agencies. Historian Jonathan Bean writes:

In 1913, Democratic president Woodrow Wilson ordered the segregation of government offices. Moorfield Storey and other officers of the NAACP protested, but Wilson responded: "[B]y putting certain bureaus and sections of the service in the charge of negroes we are rendering them more safe in their possession of office and less likely to be discriminated against." Perhaps because he had spent most of his adult life outside the United States, Secretary of Commerce Hoover was uninterested in racial issues; moreover, thinking in terms of rigid classes violated his individualist philosophy. Hoover's Red Cross work during the Great Flood of 1927 opened his eyes to racism in the South. The following year he responded positively when the NAACP asked him to desegregate the Commerce Department.

The narrative, then, is this: on the state level, the civil rights gained by the Blacks during Reconstruction began to evaporate during the late 1800's, as Democrats regained control of southern states from the Republicans. On the federal level, the civil rights gained by African-Americans during Reconstruction began to evaporate during the Democrat administration of Woodrow Wilson; Blacks began to regain ground on the federal level during the Republican administrations of Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover. African-Americans would have to wait longer to regain that ground on the state level, as the Democrat party held the southern states under racist domination even when the Republicans had influence on a federal level.

FDR's Policy Toward the Soviets

The Czarist regime which dominated Russian during the nineteenth century, and during the first few years of the twentieth century, was a cruel and paranoid regime. Even if the personality of the last Tsar, Nicholas II, was somewhat more humane - such is the hypothesis of some biographers - it was too little, too late. The Tsarist secret police mercilessly hunted anyone who seemed to be possibly involved with any critique of the government, arresting quite a few innocents along the way. This police force was known for brutal interrogations, beatings, and killings; suspects who survived to trial were not given what Western Civilization calls 'due process,' and were sentenced to long years in labor camps, where few survived their sentences, or were simply sentenced to death.

Beyond chasing anyone who seemed likely to be critical of the government, the Czar utterly ruled out any reforms in his government which might move it in the direction of a republic with freely-elected representatives. His relations with the Duma - Russia's nominal parliament with little real power - went from bad to worse, as he refused to acknowledge the Duma as having any authority, and he dissolved it. Liberties like freedom of speech and freedom of the press were unknown. Although intended to prevent the government's overthrow, the Czarist regime's oppressiveness actually gave cause to revolutionaries.

Given the Czarist regime's harshness, it was no surprise that many western observers initially hoped that the 1917 revolution would give rise to a more humane government. The rhetoric put forth by Lenin and the other Bolshevik leaders sounded as if it would lead to the types of political liberties favored by Western Civilization.

But it soon became clear that the Soviet dictatorship would be no improvement over the czarist regime. By some metrics, it would be worse. The communist government of the Soviet Union murdered Russians by the millions. Freedom of religion, freedom of the press, and freedom of speech essentially disappeared. The Russians who had been oppressed by the czarist regime soon realized that they were being maltreated with even more brutality by the communists. Western observers who had hoped for progress under the Soviet Union saw Russia dissolve into a nightmare of cruelty.

By the time western governments, including that of the United States, realized which type of ruthless government was dominating Russia, it was too late. The results of the 1917 revolution were firmly in place. Not only did the communist dictatorship - which allowed no meaningful elections, but gave elaborate pretenses of such - have a secure grip on power in the Soviet Union, but it had also installed spies inside the United States government.

Although it was clear, equally to foreign policy specialists and to the ordinary citizen, that the Soviet government was no friend either to political liberty generally or to the United States specifically, policy makers inside the State Department were under the influence of misinformation given to them by Soviet agents who had obtained influential posts inside the government.

In addition to these moles, who were in two-way communication with the KGB and other Soviet agencies in Moscow, there were also sympathizers: those who were so infatuated with communist ideology that they continued to support Lenin and Stalin even after their atrocities became public.

There was a significant number of knowing and willing agents, both in the State Department and in other offices inside the United State government. There was also a large number of sympathizers, regarded by the Soviets as intellectual dupes, who were neither employed by, nor in direct contact with, Soviet intelligence agencies, but whose activities were certainly helpful to the Stalinists.

Among the agents on the Soviet payroll were State Department officials like Alger Hiss, Julian Wadleigh, Laurence Duggan, and Noel Field. They reported to agencies like the NKVD, the GPU, and the OGPU. Among those who, having a fondness for communist ideology, helped the Soviets without being on the payroll of the Soviet intelligence agencies and without direct contact to those agencies were men like Harry Hopkins, who perhaps never released state secrets to the Soviets, but who, wittingly or unwittingly, nudged United States policy in directions favorable to the Soviet Union.

Hopkins, for example, was convinced that the United States could form a "friendship" with the Soviet Union, even as Stalin was directing his spy networks to undermine the U.S. government. Hopkins hoped that the United States could render "assistance" to the Soviet Union, encouraging such friendship, even as the Comintern, an agency of the Soviet government, plotted the overthrow of the U.S. government. Policy documents formulated under the supervision of Harry Hopkins, and transmitted by Hopkins to President Franklin Roosevelt, contained these words and ideas.

By continuously feeding such misinformation to FDR, Roosevelt's policy views were nudged into a direction which played into the hands of the Soviets. To be sure, not all of Roosevelt's advisors were keen on Russian communism, and some of them warned the president about the dangers. Historian Medford Stanton Evans and Herbert Romerstein write:

Seeking Soviet “friendship” and giving Moscow “every assistance” indeed summed up American policy at Teheran and Yalta, and for some while before those meetings. The most vivid expression of Roosevelt’s ideas to this effect would be quoted by William Bullitt, a longtime confidant of the President, and his first envoy to Moscow. Bullitt recounted an episode early in the war in which he suggested to FDR that American Lend-Lease aid to Russia might provide some leverage with a balky Kremlin. To this, according to Bullitt, the President responded: “I have just a hunch that Stalin doesn’t want anything but security for his country, and I think that if I give him everything I possibly can and ask nothing from him in return, noblesse oblige, he won’t try to annex anything and will work for world democracy and peace.” (Emphasis added.) Bullitt, who had learned about Stalin the hard way in Russia, tried to dissuade the President from this view but was not successful.

The pro-Soviet advisors inside the Roosevelt administration mocked those who warned about the dangers of Stalin, even as Stalin was orchestrating a manmade famine in the Ukraine which would kill millions, and even as Stalin was preparing to team up with Hitler against the United States. The Soviet agents in the State Department ridiculed those who attempted to alert FDR to Stalin's sinister activities, scorning them as backward-looking. Any data about Soviet butchery was countered with reminders that the czarist government hadn't been that much worse.

After the 1917 revolution, a civil war between the "White Russians" and the "Red Russians" lasted from 1917 to 1923. The White Russians had hoped to dislodge the Bolsheviks, while the Red Russians were the communists who hoped to solidify their hold on power. During and after that war, which the White Russians lost, emigres from the White Russian side gave useful data to the State Department. The data from the White Russians complemented data gathered by Americans like William Bullitt on the ground in Russia.

As the ever-grimmer picture of Lenin's and Stalin's butchery and aggressions emerged, the pro-Soviet faction in the State Department worked to discredit the data offered by the White Russians.

When U.S. and Soviet diplomats met, three issues were on the table. First, the Soviet destruction of freedom of religion was extending even to visiting U.S. nationals on Russian soil. Second, the Comintern was continuing to organize subversive groups to attempt violent overthrows not only of freely-elected western governments, but also of the Chinese government. Finally, the Soviet government had confiscated and nationalized assets belonging to U.S. citizens which happened to be on Russian soil at the time of the revolution.

Although these human rights violations were flagrant and glaring, the pro-Soviet elements within the State Department still worked to steer the negotiations to the advantage of the Soviets. Historian Jean Edward Smith writes:

Because the career diplomats in the State Department - many of whom had spent the last fifteen years hobnobbing with White Russian emigres - were still imbued with nostalgia for the czarist past, Roosevelt handled the negotiations himself, first through Henry Morgenthau, then through William C. Bullitt. Morgenthau, as head of the Farm Credit Administration, dealt with the Soviet trade organization Amtorg; Bullitt with Boris Skvirsky, the senior Russian commercial representative in the United States. As a result of these covert discussions, FDR invited Soviet foreign minister Maxim Litvinov to Washington for direct negotiations in early November. The ostensible outstanding issued involved freedom of religion for Americans in Russia and the continued agitation for world revolution mounted by the Comintern. The real sticking point was the restitution of American property seized by the Soviet government in its nationalization decree of 1919. Roosevelt and Litvinov compromised. The agreement is known as the Litvinov Assignment. The Soviet government assigned to the United States its claim to all Russian property in the United States that antedated the Revolution. The United States agreed to seize the property on behalf of the Soviet Union, thus giving effect to the Soviet nationalization decree, and use the proceeds to pay the claims of Americans whose property in Russia had been confiscated. The constitutionality of the assignment was twice challenged before the Supreme Court, but in both instances it was upheld, the "taking clause" of the Constitution not withstanding.

Two factors shaped FDR's policy: first, pro-Soviet sympathizers in the State Department directed a continual stream of misinformation to him; second, his declining health stole his resilience and stamina and predisposed him to look for easy solutions rather than strive for diplomatic gains.

The Supreme Court was willing to go along with Roosevelt's policy toward the Soviets because it already had been at the receiving end of FDR's ability to bully the court. The two challenges, 1937 and 1942, to Roosevelt's deal with the Soviets, indicated that the U.S. government would be complicit in aiding the Soviet nationalization policy in seizing property which belonged to private citizens. Assets belonging to Russian citizens - assets which happened to be on U.S. soil - were seized, thus denying the rights of those citizens. The Soviet government had stolen assets both from U.S. citizens from Russian citizens, assets which happened to be on Russian soil at the time of the revolution. FDR would use the U.S. government to complete the theft by seizing any assets on U.S. soil which happened to belong to a Russian citizen. He would use the proceeds to pay the claims of American citizens whose property on Russian soil had been stolen by the Soviet government. But he was paying them with stolen cash. The Supreme Court did not have the stamina to resist Roosevelt's action; it knew that it would be bullied into submission for contradicting the Roosevelt administration, just as it had been bullied into approving the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1938, after striking down its clone, the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933.

In the end, FDR knew better. He was savvy and cosmopolitan - he'd spent more time in Europe than many of his State Department appointees. But his illness sapped his strength, and his agreement with the Soviets was the easy way out - appeasing the Americans whose property had been confiscated by the Stalinists - and the easy way out was more appealing than insisting on a principled diplomatic stance.

George Washington and the Synagogue

In Newport, Rhode Island, stands the nation’s oldest synagogue, built in 1763. Its age, and its symbolic significance for religious freedom, are already enough to make it noteworthy. But it has added importance because George Washington visited it, and did so to underscore the nation’s commitment to free worship. Eric Tucker, writing for the Associated Press, reports that

The history of the synagogue starts with a group of Sephardic Jews who arrived in 1658 in Rhode Island - a colony founded by Roger Williams and his followers on the principle of religious tolerance. They established a congregation, and the synagogue was built a century later designed by Newport architect Peter Harrison, whose other notable buildings include King’s Chapel in Boston.

The tradition of freedom of belief began with the early settlers like Roger Williams and William Penn, and was carried forward to the next generation of colonists. Religious freedom was a widespread value among the colonists. In New York, John Rogers, during a 1783 sermon, declared that

Another instance of the divine goodness to us, and which we may not pass unnoticed, is, his providing us in New York with so good a constitution, for the securing our inestimable rights and privileges. I do not say it has not its imperfections; but it is upon the the whole, equalled by few, and surpassed by none of the constitutions of the sister states, in wisdom, justice, and sound policy. The rights of conscience both in faith and worship, are fully secured to every denomination of Christians. No one denomination in the state, or in any of the states, have it in their power to oppress another. They all stand upon the same common level in point of religious privileges. Nor is this confined to Christians only. The Jews, also, which is their undoubted right, have the liberty of worshiping God in that way they think most acceptable to him. No man is excluded from the rights of citizenship on account of his religious profession. Nor ought he to be.

Washington’s visit to the synagogue set a clear tone for the new nation. As the war was winding down, Washington’s presence in the building was a message that Jews and Christians in America, despite differences in belief, had a common heritage which would form the foundation for a natural law view in which personal freedom and individual liberty would be goals of the political system. After visiting, George Washington wrote to the leaders of the synagogue:

It is now no more that toleration is spoken of as if it were the indulgence of one class of people that another enjoyed the exercise of their inherent natural rights, for, happily, the Government of the United States, which gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance, requires only that they who live under its protection should demean themselves as good citizens in giving it on all occasions their effectual support.

The depth of Washington’s consideration of the congregation which met in the synagogue is manifested in the fact that his first visit to the location was in 1781, and his letter to them was written in 1790. Clearly, the group had a significant spot in Washington’s mind. The degree of religious freedom to which he was committed was astounding at that point in time: Rabbi Mordechai Eskovitz notes that in the 1700’s, Jews in the United States “had the privilege of praying as free citizens,” while the rest of the world “didn't have much religious tolerance.” In the two centuries following Washington’s visit, while a few other nations in the world embraced the notion of religious freedom, the relative situation remained much the same: while America strives to offer unprecedented levels of freedom to its citizens, much of the world remains oppressed by governments which restrict, regulate, and tax. Eric Tucker writes that

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower also attended services at Touro, as did poet Robert Frost.

Leaders like Eisenhower defended the Judeo-Christian value of tolerance against Soviet Communism during the Cold War in the twentieth century, and we defend it against the terrorist attacks of Islamofascism in the twenty-first century. The Touro synagogue in Rhode Island has became an enduring symbol for this struggle, and for the need to defend freedom against the inevitable attacks on it. Perhaps Robert Frost was considering the need to dedicate one’s self to liberty's defense when he wrote

But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,

The United States must keep its promise, remaining vigilant despite fatigue, defending the peculiarly Judeo-Christian concepts of freedom and liberty. That is the nation’s duty.

James Otis Discusses Taxes

James Otis was born in Massachusetts in 1725. His father was also named James Otis, and sometimes he is listed as "James Otis, Jr." but often the "Jr." is omitted. Although he was disabled by the time the fighting began in 1775, he was pivotal in the developing events leading up to the revolution. One of his contributions was his precise and articulate formulation of the grievances against the British government.

Basing his argument on ideas drawn from the Magna Carta and from the English Bill of Rights of 1689, James Otis clarified the argument that the taxes on the colonists were unfair because the colonies had no voting representatives in Parliament. Otis was probably the first to say or write the phrase "no taxation without representation" - but the evidence is not conclusive. The oldest surviving text with that phrase is dated February 1768: a London magazine's account of a speech. But Otis was widely read and discussed in English political circles, and the author of that speech may well have gotten the phrase from Otis. It is confirmed that Otis wrote "Taxation without representation is tyranny" and other similar phrasings of the thought. Historian Les Standiford writes:

However, the concept of the basic unfairness of being taxed without the consent of one's elected representatives had certainly been eloquently expressed by the Boston assemblyman and attorney James Otis, Jr., as early as 1764 in a pamphlet of protest, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved. Otis framed his argument by asking, "Can there be any liberty where property is taken away without consent?" Then he began his answer with a second question: "Is there the least difference as to the consent of the colonists whether taxes and impositions are laid on their trade and other property by the crown alone or by the Parliament?"

Having graduated from Harvard College in 1743, James Otis had been practicing law in Boston since 1750. In 1761, he gained fame by mounting a legal challenge to "writs of assistance" issued by the British government. These documents were search warrants which allowed English tax officials nearly unlimited access to the homes of colonists. Neither the specific home to be searched, nor the object of the search, were specified; British bureaucrats were entitled to barge into anyone's home, with no notice, and look for anything they pleased. James Otis may be the spiritual father of the fourth amendment, which reads:

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

In May 1761, Otis was elected to the legislative body of Massachusetts, and would be reelected continuously as long as he was fit. Like many of the early revolutionaries, his arguments were based, not on his rights as an American, but rather on his rights as a British subject. This reveals the degree to which the early protesters were still trying to work with the British system. Only when it became clear that they would never be granted appropriate representation in Parliament, and only when it became clear that the British would continue to ravage the colonists and trample human rights by means of taxation, that independence became the goal, instead of correcting the behavior of the British government. Les Standiford quotes Otis:

For Otis, it was a simple matter, though he made his case with passion: "I can see no reason to doubt but the imposition of taxes, whether on trade, or on land, or houses, or ships, on real or personal, fixed or floating property, in the colonies is absolutely irreconcilable with the rights of the colonists as British subjects and as men ... for in a state of nature no man can take my property from me without my consent: if he does, he deprives me of my liberty and makes me a slave. If such a proceeding is a breach of the law of nature, no law of society can make it just. The very act of taxing exercised over those who are not represented [emphasis added] appears to me to be depriving them of one of their most essential rights as freemen, and if continued seems to be in effect an entire disfranchisement of every civil right."

In 1762, Otis published one of his most famous works, a book titled A Vindication of the Conduct of the House of Representatives of the Province of Massachusetts Bay; in it he articulated the view that the colonists should not be taxed to pay for the defense of the colonies by English soldiers and by the English navy, because the colonists could protect themselves with their militias, do it better, do it at less cost, and do it without creating the misery which the drunken and harassing English soldiers inflicted upon the colonists. He drafted documents which were sent to London to explain the rights of colonists according to British law, and he was a member of the Stamp Act Congress. He published two more books, The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved and Considerations on Behalf of the Colonists, and his speeches and writings were influential within the growing revolutionary movement. He wrote:

The sum of my argument is: that civil government is of God; that the administrators of it were originally the whole people; that they might have devolved it on whom they pleased; that this devolution is fiduciary, for the good of the whole; that by the British constitution this devolution is on the King, Lords and Commons, the supreme, sacred and uncontrollable legislative power not only in the realm but through the dominions; that by the abdication, the original compact was broken to pieces; that by the Revolution it was renewed and more firmly established, and the rights and liberties of the subject in all parts of the dominions more fully explained and confirmed; that in consequence of this establishment and the acts of succession and union, His Majesty George III is rightful King and sovereign, and, with his Parliament, the supreme legislative of Great Britain, France, and Ireland, and the dominions thereto belonging; that this constitution is the most free one and by far the best now existing on earth; that by this constitution every man in the dominions is a free man; that no parts of His Majesty's dominions can be taxed without their consent; that every part has a right to be represented in the supreme or some subordinate legislature; that the refusal of this would seem to be a contradiction in practice to the theory of the constitution; that the colonies are subordinate dominions and are now in such a state as to make it best for the good of the whole that they should not only be continued in the enjoyment of subordinate legislation but be also represented in some proportion to their number and estates in the grand legislature of the nation; that this would firmly unite all parts of the British empire in the greater peace and prosperity, and render it invulnerable and perpetual.

James Otis, along with Sam Adams and Patrick Henry, seemed to realize, more than some of their fellow founding fathers, the power of the emotion among the colonists. He perhaps realized early what others realized later: that the time was ripe for a revolution, and that the colonists had been subject to such abuse for so long a time that they were ready to riot, to throw valuable cargo into Boston Harbor, and to start a war for independence. Les Standiford reveals that Otis was even ahead of Benjamin Franklin in understanding the revolutionary sentiment among the people:

If Otis was calling for colonists to boycott the tax, however, shortly after the act's passage the British were taking steps to see that the desperately needed funds would in act begin flowing into the national coffers. Even Benjamin Franklin miscalculated the depth of passions loosed in the colonies, it seemed, for he went so far as to nominate a Philadelphia friend, John Hughes, to serve as stamps distributor for Pennsylvania. It was only when word reached Franklin that an angry mob had surrounded Hughes to prevent him from assuming his duties and another had marched on Franklin's own home, threatening to burn it down, that the envoy began to understand that a profound shift in Anglo-American affairs had taken place.

Sadly, James Otis was struck on the head by a British officer in 1769. He was disabled from that time forward, although he lived until 1783. By the time he died, the United States was free and independent, thanks in part to his work.