Talk:New Deal/Archive 5

German American Bund
Wouldn't it be pertinent in the critical reception of the New Deal to include that american nazis refered to it as the "Jew Deal"? C.Delacroix (talk) 23:05, 31 March 2011 (UTC)

Where is the research on the FAILURE of the New Deal?
Many researchers say FDR hurt the economy with his regulations,taxes and spending. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ericg33 (talk • contribs) 10:08, 23 January 2011 (UTC)

Please stop that vandalism...
Someone should have a look at this article because some nonsense has been put in it. Probably it would be an idea to lock it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.183.178.184 (talk) 21:21, 3 February 2010 (UTC)

What's with the cow?
A few edits ago, ==Reform== was changed to "When the cow jumped over the moon a nickle caused the world to turn to drugs." I don't get it.

Speaking of bias, where is the reception section?
We really need a reception section for this article!--Guugolpl0x (talk) 17:22, 19 February 2009 (UTC)

Bias in this article is extremely destructive right now
Someone more versed in using Wikipedia needs to take it upon her/himself to get this article in shape and protected. The Republicans in the U.S. are licking their wounds after Obama's amazing landslide victory (and the general "mkjoi" the American populace has given to Bush and his cronies) by trying to handicap the new Administration before they even get to work. Paramount to this effort is to re-write the history of the New Deal. Limbaugh and others are already referring to the financial situation in the U.S. as the "Obama Depression," and they've convinced the Ditto Heads among us that the concensus of historians is that the New Deal "prolonged the Great Depression." That is by no means the case. Most historians agree that it was a mixed bag, and that our leaders did what they thought was right at the time.

In the section of this article labeled "Prolonged/worsened the Depression," a good example of this rhetoric can be found. The survey cited in this section (citation 45 at the bottom) is actually of questionable rigor. The author himself states that he has no way of knowing whether he used a representative sample, and that's the whole point of doing such research! If someone is going to try and provide information in this Wiki article about what "most historians think" about the New Deal (and I think many will come away with that impression), he/she should at least try and find an article whose authors can provide us with some assurance that their data represent what "most historians think" about the New Deal. Doesn't that make sense?

At any rate, I'm sure millions of people around the world will be turning to Wikipedia to do their quick search refresher on the New Deal, and I'd hate to see it used to further spread propaganda. 67.164.84.120


 * Anon seems to complain when scholars and experts have conclusions based on thorough research. That's what we report at Wiki. Bernanke of cousre is a leading expert on the topic, unlike Rush Limbaugh (what's he doing here, or Obama???) It makes sense for Anon to read the studies that are listed in the bibliography, which cover all major points of view on the topic, before talking about "propaganda". Rjensen (talk) 22:11, 6 December 2008 (UTC)


 * I am but a humble anon myself, and judging by Rjensen's credentials I may not be in the position to disagree, but I do think there are some POV issues in this article. The article does seem largely critical of FDR and the New Deal. There are numerous areas where this is an issue, but I think the most obvious one is the Conflicting Interpretations section. The section states that a minority (a large minority) feels the New Deal did not end the Depression and yet there are a sparse (on the verge of non-existent) rebuttals to that perspective. At the very least it would make sense to change that section to "Alternate Interpretations" or "Criticisms of the New Deal".  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.90.128.73 (talk) 17:59, 15 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Whoever wrote the section citing the survey screwed up the results. Leaving aside methodological concerns, there were three categories in the survey: Agree, Disagree with provisos, and Disagree. When you add up the two "disagree" categories, you get 95% of historians and 73% of historians reporting that the New Deal did not prolong the Depression. (The original writer seemed to add "agree" and "disagree with provisos" together, which is untenable.) So I've changed the weasel words in the opening section about there being a substantial debate (at least among historians, there isn't), and fixed the discussion in the prolonged/worsened the depression section to reflect accurate numbers.

07:40, 25 December 2008 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Creed of hubris (talk • contribs)


 * Actually, you seem to have misread the survey, the option you are referring to is not "disagree with provisos", but "agree with provisos", as such the previous situation was more accurate than the current. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.192.7.180 (talk) 11:42, 27 December 2008 (UTC)


 * The above critic ("BIAS IN THIS ARTICLE...") seems to suggest the article should serve as a rebuttal to the ranting of a right-wing talk show host, and be amended accordingly. We can dismiss this out of hand. However, Paragraph 2 of "The First Hundred Days: Banks and monetary reforms" was a real stinker, and included a quote from Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz on the Emergency Banking Act: "The 'cure' came close to being worse than the disease." Now Friedman was an important economist, and his take on the New Deal is one to be reckoned with, but nothing that preceded this quote in the paragraph made any reference to bad consequences of the EBA. Worse, the following sentence was amended, apparently for continuity's sake ("To avoid future 'cures'..."), but it suggested that Congress created the FDIC as a sort of Friedmanite response to Roosevelt's monetary policy. This is the height of absurdity. Since Friedman is rightly discussed elsewhere, the quote was omitted. Less significant changes were also made to the paragraph, which is still flawed.Arc boutant (talk) 20:19, 27 January 2009 (UTC)Arc_boutant


 * Similarly, an entire section devoted to general criticisms of the New Deal was placed, inexplicably, in the middle of a section describing the National Recovery Administration. This has been removed to where it belongs, although substantial work is still needed. Also, several redundant sentences summarizing conservative criticisms have been removed.Arc boutant (talk) 20:17, 27 January 2009 (UTC)Arc_boutant

I would not necessairly say that this article is "wrong" however there is no counter point to what is clearly a conservative view point with hand picked sources. This is fine as long as a more liberal interpretaion is presented as well. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.36.74.153 (talk) 13:04, 11 February 2009 (UTC)

"The Republicans in the U.S. are licking their wounds after Obama's amazing landslide victory" - bias much? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.171.161.53 (talk) 16:02, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

I agree with this criticism in every way. Largely right-wing/Republican viewpoints are presented in the article and cloaked to make them seem like the consensus view. They are not. In fact much of the theory presented in the article has been thrown it to doubt due to the fact that the dismantling of New Deal regulation promoted by the right-wing/Republican theorists cited is believed by many economists to the the primary cause of the 2008 Financial Crisis and resulting Great Recession. '''The article is terribly one-sided. Keynesian and Marxist viewpoints MUST be presented for it to be balanced. Presenting only the right-wing view constitutes deception.''' As of now this article is at best a work of right-wing revisionist history - at worst Orwellian propaganda. "He who controls the past controls the future." ByronHudson (talk) 05:15, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Contradictions on sharecroppers
This article can't seem to decide whether the New Deal helped or hurt southern sharecroppers and tenant farmers. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ephemerama (talk • contribs) 15:20, 5 September 2008 (UTC)

It did both. It stalled eventual mechanization, but unintentionally accelerated the death of the labor system by drastically cutting production. 35.10.45.21 (talk) 20:08, 7 October 2008 (UTC)Yaron Harnell


 * One perspective holds that a very major way the New Deal hurt black sharecroppers was a program to create scarcity and thus raise prices by destroying food and paying farm owners to NOT grow food (recall the stories of mountains of produce left to rot under armed guard). This profited the land owner well, but was a disaster for sharecroppers who could neither grow food, nor share in the government pay to keep their landlord's land fallow. I'll see if I can find credible sources for this perspective. 24.21.105.223 (talk) 06:50, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Some recent scholarship, such as Keith Volanto's book "Texas, Cotton and the New Deal," have actually argued that the New Deal actually accelerated mechanization, because land owners used subsidies to buy tractors (instead of pay sharecroppers and tenant farmers) and then no longer the extra labor. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.133.127.183 (talk) 21:08, 17 January 2009 (UTC)

It generally depended on what subregion of the South you are talking about. Where the terrain was conducive and it was generally cost-efficient, then yes, the AAA tended to lead to increased mechanization. Not in other areas where tractors and other equipment were less efficient. Either way, the AAA tended to be very bad for croppers and tenants simply because less land in production due to gov't payments for retraction of land = less need for agricultural laborers. Thus, it was not just mechanization that was driving croppers and tenants from the land, but the domestic allotment policy itself--which was mdesigned by non-southern farming men who did not see that their plans would be beneficial to landowners such as in the North and Midwest but quite harmful to non-tenured farmers in the South. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.197.26.64 (talk) 23:35, 17 August 2009 (UTC)

Socialist/Communist Edit
The New Deal reflected many of the popular viewpoints of socialist groups in the 1930s. Socialist groups had heavy ties to the labor unions in the U.S, and these groups were strengthened greatly by the NIRA which was formed by the New Deal. The New Deal also enforced an Eight Hour Workday (check the article). This was a popular idea in the labor movement, as well as with Socialists in America. Overall, the New Deal appears to have given Socialists much of what they demanded in the United States. Litanss (talk) 19:31, 15 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Not quite. Socialism involves state control of the means of production, and the New Deal Democrats usually (though not always) preferred regulation to nationalization.  Not the same thing. 76.106.145.195 (talk) 01:52, 27 May 2008 (UTC)


 * Not necessarily true. There are (and were) so many factions of (and within) socialism, that one cannot state with finality that Socialism stood for any single production principle. Although generally anti-free market, most mainstream American socialists were loathe to do away with free market capitalism altogether. Fascist socialism under Mussolini favored nationalization while German socialism under Hitler favored coercing industry into the nationalistic effort, but leaving them for the most part privately owned though heavily regulated. 24.21.105.223 (talk) 07:44, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Before 1939, actually before 1943 industry wasn't really "coerced" into the "nationalistic effort". The "Gleichschaltung" dealt more with the trade unions and other organisations not firms and companies as such. --41.150.63.186 (talk) 16:34, 16 November 2012 (UTC)
 * I agree. the article gives no mention of the significant movement politics and their role in bringing about these policies. Robert Jensen argues that credit for the New Deal should not be given solely to elected officials:
 * Whoever gets elected, you have to have social movements powerful enough to force those elected official to enact the policies that you think are important. In US History we have a rich and exciting history of social movements that have done that... Those are really inspring stories... There not taught so well in the American School system. If you look at the Great Depression and the aftermath. Who gave us the New Deal? FDR. What get's left out is that very left-wing radical socialist labour organizers from the late 19th century on had been pushing, and in the 1930's given the economic conditions were able to push successfully for limited changes in Capitalism."
 * http://www.zmag.org/zaudio/2911 (minute 35)Brinerustle (talk) 09:42, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Paragraph 5 of "Origins" has been amended; among other weaknesses, it referred to the Socialist Party as a "liberal group," which is obviously silly. It also described the SP has having been "excluded" from participation in New Deal policymaking, when in fact it was the SP which had no interest in participating; this is getting off-topic, however, and so rather than a lengthy discussion of a party even then long in decline, this has been amended to the less controversial "not included." Arc boutant (talk) 19:24, 27 January 2009 (UTC)Arc_boutant


 * I guess it depends what you mean by socialism - the term hasn't had any real meaning since its split between Marxist and Social-Democratic wings. FDR definitely used the language of class warfare and quite a few of its policies - letting taxation "soak the rich" and redistributing the wealth to the less fortunate.  On the other hand, orthodox socialists frequently criticize him for not tearing down free markets completely when he had the chance (regulation rather than nationalization of banks, railroads and such, as mentioned in this article).  147.9.177.84 (talk) 04:07, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Neutrality - Article should be less ASSERTIVE
There are several assertive statements in this article that are debated topics! To improve the quality of this article, these assertions should be modified so to not violate conflicting viewpoints of others... Please point out any examples of such within this section. Litanss (talk) 19:31, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

''Although the New Deal greatly improved the economy, it did not end the Great Depression. The coming of the Second World War ended the depression by creating demand for more products. ''

- Many would disagree that WW2 directly caused the end of the depression; this is asserted strongly here.

The most important program of 1935, and perhaps the New Deal as a whole, was the Social Security Act

- The importance of the Social Security program is subjective - there are so many other programs being introduced at this time, so many would argue others are more important.

Thus, it did not transform American capitalism in any genuinely radical way.

-'''This is controversial; many would argue New Deal caused dramatic changes in the United States. The Wagner Act is one example, as U.S. business has been effected greatly by the strengthening of labor unions.'''

Virtually all historians believe that the New Deal helped resolve the Great Depression

- This is asserting the beliefs of a certain group (historians in general), and should be modified for quality's sake

Litanss (talk) 20:00, 15 April 2008 (UTC)


 * Regarding the assertion that WWII, not the New Deal, ended the depression: I've heard it said that Historians will tell you that the New Deal ended the depression. Economists will tell you that WWII ended the depression.  The later seems to make more sense to me. Many believe the New Deal actually made the depression worse. All of these perspectives can be included in the article, with the sources that posit them. It's not an "either - or" proposition. 24.21.105.223 (talk) 07:06, 20 November 2008 (UTC)

Entirely bias "interpretation" of the New Deal, as opposed to straight history.
This is an unbelievably biased article about the New Deal. By what fair academic standard could we justify applying an epithet ("Broker State") that is by no means a mainstream description, throughout the article? This article reflects the opinions of libertarian and so-called "Free Market" thinkers, not the mainstream accepted understanding.Ramsincanon (talk) 21:47, 26 February 2008 (UTC)
 * Then why not read up on the subject and rewrite the article. This is a free encyclopedia, if you see something wrong, change it.... 193.130.82.253 (talk) 07:22, 3 March 2008 (UTC)

I cannot see what you are talking about...141.155.26.144 (talk) 20:37, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I would like to see a citation for the assertion that there is debate about whether the New Deal made the depression worse. That strikes me as partisan revisionism.

forgive my complete lack of wikipedia technical skills... this article reads like an opinion paper a high-schooler would have written. encyclopedias should present facts, not opinions of conclusions, regardless of whether or not they are "mainstream" opinions. example: "In high school we were taught that Roosevelt came in as this great savior, put in "THE NEW DEAL" and America fought its way out of the morass." i am no expert but this is not the kind of writing i expect to see in an encyclopedia. i came across this page looking for facts, not opinions. i can't judge the validity of this article because i don't know the facts (hence my attempt research them) and it may be a great article but it should not be on wikipedia. at the very least this article needs a "disputed neutrality" header. - james jones, 06 July 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.36.43.8 (talk) 22:34, 6 July 2008 (UTC)
 * I added cites -- Parker and Best--regarding the debate on New Deal's effectiveness.Rjensen (talk) 18:10, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Template:New Deal
A new template has been created to help organise all of the various articles relating to the New Deal. Please come and help improve/expand if you can. Thanks. LordHarris 11:45, 23 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I think that is a great template. Good work! Just make sure it doesn't autohide when viewed in the articles. -- penubag  (talk) 03:42, 24 March 2008 (UTC)

Misleading graphs
The two graphs in this article are currently misleading. They purport to show a trend, but their origins are not at 0, which sensationalizes / exaggerates the trends being shown. Tempshill (talk) 19:46, 12 June 2008 (UTC)
 * no they show the fine detail that will be mostly lost if the origin is set at zero. "sensationalizes" is a false statement. Rjensen (talk) 04:50, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure whether I agree or disagree with Temp. He makes good points at the Pump-policy page, but I'm not sure he is absolutely right on this.  Assuming good faith, I don't see that the creator of the graph meant to deceive us.  One interesting proposal is that the variance on the chart be no more than the variance in the numbers (e.g., 5% variance in the statistic represents a 5% change in the graph), and I think this can be done without having zero as a Y intercept.  I think that much good could come from this discussion. --Kevin Murray (talk) 14:46, 13 June 2008 (UTC)
 * It might be misleading because the U.S. population was going up at the same time. Even if the unemployment rate stayed stable the actual number of people unemployed would rise.  A graph of unemployment rates might be clearer and allow for a zero origin if in fact that's important.--76.103.128.198 (talk) 04:08, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
 * it's a graph of actual employment which is important in its own right. It does not attempt to show unemployment. (There are many causes of unemployment (for example, population growth, people dropping out of school, or people without work moving from farms (where they are not considered unemployed) to town (where they are counted as unemployed. Rjensen (talk) 23:58, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Plagerism
I suspected that there was significant plagerism at this article evidenced by the tone and lack of context between some sections. In trying to find notability for the term "Broker state" sufficient to support major section on the topic, I ran across: [] where the entire section was plagerized to our article. This is bad form and lazy. --Kevin Murray (talk) 20:32, 13 June 2008 (UTC)

Almost as lazy as misspelling plagiarism.
 * actually the Historymania source copied Wikipedia and admits it in the last line of the article. Our coverage here is not copied (but is based on Leuchtenburg and Kennedy books). Rjensen (talk) 08:57, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

When "New Deal" term goes out of fashion?
Does anyone know when "New Deal" went out of use/fashion? Was the term still in active use towards the end of WWII? DEddy (talk) 15:26, 9 November 2008 (UTC)
 * In December, 1943, FDR told the press that "Dr. New Deal" had given way to "Dr. Win the War" according to Robert Sickels, The 1940s (2004) p,7 onlineRjensen (talk) 17:29, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

The Reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on corruption in the New Deal
I forgot his name but he and his work should be mentioned here.PonileExpress (talk) 20:15, 23 December 2008 (UTC)
 * This should help: Nonamer98 (talk) 03:56, 15 April 2009 (UTC)
 * probbably a reference to Westbrook Pegler, who won the Pulitzer for exposing corrupt labor unions in Hollywood. He opposed the New Deal but that was not the reason for the prize. Rjensen (talk) 08:25, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

Completely false statement
"There is a broad consensus among historians that the New Deal policies aided in this recovery; in a recent survey, 95% of historians supported this idea, while 73% of economists agreed."

.

I deleted this line, because it wasn't supported by the reference. The only statistic close to the claim is from this question:

A P D 39. Taken as a whole, government policies of E 27 22 51 the New Deal served to lengthen and deepen H 6 21 74 the Great Depression. Pr 97/95

? 89/87 - percent of economists replying, followed by the percent of historians replying

Only 51% of economists disagree (who answered), and only 74% of historians (who answered) in this survey disagree. There's no support for the above claim.


 * Good point, needs rephrasing. Try: "There is a broad consensus among scholars that the New Deal policies did not lengthen and deepen the Depression; only 5% of professional historians and 27% of professional economists believe it served to lengthen and deepen the Great depression." Rjensen (talk) 08:52, 27 December 2008 (UTC)

This is a direct quote from the survey: "Based on the survey, I concluded that the profession has not reached a consensus about the causes of the Great Depression, nor about the impact of the New Deal on economic growth."

This survey is also nearly 15 years old, and doesn't account for new research. It is also a survey of only teachers, and thus was a questionable sample to begin with. If this is going to be used at all it should say that according to this survey only 27% of historians agree or partially agree that the New Deal prolonged the depression, and only 49% of economists agree or partially agree that the New Deal prolonged the depression. Of course, then it would have to admit that this survey is nearly 15 years old, was only a survey of teachers, and that the person conducting the survey concluded there was no consensus about the impact of the New Deal on economic growth.

is "Puerto Rico" right during "The First Hundred Days" section?
i wonder that.--Ilovesabbath (talk) 06:48, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

The New Deal did NOT WORK
Looking from the statistics is enough to know.

WWII brought us out of the depression.

If there were a switch to make the economy go then every president would push it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Ericg33 (talk • contribs) 09:24, 19 January 2009 (UTC)


 * Sorry, only half right. The New Deal didn't work, but nor did the War. Prosperity only returned in 1946 when the troops went back to work and the planned economy (fascism) was abandoned. Wasteful activity is not the same as prosperity. Tom Woods writes in Meltdown: "If spending on munitions really makes a country wealthy, the United States and Japan should do the following: Each shoudl seek to build the most spectacular naval fleet in history, an enormous armada of gigantic, powerful, technologically advanced ships. The two fleets should then meet in the Pacific. Naturally, since they would want to avoid the loss of life that accompanies war, all naval personnel would be evacuated from the ships. At that point the U.S. and Japan would sink each other's fleets. Then they could celebrate how much richer they had made themselves by devoting labor, steel, and countless other inputs to the production of things that would wind up at the bottom of the ocean." ShedPlant (talk) 19:52, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Gold Standard
This article states in a couple of places that abolishing the Gold Standard was part of the New Deal. At some point the USA re-adopted it, because it was last abolished by Richard Nixon. This ought to be mentioned in the section on New Deal Programs, that the Gold Standard was re-adopted (I would guess in the 1950's, after the Roosevelt/Truman administrations ended) and then removed again in 1970 or 1971.

Actually, the gold standard was re-adopted one year later, in 1934. The main purpose was because other nations insisted that we keep the gold standard. At least, thats what The American Pageant says. Nonamer98 (talk) 03:49, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

"However, no economist has written a full-scale Keynesian analysis of the depression" ?
This is very surprising. This needs to be removed. I'd do it myself, but there's a risk of an edit war! ''"However, no economist has written a full-scale Keynesian analysis of the depression, so it is difficult to evaluate how that model would work." Keynes's own book is surely such an analysis? (I still haven't got around to reading my own copy of The General Theory)

Aaron McDaid (talk - contribs) 16:45, 11 February 2009 (UTC)
 * I have read the book and it has little history about the depression. It is online Note that Kuznets et al had not yet assembled the GNP data needed. Rjensen (talk) 21:27, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

Farting Deli Rooster
I recently undid several destructive edits to this page. FDR does not, nor will ever (hopefully) stand for "Farting Deli Rooster". Joefridayquaker (talk) 22:53, 17 April 2009 (UTC)

Goepel
I've found a pair of vandal edits that have been sitting here since April 4th, both were done by the user at 71.106.7.124. Both refer to someone named "Goepel" I'm removing them. I don't know how to do anything about vandals though, so if somebody'd like to warn them, that would be nice. Licensedlunacy (talk) 06:55, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Contradicting Second New Deal periods
1934-36 vs. 1935–1938, in the lead section. Also violates the whole "consistent style" thing, but yeah. Can we get some confirmation as to which is the real time period? --64.5.15.136 (talk) 20:40, 10 May 2009 (UTC)

Fiscal conservatism - Zelizer proves?
Just saw the statement 'as Zelizer (2000) proves' under Fiscal conservatism. Probably just a simple lexographical mistake but no historian can ever 'prove' anything. Something more like 'Zelizer argued' or something. Thoughts? Odin (talk) 19:38, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Why no section dedicated to praise??
There's a section that discusses a considerable amount of criticism towards the New Deal, yet there's no section here showing the other view point. Why is this? Neverfades (talk) 23:32, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

The stuff they dont want us to know
They killed kennedy. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 66.19.160.2 (talk) 19:12, 9 July 2009 (UTC)

In the "World comparisons" section, under Germany, why is there no mention of the Treaty of Versailles? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.171.161.53 (talk) 16:05, 16 November 2009 (UTC)

Federalism?
Someone please put the type of federalism the New Deal created into the article.Deedeek (talk) 13:18, 22 August 2009 (UTC)

Still much content missing from before attack/s
Looks like this article has been punched around a few times lately. The entire section "Farm and rural programs" is gone. Might be other still-unrecovered material too. Cramyourspam (talk) 23:44, 23 November 2009 (UTC)CramYourSpam


 * Much improved! Thanks reconstructor/s!  Cramyourspam (talk) 05:56, 25 November 2009 (UTC)CramYourSpam

Should we really be playing these political games?
From this section:

"UCLA economists Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian are among those who believe the New Deal caused the Depression to persist longer than it would otherwise have, concluding in a study that the "New Deal labor and industrial policies did not lift the economy out of the Depression as President Roosevelt and his economic planners had hoped," but that the "New Deal policies are an important contributing factor to the persistence of the Great Depression." They claim that the New Deal "cartelization policies are a key factor behind the weak recovery." They say that the "abandonment of these policies coincided with the strong economic recovery of the 1940s."[62] Cole and Ohanian claimed that FDR's policies prolonged the Depression by 7 years.[63] However, Cole and Ohanian's argument relies on hypotheticals, including an unprecedented growth rate necessary to end the Depression by 1936.[64][65]"

I can't help but notice that the beginning of the paragraph (citing Cole and Ohanian's argument) cites the UCLA press and then an academic paper directly, whereas the end of the paragraph (citing the disagreement with Cole and Ohanian) cites an opinion paper with a rather open and blatant political bias.

What are Paul Rosenberg's qualifications? Is he an economist? Or is he a journalist? As an economist-in-training myself, I can tell you his argument doesn't hold a lot of water(in fact, it basically boils down to his personal credulity, which is inherently subjective and not a very good rebuttal to Cole and Ohanian's work). Should we really be citing such blatantly partisan articles simply to try to pursue this Golden Mean fallacy in 'presenting both sides of the argument'. Sometimes one side really does have all the cards, although that doesn't necessarily mean they're right or that their argument is the 'truth'.

If we want a balanced presentation of the debate, perhaps we ought to stick to citing actual academic research instead of the ravings of politicized madmen. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.162.233.22 (talk) 17:59, 28 December 2009 (UTC)

'''AMEN. This article has been sabotaged by a right-wing web activist!''' ByronHudson (talk) 06:52, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

Green New Deal??
The section in this article on the notion of the "Green New Deal" is inappropriate and biased. It should not even be included in this article on FDR. For instance, this statement:

"This in turn creates more sustainable urban environments, lowers carbon emissions and stimulates the economy amongst much else."

This statement is not true according to the fundamentals of economics and it does not include any citations. In fact, this section includes no citations whatsoever and only seems to serve a leftist, progressive agenda which is at the forefront of controversy today. I don't think it is the function of Wikipedia and/or this article on FDR to promote such agendas particularly with no factual support. I think to editorialize the legacy of FDR's policies in an encyclopedia article is just the kind of indoctrination our young people are suffering from currently.

If, however, a proper history of economics and government were to be the basis for such analysis then it might be appropriate. Although, with that as a basis these kinds of conclusions this section states would not be made. I hope that WP recognizes the danger in the existence of this section and removes it, especially in light of current events in which rhetoric like this is tossed around as fact.

I actually went back and reread the section and decided to delete it. It will not be missed and is irrelevant to the history of FDR's presidency. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Bberchin (talk • contribs) 16:20, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

Government spending stats needed
It would be interesting to see government spending year-by-year in this period compared to GDP, unemployment, etc. It would also be interesting to know what percent of GDP was government spending vs. private. -- Beland (talk) 19:28, 19 March 2010 (UTC)

List of New Deal Programs
(11th section) I saw that the National Housing Act of 1934, which created the Federal Housing Administration, was missing. Someone should probably add that. --03:09, 1 April 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.234.35.153 (talk) Changed the language slightly to conform with the neutral language of an encyclopedia.Rbird (talk) 04:55, 5 August 2011 (UTC)

1995 "survey"
The whole reference to the supposed survey should be removed or reworded. Based on the wording of the questions and the fact it was anonymous. Who verified it? There were no checks and the survey taker could have had his own agenda. For example, why was there no option to answer "Disagree, with provisos"? How many in the "Agree, with provisos" would have answered in the previous category if it were a choice, and how many thought that it didn't go far enough? It's impossible to answer. Also, the link for the source is dead.

Another problem, the first source cites that Keynesian economics became the "dominant view in the economics profession for at least the next forty years", but "an increasing number of economists" have doubts. How much is an increasing number when dealing with a "dominant view"? It's a small number, as common sense dictates. The section needs to be cleaned up, or removed. DD2K (talk) 20:54, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * the survey is high quality work published in a leading journal, and it served as a model for other surveys as well. The criticism seems to be OR and not based on any RS at all.  As for Keynesianism, there is near-unanimous agreement it was dominant until the 1970s.Rjensen (talk) 22:10, 3 April 2010 (UTC)


 * This is your opportunity to back that up with reliable sources. As of now, the link to the source is dead and there is almost nothing mentioned about this except in blogs(almost all right-leaning, Von Misses-types) or other books/reviews by obscure economists. Someone needs to link to a reliable source with documentation of real data. When citing polls/surveys it has to be backed up by certain criteria. As of now, the citations meets none of the requirements to be included here. DD2K (talk) 22:49, 3 April 2010 (UTC)
 * OK i fixed it. The survey is reported in Robert Whaples, "Where Is There Consensus Among American Economic Historians? The Results of a Survey on Forty Propositions," Journal of Economic History, Vol. 55, No. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 139-154 in JSTOR Rjensen (talk) 22:59, 3 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Ok, thanks. I wish there were a source that was easier to access for everyone and took on the survey in greater depth, but this can be vouched for though your link. By the way, the portion of the survey cited is on page 144 and goes into a little detail about the results on page 151. I may not be in the economics department, but I should be able to understand the sources cited on Wikipedia. As now is the case. Thanks again. There are other, newer releases too. I will go over them for anything relevant. DD2K (talk) 00:12, 4 April 2010 (UTC)

Note it can't be reported that a "minority" of economists think the New Deal prolonged the depression, because the figure is 49% compared to 51%. That's within the margin of error if it's going to be extrapolated. Signospano (talk) 02:04, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I changed it to say among economists surveyed. Signospano (talk) 02:09, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
 * First of all they are called economic historians (some are in economics dept and the rest in history departments). They cover all subfields, so there are lots of scholars in, say, colonial history, and they typically abstain on topics outside their field. Those who do know about the topic voted 2-1. That is what a consensus looks like ("consensus" is Whaples term) Editors are not allowed to rewrite the results to favor their own personal POV. Rjensen (talk) 02:39, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Two different groups of people were surveyed, historians and economists. Signospano (talk) 05:36, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
 * They are all economic historians. One group work in the economics department in their given universities, the other group work in the history department. But both groups are economic historians and belong to the Economic History Association. All have a B.A. in both Economics and History, and a P.H.D. in either Economics or History. As does the author of the study himself(Robert Whaples). DD2K (talk) 16:52, 4 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Also, you should stop trying to insert POV into the survey and let the results be given with you 'adding' them up to something they are not. The author gives specific reasoning why the provisos of some answers are more likely swayed to the disagree side and gives a 89% probability that both groups are in consensus for disagreement on this particular statement. You can't make your own conclusions based on your own POV. DD2K (talk) 01:13, 6 April 2010 (UTC)

Fiscal Conservatism
The country went from a budget surplus in 1930 to a 4 billion dollar deficit in 1936. That may not be much by today's standards and it may have been useful or necessary, but high deficits were very much a topic of concern among Roosevelt's opponents.

If you want to correct the impression that Roosevelt didn't care about deficits or fiscal conservatism, fine, but your article tends to give the equally erroneous impression that FDR was more fiscally conservative (in the context of his own time) than he actually was. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.10.198.104 (talk) 19:43, 20 May 2010 (UTC)
 * in terms of % of GDP, the jump in debt happened under Hoover and the Republicans. FDR was very worried about the debt, as his choices of budget director (Douglas) and Treasury Secty (Morgenthau) demonstrate. His political opponents were not worried about the debt nearly as much as they feared FDR was using relief $$ to build a gigantic national machine. Rjensen (talk) 01:16, 1 April 2011 (UTC)

Novus ordo seclorum
I hear, from the underground, that FDR was in on a massive conspiracy, dating back all the way to Thomas_Jefferson being given the great seal of the United States by an unknown cloaked man one stormy night as he and his compatriots were trying to design the very seal, and perhaps even before to some sort of Masonic conspiracy stretching out through the ages. The evidence of this, so I hear, is that FDR interpreted the motto on the reverse of the great seal (Novus ordo seclorum) as "the new deal for the ages", thus giving rise to his "New Deal". Now, I love a good conspiracy as much as the next, but I was wondering if anyone else had heard of this conspiracy that transcends the ages? I'm being serious.

CybergothiChé (talk) 17:25, 10 July 2010 (UTC)


 * What I also meant to add was that, perhaps, if this story holds any weight, and "The Man" don't keep it down, perhaps it could be added to the article...?

CybergothiChé (talk) 17:27, 10 July 2010 (UTC)

International interpretations and reactions
Where does this article discuss how the New Deal was received internationally, by foreign statesmen contemporary with Roosevelt, and how the New Deal influenced the politics and policies of non-American places and people? It isn't clear to me, based on a cursory reading of the article, where the New Deal's influence on world history outside of the United States is addressed. Where would be the best place to include information on the New Deal's international influence?Ferox Seneca (talk) 04:17, 7 May 2011 (UTC)

World comparisons
Depression Graph.svg is based on per capita income. It reflects the different levels of productivity. --Pass3456 (talk) 19:57, 15 April 2012 (UTC)

Undistributed profits tax

 * The text “Business profits were taxed on a sliding scale; if a company kept 1% of their net income, 10% of that amount would be taxed under the UP Tax. If a company kept 70% of their net income, the company would be taxed at a rate of 73.91% on that amount.” is cited with Jim Powell, FDR's Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression (2003), p.80.
 * But you can read everywhere that the tax rates where set to 7 - 27% -> p. 173, amity shlaes the forgotten man, david m kennedys freedom from fear. I suppose the quote is a user´s folly. --Pass3456 (talk) 22:20, 6 May 2012 (UTC) I´m not the first one asking that question Talk:Undistributed_profits_tax. Anyway pulitzer prize winning Freedom From Fear should be a better source. --Pass3456 (talk) 22:23, 6 May 2012 (UTC)

Labor relations
The labor movement had crusaded to realize its most elusive goal: to organize the millions of workers in the mass-production sectors. The task was especially difficult since mass-prduction did not require skilled workers. Therfore workers could be easily replaced. Many companies reacted by suppressing unions, firing unionized employees and breaking strikes by force. The comflicts often escalated in (often mutual) violence which ended up with people injured and even killed. For example on July 5, 1934, a strike in San Francisco grew violent when a convoy of strikebreakers tried to pass a picket line. Police intervened with nightsticks, teargas and revolvers, in the end two strikers lay dead from gunfire. The hatred culminated in a general strike followed by more than 130,000 workers that turned San Francisco in a virtual ghost town for four days. The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, finally guaranteed workers the rights to collective bargaining through unions of their own choice. The Act also established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to facilitate wage agreements and to suppress the repeated labor disturbances. The Wagner Act totally did not compel employers to reach agreement with their employees. But it opened possibilities for American labor. The result was a tremendous growth of membership in the labor unions, especially in the mass-production sector, composing the American Federation of Labor. Labor thus became a major component of the New Deal political coalition.

I think that is a pretty fair summary of Freedom From Fear pages 289 - 291. The struggle to organize the workers in the mass-production sectors as the main source for conflict can also be referred with (Colin Gordon, New Deals: Business, Labor, and Politics in America, 1920-1935, Cambridge University Press, 1. Auflage 1994, ISBN 978-0521457552, p. 225). --Pass3456 (talk) 08:45, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
 * start with "The labor movement had struggled a long time to organize the millions of workers in the mass-production sectors." that's not true-- the unions had avoided the mass-production sectors. Kennedy says: "its most elusive goal: organizing the millions of unskilled workers in the great mass-production sectors, especially steel and automaking, into powerful industrial unions. That objective had lain beyond labor's grasp ....It had receded even further' from reach."   The passages on violence (Kennedy p 293) are about a  strike in San Francisco & not the national scene. Rjensen (talk) 09:16, 27 May 2012 (UTC)


 * Changed the frist part in the text above.
 * Violences: Kennedy refers to different violences throughout the US. I try to make an explanation why one goal was to suppress the repeated labor disturbances. (David M. Kennedy, Freedom From Fear, The American People in Depression and War 1929–1945, Oxford University Press, 1999, ISBN 0-19-503834-7, p. 291). --Pass3456 (talk) 09:25, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
 * this article is ONLY about the New Deal. Stick to topics like Wagner act. Rjensen (talk) 09:27, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

The National Labor Relations Act of 1935, also known as the Wagner Act, finally guaranteed workers the rights to collective bargaining through unions of their own choice. The Act also established the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) to facilitate wage agreements and to suppress the repeated labor disturbances. The Wagner Act totally did not compel employers to reach agreement with their employees. But it opened possibilities for American labor. The result was a tremendous growth of membership in the labor unions, especially in the mass-production sector, composing the American Federation of Labor. Labor thus became a major component of the New Deal political coalition.


 * That is fine? --Pass3456 (talk) 09:33, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
 * yes very good--you should include the CIO -- it split off from AFL about 1q937 and they fought so much that labor's influence was sharply weakened. Rjensen (talk) 09:49, 27 May 2012 (UTC)
 * Thank you. I´m expanding the last point tonight since I`m offline soon. --Pass3456 (talk) 09:55, 27 May 2012 (UTC)

Origins of the Great Depression
Details should not be explained in this article since there is Causes of the Great Depression. As an overview contemporary austrian economics and the evolving modern consensus should be enough.--Pass3456 (talk) 18:42, 17 June 2012 (UTC)

AAA
Verifiability and No original research is important here. Example: food proces were in decline long before 1929. The peak would have been about 1922. Conclusions should be made by historians. Our task is to present published conclusions (which are relevant for the article). --Pass3456 (talk) 19:11, 18 June 2012 (UTC)

Insidious bias throughout, but especially in '# 1.3.1 Origins of the Great Depression' section. (UPDATE: EDITED SECTION)
Hayek and Republican officials get all of the air time.

Not heard from are the Keynesians: Never mind the actual left (Marxist theorists). This article is biased in the most insidious, Orwellian sense. It paints a picture with almost wholly right-wing theories while pretending to be neutral.

If Wikipedia is to be taken seriously, it must not allow the opponents of a policy to paint a skewed picture of it. This article has been allowed to become a propagandistic smear-piece. ByronHudson (talk) 05:02, 21 June 2012 (UTC)

UPDATE: I edited the section. Can you believe the guy didn't mention the Keynesians ONCE. He presented the Libertarians as the mainstream view, and the Monetarists as the dissenting view. Of course he didn't call them 'Libertarian' or 'Monetarist'.

His reference links were full of far-right political garbage. Literally all of it.

'''This article is such a mess! I don't have time to attack the whole thing! Is there anybody out there who has the time and lack of bias to do the subject justice?'''


 * I reduced "politically biased and contains numerous errors and omissions" to "politically biased". I have checked the article and corrected many errors. Would work further on any precise hint. --Pass3456 (talk) 10:28, 30 June 2012 (UTC)


 * What exactly is (above) your point of contention? Hayek was a classical liberalism advocate, not a libertarian. Freidman was a monetarist, though that wasn't his only economic persuasion. Looks to me like this section is a summary of four primary and in some cases competing economic POVs, hardly "far-right political garbage". A little more clarity on points of contention. Either that or remove the citation. 10stone5 (talk) 16:14, 15 July 2012 (UTC)

I was surprised to find this article in such a state as well. Keynesian economics is largely credited for how things turned out in Scandinavia after the war. I wasn't even aware that there was such a strong interest in re-analyzing the New Deal in the US. From a European standpoint much of this article currently reads as an attempt to build an attack on the consensus. 84.208.181.207 (talk) 19:19, 27 February 2013 (UTC)

To whomever locked the article and stopped the onslaught of disinformation: thank you. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.169.102.136 (talk) 23:36, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

When did New Deal end, 1936 or 1938?

 * The Fair Labor Standards Act was a major legislation too. Aditionally the Republican gains in Congress in 1938 mark a turning point. Why shouldn´t we say the second new deal ended in 1938? --Pass3456 (talk) 09:26, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
 * yes that was about it (and it had support of New England Republicans). The key years for 2nd New Deal were 1935-36. Kennedy says that it had petered out in 1938 and reverses outnumbered advances in 1937. That is not to say the programs all ended--social security & Wagner act etc are still alive. For cites see, , , , and Rjensen (talk) 10:23, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
 * So did New Deal legislation end after the key years or with the last part of legislation? --Pass3456 (talk) 12:06, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * the passage of NEW programs practically ended in 1936 (Min wage is the major exception). But existing programs were later ended (WPA, CCC, FSA) & some (FDIC, SEC, Soc Sec, Wagner) continue to this day. Rjensen (talk) 12:55, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

elanor roosevelt
ÉĻÁŃÓŔ — Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.216.152.186 (talk) 04:06, 31 January 2013 (UTC)

HELP NEEDED -- Potential copyright or plagiarism problem
I don't have the experience or time to report this, but there may be a problem. It looks like close paraphrasing where some sentences are too similar.

Kiran Klaus Patel's book has the following sentence on page 5:

"After 1945, few observers continued to see these similarities ..." …

This article says:

After 1945 only few observers continued to see similarities.

The same page from Patel's book says:

"The most important cause behind these similarities was the growth of state interventionism since both societies, in the face of a catastrophic situation, no longer counted on the power of the market to heal itself."

This article says:

The most important cause was the growth of state interventionism since in the face of the catastrophic economic situation both societies no longer counted on the power of the market to heal itself.

I think that there should be quotation marks since most of the words are Patel's. It's possible I made a typo or two when typing from Patel's book. I know it is difficult to paraphrase. If this is a false alarm, I apologize. If not, can someone fix this. Thanks. LesLein (talk) 01:55, 15 March 2013 (UTC)

new deal henry c wallace/henry a wallace
i'm enquiring about a mistake you've made on the new deal wikipedia page. it says "Rural America was a high priority for Roosevelt and his energetic Secretary of Agriculture, Henry C. Wallace." henry c wallace was henry a wallaces father, and was not in office at the time of roosevelt. rather it was henry a wallace. :) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.39.67.99 (talk) 00:23, 12 May 2013 (UTC)
 * ✅. Thanks. Fat&#38;Happy (talk) 00:51, 12 May 2013 (UTC)

Charges of fascism
Can we agree not to stuff this paragraph with quotes from the 1930s. I think that the Hoover and Roosevelt quotes serve to highlight the debate but that should be enough. I can´t help thinking that the tendency to quote old stuff is to suggest conclusions that don´t match with the conclusions of contemporary historians. --Pass3456 (talk) 12:06, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * the debate in the 1930s is quite important and the quotes are useful. Rjensen (talk) 12:14, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * We are not debating that subject. Actually not even researching it. Wikipedia should be based on contemporary published academic research, not on historic quotes. --Pass3456 (talk) 12:22, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * all the cites that were erased follow the Wiki guidelines. Historical quotes are primary sources & can be used to illustrate the points made by scholars (ie the point made by Schlesinger, Garraty etc) that many leaders at the time, like Hoover and Long, accused the New deal of fascism.Rjensen (talk) 12:52, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Before I ereased some quotes the ratio was 18 sentences of historic quotes to 6 sentences of scholarly analyses. No_original_research demands at least that it is the other way around. But 24 sentences are too much anyway since for the fast majority of historians "charges of fascism" isn´t a serious topic at all. --Pass3456 (talk) 13:18, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * those are your personal views not Wikipedia rules. As for historians (such as Garraty, Schlesinger, Hamby, Nash, Hawley, Payne), yes the rhetoric around the term "fascism" is a serious topic. As Alan Brinkley notes with respect to especially Hayek's ideas: quote the threat of fascism was a threat from the state. And so was to the state that Americans look in the 1940s for signs of totalitarian danger at home." Brinkley cites Winkler, Blum, Hayek, Niebuhr, etc.  Alan Brinkley, Liberalism and its Discontents (1998) pages 104 to 107 Rjensen (talk) 13:50, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Garraty, Schlesinger, Hamby, Nash, Hawley, Payne, Brinkley, Winkler, Blum, Hayek, Niebuhr, Jensen et. alt. are most probably excellent sources for summarizing profound academic research on that topic. --Pass3456 (talk) 13:59, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * that's what we do. we also provide quotes--do you have a personal problem with that? Rjensen (talk) 14:04, 2 January 2013 (UTC)
 * A ratio of 18 sentences of historic quotes (primamry sources) to 6 sentences of scholarly analyses (secondary sources) is obviously a mess. Wikipedia articles should be based on reliable, published secondary sources and, to a lesser extent, on tertiary sources. The paraghraph should give a short summary of profound scholarly research on that topic (Garraty, Schlesinger, Hamby, Nash, Hawley, Payne, Brinkley, Winkler, Blum, Hayek, Niebuhr, Jensen et. alt.). The The New Deal and corporatism is for a more detailed summary and may contain some more historic quotes. --Pass3456 (talk) 14:34, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

The Wikipedia policy on primary sources is as follows: "Unless restricted by another policy, primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia; but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them. Any interpretation of primary source material requires a reliable secondary source for that interpretation. A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the source but without further, specialized knowledge."

In order to satisfy myself on the accuracy of a quotation from Harold Ickes' published diary, I obtained a used copy this week. In an entry for October 5, 1933, Ickes talked to Roosevelt privately. He paraphrases Roosevelt as follows: "He said that what we are doing in this country were some of the things that were being done in Russia and even some things that were being done under Hitler in Germany.  But we are doing them in an orderly way." That is the full context on the subject for that day. Adding this quote is consistent with Wikipedia policy. It is very relevant.

The discussion on fascism remains flawed in that it says the charges of fascism were started by the New Deal's critics. Actually members of FDR's administration boasted of the New Deal's similarities with fascism. Hugh Johnson said that Mussolini was a "shining name" during his farewell address. The NRA's internal studies spoke favorably of Italian fascism. Rexford Tugwell praised Italian fascism. FDR expressed interest in implementing the economic policies of "that admirable Italian gentleman." During the first New Deal both its supporters and critics noted its similarity to Italin-style fascist corporatism. See the article by James Q. Whitman in the Autumn 1991 issue of The American Journal of Comparative Law. The title is "Of Corporatism, Fascism, and the First New Deal." It is available at JSTOR.

Whitman explains why the subject is confusing. After Italy invaded Ethiopiam the Roosevelt administration stopped talking about similarties with Italian fascism. Historians ignored the subject for a generation. It was revised by Garraty and other prominent historians. According to Whitman, interest revived because of New Left interest in "Corporate Liberalism." By the late 1980s it was "almost routine" for histories of the New Deal to list similarities with fascism.

Finally, New Deal supporters say its origins were in the War Industries Board (604). Page 604 of Garraty's textbook says that under Bernard Baruch the WIB "was given almost dictatorial power to allocate scarce materials,standardize production, fix prices, and coordinate American and Allied purchasing." "The antitrust laws were suspended and producers were encouraged, even compelled, to cooperate with one another. The New Freedom variety of laissez-faire had no place in a wartime economy." — Preceding unsigned comment added by LesLein (talk • contribs) 03:16, 4 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Please note: Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources.
 * If you would check secondary sources you would find out that Harold Ickes and other members of FDR's administration never charged the New Deal of beiing fascism.
 * But FDR and members of his administration charged a lot of people of fascism. You may get the impression that every U.S. in the 1930s was a fascist. According to fascism-expert Stanley Payne fascism had no influence in the United States. Bottomline is that most people use fascism as a swearword, not as an analytic term. I think we can agree that relevance needs more than just a confimation of Godwin's law. So please start with reliable, published secondary sources that say something of encyclopedic relevance about the New Deal. To illustrate the point made by secondary sources a primary source can be cited. Primary sources that have been reliably published may be used in Wikipedia; but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them ... A primary source may only be used on Wikipedia to make straightforward, descriptive statements of facts that can be verified by any educated person with access to the source but without further, specialized knowledge. --Pass3456 (talk) 12:17, 4 January 2013 (UTC)

The section "Charges of Fascism" needs a lot of work. I will address the problems further when time permits. In the meantime, note that Amazon provides the capability to search the Payne book. (After a brief skim, it looks good.) According to the current Wiki article, Payne writes:

“Stanley Payne, a leading historian of fascism, explains that fascism had no influence in the United States. Even ‘the various populist, nativist, and rightist movements in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s fell distinctly short of fascism.’”

Here is what page 350 of Payne's book actually says:

"As in Latin America, the various populist, nativist, and rightist movements fell distinctly short of fascism.”

The current Wiki passage on Payne's findings mischaracterize his findings. On page 230 Payne writes:

“Mussolini looked to the American economy to provide the strength to overcome the depression in Europe, and within a matter of months he was sure that the New Deal was copying Fascist economic policies – just as Roosevelt’s critics in the United States alleged.” In other words, on this issue Payne agrees with Roosevelt's critics! LesLein (talk) 03:45, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Payne actually writes: "As in Latin America, the various populist, nativist, and rightist movements in the United States during the 1920s and I930s fell distinctly short of fascism.” He then mentions the KKK, Huey Long, Pelley, Father Coughlin, and the German Bund. He does not link the New Deal or FDR to fascism. As for Mussolini, he knew very little about the US, but boasted (falsely) that FDR was emulating Mussolini! See  Rjensen (talk) 04:20, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * +1 --Pass3456 (talk) 10:43, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Payne agrees with Roosevelt's critics that the New Deal copied Mussolini's fascism. That qualifies as a link. Mussolini only needed to read a newspaper to know what FDR was doing. Roosevelt said he planned to imitate "that admirable Italian gentleman."

"Secondary or tertiary sources are needed to establish the topic's notability and to avoid novel interpretations of primary sources]." -- That's why I provide the Ickes quotes without any additional comment. The Garraty and Brinkley quotations qualify as secondary and tertiary sources.

"If you would check secondary sources you would find out that Harold Ickes and other members of FDR's administration 'never' charged the New Deal of being fascism." -- I didn't say otherwise. It would be ridiculous for Ickes to write a diary entry accusing himself of fascism.

"According to fascism-expert Stanley Payne fascism had no influence in the United States." What is the page number for this? On page 230 of his book Payne says that Mussolini "was sure that the New Deal was copying Fascist economic policies – just as Roosevelt’s critics in the United States alleged.”

"I think we can agree that relevance needs more than just a confimation of Godwin's law." Early in his first term Roosevelt said that was following some things that Stalin, Hitler, and Mussolini. That is more relevance than Godwin's law. The charges of fascism section was published here before I ever read it. Godwin's law refers to online discussions. The fascism issue started in the 1930s. Invoking Godwin's law is an anachronism.

"So please start with reliable, published secondary sources that say something of encyclopedic relevance about the New Deal. That is what Garraty and Whitman do.  LesLein (talk) 20:09, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * "Payne agrees with Roosevelt's critics that the New Deal copied Mussolini's fascism" no.
 * "On page 230 of his book Payne says that Mussolini was sure that the New Deal was copying Fascist economic policies – just as Roosevelt’s critics in the United States alleged." Mussolini is not a reliable source. Payne does not share Mussolinis point, please read Payne and Rjensens answer again.
 * Garraty and Whitman don´t say that the New Deal was kind of fascism. Question: source for what? --Pass3456 (talk) 21:30, 5 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Even if Mussolinie would have been a contemporary historian instead of a 1930s dictator a statement made in late 1933 to summarize the New Deal would be totally inadequte. Mussolini might be presented as an example of a enemy of FDR who called the New Deal fascist. We don´t know if he changed his mind after 1933 though (which is actually very likely).
 * Just to make that clear: Payne has a chapter for fascism in the US and the New Deal isn´t mentioned there at all. That is all that Payne has to say about that claims. --Pass3456 (talk) 15:35, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

On page 230 Payne mentions Mussolini and the New Deal. There is no reason to omit it since it deals directly with the issue. The quote from Harold Ickes was removed, even though it was from a secondary source. The material from Shlaes and Will indicates that the New Deal violated rights, contrary to Roosevelt's claims. In order to be neutral articles are supposed to be neutral. LesLein (talk) 19:46, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

At the end of the article is a list of primary sources. This includes works by FDR and Raymond Moley. If it is okay to cite them, why not Ickes? LesLein (talk) 20:48, 6 January 2013 (UTC)
 * 1) About page 230: You are not developing Paynes analysis. You just refer to something Paine mentions about an early impression of Mussolini and you draw conclusions that Payne does not. That violates Wikipedia policy. We don´t publish original research.
 * 2) About Shlaes and Will: they don´t charge the New Deal of beiing fascism. Once again "Charges of fascism" is the wrong paragraph. --Pass3456 (talk) 22:21, 6 January 2013 (UTC)

What's about this book? --Mr. Mustard (talk) 02:13, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Pictogram voting comment.png 3O Response: I have removed the listing of this dispute at 3O as invalid since there appear to be four editors involved in this dispute. The Devil's Advocate  tlk.  cntrb. 22:38, 7 January 2013 (UTC)
 * One problem with using primary sources is you can except them to make them sound diabolocal...""He said that what we are doing in this country were some of the things that were being done in Russia and even some things that were being done under Hitler in Germany. But we are doing them in an orderly way." now that means he is communist? fascist? opening death camps? killing Jews? killing kulaks? starving millions? jailing opponents? setting up a secret police? gigantic increase in military spending? shutting down churches? killing priests? building roads and highways? deficit spending? jailing political opponents? sending spies around the world???? By not explaining the context the quote is a deliberate device to make readers suspicious of FDR's motives. Rjensen (talk) 23:35, 17 January 2013 (UTC)


 * You only know your own motives, not anyone elses. I am trying to show similarities between two countries' policies.  I provide an accurate and relevant quote.  It is referring to the title of the article, the New Deal.  If it was about labor camps I would have provided it in such an article.  I provided the full context; the quote is the only thing in the diary that discusses connections between Hitler and the New Deal.  It is supported by statements and research by many others.  I didn't select anything to make it appear "diabolical."  If I wanted to make Roosevelt look diabolical I could have used plenty of other material.  We are supposed to assume good faith.


 * In your edit summary for the article you said that Goldberg got it wrong. You talk of falsification.  You say that Ickes never made the statement. In fact he did.  You can buy the book from Amazon for a few bucks.  See for yourself.  If Goldberg got the Ickes diary entry wrong, hostile reviewers would have pointed it out long ago.  Incidentally, Stanley Payne seems to agree that fascism is a "Marxist heresy."  This confirms a key point Goldberg makes.  You owe him an apology.


 * If you really believe there's falsification, who is the liar? You should be specific.


 * A few minutes after your edit summary you wrote above that primary sources can be unreliable. FWIW, the Ickes diaries are used for at least four other Wiki articles.  These include the articles on Glavis, Bohemian Grove, the Civil Works Administration, and the Hoover Dam.  When are you going to remove those references?  This article uses multiple primary sources.  When do you intend to remove them?


 * If you had checked, my previous revision used an impeccable secondary source. Surely you aren't going to argue that Lewis Feuer and Johns Hopkins University are unreliable?


 * What Roosevelt said in private is the most relevant statement possible on the subject.


 * The diaries were edited by Harold Ickes' wife, Jane. She wasn't trying to make FDR look diabolical.  Nor was she engaged in "a deliberate device to make readers suspicious of FDR's motives."  She had confidence in her husband's views; to her credit she was willing to present unpleasant information to readers so they could judge for themselves.  So should you.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by LesLein (talk • contribs) 23:18, 20 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Patrick J. Maney, The Roosevelt Presence: The Life and Legacy of FDR, page 70: "Even before the end of his first term, Roosevelt´s presidency had already assumed mythical proportians, as friends and foes alike credited him with almost superhuman feats. Some ardent admirers even attached religious significance to his presidency, viewing him as a recepient of divine guidance; ardent critics, on the other hand, depicted him as an unmitigated evildoer, a destroyer of the American way." LesLein has picked his side, now we need an ardent admirer to balance him so that readers can make their own decision. Cause one thing is for sure FDR was a superhuman who can only be interpreted in mythical good vs. evil duality. The world impatiently awaits a marvel-comic-style article. ;-)   --Pass3456 (talk) 22:18, 21 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Actually I generally admire FDR and some aspects of the New Deal, though not ardently. The quote Pass3456 objects to so much was said by FDR and recorded by Ickes.  Roosevelt's ardent admirers include Ickes and possibly himself (politicians aren't humble).  I take it that there are no longer any Wikipedia rules against including the quote, or the deleted material summarizing Garraty's book chapter.  :-)  LesLein (talk) 23:41, 21 January 2013 (UTC)
 * the problem with the actual Ickes quote is that it does not say anything about the new deal. Some people will read it to say that Roosevelt imprisoned or killed millions of people as Stalin and Hitler did in their countries. The 2nd Ickes quote (" Ickes warned Roosevelt that there was an increasing tendency by the public “to unconsciously group four names, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Roosevelt.") is a fake – Ickes never said it. The statement came in a letter to FDR, one of millions he received from private citizens. Rjensen (talk) 23:53, 21 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't think the Ickes quote creates that impression. Unfortunately the two sentences I quoted are the only thing in the entire diary that address the matter (the index only mentions Hitler twice).  On the day in question Ickes spends more ink expressing guilt about taking the afternoon off to attend a World Series game (he wasn't a big baseball fan).  I provided the deleted Garraty material to provide some context so it would be clear that FDR wasn't referring to dictatorial measures, just certain economic policies.  I'm not trying to show that the New Deal was fascist or communist.  My main point is that Hoover's claim had some merit and the New Deal's corporatism had at least a few similarities to fascist corporatism.  (The two types of corporatism shared the same family tree going back to nineteenth century German theorists.  They are cousins, possibly brothers, but definitely not twins.)  The Hoover quote currently is presented like something that a sore loser (great man, bad president) would say.  The New Dealers prided themselves on being pragmatists.  Roosevelt called for "bold, persistent experimentation."  Some of the experiments came from disreputable sources. Roosevelt took over during very desperate times.  Talk of dictatorship was in the air (see Alter's book on the hundred days.)


 * FWIW, Mussolini had a popular following in the U.S. in the early 1930s. A Cole Porter song said "You're the top!  You're Mussolini!"  (Porter didn't write this part.)  Some New Dealers, including FDR, exagerated the similarities between the New Deal and Italian fascist corporatism.  Whitman does an excellent job comparing corporatism, the New Deal, and Italian economic policy.  He also describes the family tree for American-style corporatism.  After Italy's invasion of Ethiopia, the Roosevelt administration dropped this topic.  Cole Porter changed the lyrics.  The issue didn't resurface until Garraty's 1973 article.  Garraty was responding to New Leftists, who were interested in Liberal Corporatism.  According to Whitman, by the late 1980s it became "almost routine" for New Deal historians to identify similarities between the New Deal and fascist governments.  Whitman concludes that the New Deal was only superficially similar to Italian fascist corporatism.  I'd like to put this in the article, but I need a stable foundation before building the house.


 * Goldberg's source on the second Ickes quote was Brinkley's book. If you can provide a source I will attempt to notify the authors.  LesLein (talk) 02:02, 22 January 2013 (UTC)
 * Goldberg got the source wrong--Ickes is nowhere mentioned.  As for the first quote--it's a paraphrase and Ickes simply does not tell what FDR was talking about. Mentioning it is forbidden OR -- it involves contested interpretation not based on any reliable secondary source. Mentioning it is a rhetorical device that confuses our readers, suggesting FDR's atrocities on the order of Stalin & Hitler. As for Mussolini, there was one New Dealer (Johnson) who had a favorable view and he was fired for it. As Diggins says, "Hugh Johnson notwithstanding, the published writings of the Brain Trusters reveal no evidence of the influence of Italian Fascism."  Diggins goes on to say there was  zero influence of Mussolini on FDR.


 * I went to your Brinkley link. It says "Another, more friendly observer warned the President that there was a growing popular tendency 'to unconsciously group four name, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini and Roosevelt.'"  If you search for "Stalin" in Amazon's page on Brinkley's book you'll find it.  Brinkley's source was the Ickes diaries.  I'm reading Brinkley's book on my Kindle.  The Ickes quote is on page 22.  Brinkley quotes the Ickes diaries throughout the book.   Goldberg's source was Brinkley.  Do you really believe Goldberg falsified what Brinkley wrote?  What is your evidence that Brinkley got it wrong?  The point is moot since my last revision didn't use the second Ickes quote.


 * I said earlier that similarities between Italian fascism and the New Deal were superficial. FWIW, at the start of the New Deal Roosevelt said he was interested in implementing the policies of "that admirable Italian gentleman."  See the bottom of the Whitman article I mentioned earlier.  If there's confusion, Roosevelt helped cause it.  It is a different story with national socialism.  Garraty has a long journal article and book chapter comparing the New Deal to national socialism.  In one he says the similarities were "striking."  In the other he says the similarities are "remarkable."  Why does the Garraty material keep getting removed?  You said yourself that he is a good source.


 * I didn't know there was any serious dispute about New Deal "atrocities," let alone on the order of Stalin and Hitler. Any intelligent layman will read the passage and know it is referring to economic policies (see Garraty material).  Do you really think that Wiki readers are that ignorant?  Quoting Lewis Feuer is not original research.  Editors of this article know that Roosevelt contradicted his denials in private.  Keeping out the Ickes quote creates bias because it leaves out FDR's real POV, which is important.  :-)  LesLein (talk) 13:48, 23 January 2013 (UTC)
 * The article will be used by high school kids who know very little about the New Deal but have heard plenty about Hitler's atrocities. "Any intelligent layman" will rwalize he's being fooled by the linking of FDR and Hitler but the kids won't. Again the Ickes quote (the genuine one) tells the informed reader zero--what program was FDR referring to??-- but will hint to the poor student that FDR admitted actions similar to Hitler. Rjensen (talk) 15:38, 23 January 2013 (UTC)


 * +1
 * And comparisons itself are without significance. One of the many differences between Hitler and Roosevelt, e.g., was the fact that FDR was a champion of the jewish vote ;-) Comparisons are about similarities and differences and the significance of the findings and at the end there might be a conclusion, e.g.: With Nazism and Bolshevism advancing "the only light in the darkness was the administration of Mr. Roosevelt and the New Deal in the United States." (Isaiah Berlin ). --Pass3456 (talk) 20:04, 23 January 2013 (UTC)


 * First, I think you should either substantiate your claim of falsification or retract it. Claims of falsification shouldn't be made without evidence.


 * What Wikipedia rule covers misunderstanding by high school kids? Are they to be barred from unpleasant facts?  Can we take adult readers into account?  Is there a complete list of reasons for Ickes' quote to be excluded?  First it was an unreliable source (whose research was praised by Publishers Weekly).  Then it was use of a primary source, which has been used in multiple Wikipedia articles.  The article uses other primary sources without complaint, btw; it also has unsourced statements.  Now it is concern for high school kids.  If students read the article's first sentence they'll know it's about economic atrocities; not atrocities or anti-semitism.  What reason is next?


 * If concern about misleading high school kids is the criteria, then much of the subarticle needs purging. Given what he said in private, FDR's block quote denial is deceptive.  Then there's the block quote from Hoover.  Editors aren't aloud to point out that FDR used the Swope plan as a basis for the NIRA.  We're not even allowed to say what the Swope plan was.  Hight school kids might think it's a reference to the Wannsee Protocol.


 * The New Deal's War Industries Board ancestry is presented as a defense of the New Deal against charges of fascism. High school kids will accept this without realizing that at least one prominent historian said the WIB had "almost dictatorial power." Stanley Payne is quoted as saying that "the various populist, nativist, and rightist movements in the United States during the 1920s and 1930s fell distinctly short of fascism."  High school kids won't know that elsewhere in his book Payne says that fascism has far-left origins ("Marxist heresy").  If comparisons are insignificant, why quote Payne, whose book compares different countries to his fascist criteria?


 * Check out what Alistair Cooke says in his admiring portraitof FDR. He says that in his first two years in office FDR was a "benevolent dictator."  Cooke wrote that under Roosevelt "America took its first fling at National Socialism."  Pity the high school students reading his book.  If a New Deal admirer can say this, why can't anyone here?LesLein (talk) 00:56, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
 * why can't you call FDR a dictator here -- because the RS strongly disagree. (Cooke wrote that passage when he was in his 90s and he garbled it completely. suggesting FDR was just like Hitler is likewise a no-no. Rjensen (talk) 01:22, 27 January 2013 (UTC)
 * There is an entire article on Criticism of Franklin D. Roosevelt that has details on charges he was pro-big business, anti-business, fascist, anti-Jewish etc. Rjensen (talk) 02:54, 27 January 2013 (UTC)


 * Who said Roosevelt was just like Hitler? Cooke originally made his statements in an interview back in 1995.  He said "benevolent."  He didn't mean it literally; I should have been clearer.  BTW, Cooke's statement is used in another New Deal article.  There's no evidence that his book garbled it.  I think it is a no-no to accuse people of bad faith; allege falsification without evidence; or drop hints for others to get lost.  I take it you're never going to substantiate your claim about the second Ickes quote being wrong.


 * Are the Hoover and Roosevelt block quotes primary sources? LesLein (talk) 02:08, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
 * yes = primary sources. Hoover wrote at length and there is no mistaking what he meant: fascism = control of government by big business. (That is what Hoover meant by fascism but that never happened under Hitler or Mussolini.) FDR was talking to Ickes about XYZ, but Ickes never tells us what XYZ was. No historian has tried to guess XYZ -- there are simply no clues.  The Ickes quote is used by enemies of  FDR to trick people into linking FDR with Hitler's atrocities. Rjensen (talk) 04:12, 28 January 2013 (UTC)
 * I agree with Rjensen here. Might I also add that you seem to be trying to push a POV here in an obvious manner. Using words like 'dictator' and attempting to link FDR to Hitler is definitely fringe. Please do not make these types of edits again without Talk page consensus. Dave Dial (talk) 04:35, 28 January 2013 (UTC)


 * I said earlier that my reference to dictatorship ("benevolent") should have been clearer. I was in a rush at the time.  A similar example might be a reference to "FDR's atrocities" by another editor; I doubt if the editor really meant to say that the New Deal committed atrocities.  Earlier I quoted a historian stating that the NIRA "was also similar to experiments being carried out by the fascist dictator Benito Mussolini in Italy and by the Nazis in Adolf Hitler’s Germany. It did not, of course, turn America into a fascist state ...  In a later edit subsequently reverted I quoted an historian as saying that Roosevelt "was neither a totalitarian nor a dictator."  Earlier I paraphrased  a Whitman article sby aying that the New Deal was only superficially similar to Italian fascism.  I never included Whitman's quote indicating FDR's interest in Mussolini's economic policies.  This is strange behavior for someone pushing a POV in an obvious manner to link Hitler and FDR (more to come)  [I added the italics for this edit.]


 * Is there text in the Consensus guidance that says I have to go through the Talk page before making edits? I also can't find the place that says an editor can give direction to another editor.  The Consenus page says that editors making changes should indicate "the reason why the change was made, or by discussion on the article talk page." Is it compliant to say "Stop this" or have a blank edit summary to make reversions?  Speaking of rules, should Edit Summaries state that an author falsified a quote?  A fundamental Wikipedia principle is to assume good faith


 * Getting back to consensus, earlier in this dispute another editor reinsertedsome of my previous edits. The editor who later reverted this information did not obtain consensus here.  If you check that edit, you will see that William Dodd, FDR's ambassador to Germany, wrote a foreward to a German's book noting the similarities between the New Deal and German anti-deprssion policies.  Dodd said that nothing in the book can be "quoted to our disadvantage."  FDR did not assign a fringe person to be his ambassador to Germany.


 * The source of many, if not most, of the reversions of my material is by historian John Garraty. Check the Wikipedia article on him along with the obituaries.  The New York Times describes him as a "trailblazing biographer."  He was president of the Society of American Historians.  After he left that position he wrote an academic article noting the "striking similarities" between the Nazi and New Deal antidepression policies.  He later wrote a book chapter updating the article and stating that the two countries' antidepression policies had "many remarkable similarities."  According to Whitman, Garraty had some imitators.  If my information is fringe, then so are some prominent historians.  In addition, Lewis Feuer quotes FDR saying in private that he based some New Deal policies on what the Germans were doing.


 * Neutral Point of View "means carefully and critically analyzing a variety of reliable sources and then attempting to convey to the reader the information contained in them fairly, proportionately, and as far as possible without bias. Wikipedia aims to describe disputes, but not engage in them. Editors, while naturally having their own points of view, should strive in good faith to provide complete information, and not to promote one particular point of view over another. As such, the neutral point of view does not mean exclusion of certain points of view, but including all notable and verifiable points of view." Other editors stated that the fascism subarticle is a "debate."  My Garraty material would establish NPOV by showing what the similarities are while including his disclaimers regarding dictatorship.  The Garraty material is notable and verifiable.  There are other problems with the article, but if I'm promoting a fringe POV, then Garraty, other credible historians, Ambassador Dodd, Harold Ickes, and FDR have fringe POVs.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by LesLein (talk • contribs) 23:34, 31 January 2013 (UTC)


 * The statements above are valid for charges of communism too. --Pass3456 (talk) 20:10, 20 February 2013 (UTC)


 * The material from Lewis Feuer's New Deal article reflect his information and conclusions. The information from Wikipedia's Lewis Feuer article indicates that he was regarded as an expert on Marxism.  At one time he was a Marxist himself.  Do you really think he pushes fringe theories?  Are you willing to edit the Feuer article to reflect your position?  I think that it may be fringe theory to say that Feuer wrote fringe theory.  LesLein (talk) 23:50, 28 February 2013 (UTC)


 * I would suggest that we continue to discuss that at Fringe_theories/Noticeboard. --Pass3456 (talk) 20:44, 1 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Weeks ago you said that Stanley Payne was the best source on this subject. Now you're reverting edits that quote him writing that the Nazi "job creation projects were rather like those of Franklin Roosevelt's in the United States and did not work much better."  I can't wait to see what Patel says about RAD and the CCC.  :-)  LesLein (talk) 23:50, 11 March 2013 (UTC)


 * No you did quote something that Payne did quote from someone else in a different connection. But even this is not the problem.
 * The article allready describes the relevant conclusions. We don´t add proposals for similarities and differences since that would overlay the whole rest of the article and give undue weight to a topic that every major work on the New Deal ignores as irrelevant (please see and try to understand the unequivocal responses on Fringe_theories/Noticeboard). Additionally you don´t whant to present similarities and differences but only similarities which obviously violates WP:NPOV (at least) by WP:Cherry. --Pass3456 (talk) 07:12, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Archived here. --Pass3456 (talk) 21:50, 13 July 2013 (UTC)

Charges of laxness
I haven´t undone everything but that does not mean that the additions are accepted. I await your statement and then we can take it to Third opinion. Problems are:
 * 1) "Ellen Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism" should be accurately reflected
 * 2) text based on "Larry J. Sabato, Howard R. Ernst, ''Encyclopedia of American Political Parties and Elections" should not be deleted
 * 3) again you are writing endlessly about incidents without relevance to the article and quotes from long-gone people. Why can´t you summarize current scholarly conclusions? --Pass3456 (talk) 21:00, 5 May 2013 (UTC)


 * "When Ambassador Joseph Davies was assigned to be ambassador, he was instructed to win Stalin’s friendship. Kennan said that the move reflected “the smell of Soviet influence … somewhere in the higher reaches of the government."
 * I guess the move actually reflected the strategy to win Stalin as one of the Allies of World War II ;-) --Pass3456 (talk) 21:10, 5 May 2013 (UTC)


 * Pass3456 - If you want you can leave Schrecker's statement in. Though I think it's biased, every perspective should be covered.


 * What is the date of the Sabato and Ernst book? It may be out of date. Put it back if you want, but it would be nice if there was a date so readers can judge how current it is.  I saw the previous version of the subarticle as biased; leading readers to think that only demagogues and yahoos made the charges.  There is credible research that claims that most of those McCarthy accused were security risks.  See the McCarthy article.


 * I started off here by providing short passages or quotes and was accused of cherry picking or quoting out of context, so I sometimes write more than what is normally necessary to provide context. Believe me, I don't enjoy writing endlessly.  In the past I provided relevant material from first rate scholars only to see it reverted.  As far as providing information irrelevant to the New Deal, I think the subarticles should be removed or replaced.  A better and more interesting subarticle would be on sources for New Deal ideas.


 * Davies received his instructions in the mid-1930s, not during World War II. If you want you can remove the paragraph on the library at the embassy.  Incidentally, Davies was allowed to buy Soviet art at below market prices; in effect he was bribed.


 * I think you should find my response agreeable. I don't think you should say "accepted."  It implies ownership.  LesLein (talk) 00:51, 8 May 2013 (UTC)


 * The "New Deal" was a domestic program, and the charges of Communism mostly involved the WPA and the NLRB. The postwar allegations against Hiss and other spies are a WW2 and foreign policy issue and belong in the article on US-USSR relations, not here. Rjensen (talk) 06:42, 8 May 2013 (UTC)


 * I wasn't the one who put Hiss, White, HUAC, and McCarthy in the article. I figured that as long as they were mentioned the discussion should be balanced.  Hiss and White were part of the New Deal.  They caused serious harm.  LesLein (talk) 21:18, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

Harry Dexter White
Harry Dexter White did pass materials along to the USSR, but he acted out of idealism not as a member of the Communist Party, says "Red White" By: Benn Steil, Foreign Affairs, (Mar/Apr 2013) Vol. 92, Issue 2. Steil says White, "believed that the Soviet Union was a vital U.S. ally but because he also believed passionately in the success of the bold Soviet experiment with socialism." Steil says, "White would not take orders from Moscow. He worked on his own terms. He joined no underground movements." Rjensen (talk) 19:56, 19 May 2013 (UTC)


 * The materials (currency plates) White passed on to the Soviets cost the U.S. billions. The fact that White acted out of idealism is no excuse at all.  Neither is spying for an ally.  There is a reason Jonathan Pollard is sitting in prison.  Steil doesn't mention that White interfered with financial aid to China, aiding the communist takeover.  The Chinese communists were not a vital U.S. ally.  LesLein (talk) 21:18, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
 * the articles is about domestic policies in 1930s, not foreign policy in 1940s. As for the latter-- better look at White did not "pass" any currency plates (it was a presidential decision he favored). He supported giving $$$$ to Chinese Nationalists and zero to Chinese Communists.  Rjensen (talk) 21:43, 14 July 2013 (UTC)

More on fascism
I made some edits in the past week. I think they address all of the earlier complaints as I explain here. In other cases, the complaints were rejected by the Wiki Admin Noticeboard. I think the real problem is information suppression.

Last January Pass3456 first reverted my edit because it used original research. That was the first time I heard of the rule, being relatively new here. Rjensen restored the material that was well sourced. Pass3456 then revoked it because the ratio of quotes to non-quotes was too high. There are no such rules. Pass3456 had no objection to the block quotes from Hoover and FDR that were based on original research.

Pass3456 agreed that some of my sources were good. When I put their information back in the article, Pass3456 redacted them to the point where they were almost meaningless. Wiki calls this “Not allowing one view to ‘speak for itself.’”

My critics cited Stanley Payne as a definitive. When I accurately cited Payne note that the New Deal and Germany had similar labor policies, Pass3456 said that this was a “fringe theory.”

Even though the FDR block quote reflects obvious bias and is original research, no one objects to it. When I added other relevant quotes from FDR, it is reverted. Wiki refers to this as “Explaining why evidence supports one view, but omitting such explanation in support of alternative views.” It also constitutes what Wiki calls “Making one opinion look superior by omitting strong and citable points against it, comparing it instead with low quality arguments for other POVs (strawman tactics).”   An example of a straw man tactic was using the Hoover block quote as a foil.

Rjensen objected to an FDR quote because it will mislead high school kids into thinking that it links FDR’s and Hitler’s atrocities. To avoid any confusion I now quote a book by Tim McNeese on the Great Depression, which is marketed to those 10 and over. McNeese’s editor was Rjensen. This book says that the NRA was “almost dictatorial” in its regulation of business, a claim I never made. This should prevent any further confusion.

The final complaint was that I was pushing a “fringe theory.” The only person supporting Pass3456 was Dave Dial, who only dropped in for a personal attack.

No one has provided any evidence that my recent edits are irrelevant, poorly sourced, or inaccurate. My critics should either be specific or let my edits stand. LesLein (talk) 21:39, 14 July 2013 (UTC)


 * After reading all those false statements I can´t see any sense in a further discussion. It has been lengthy discussed at Talk:New_Deal]. I took it to the fringe theories noticebard were fringe was confirmed . The admin noticeboard conclusional remark was "I hope that RJensen or some other simpatico wikipedian can either get the new editor up to speed contributing somewhat more useful content on 20th Century history or else steer him towards matters in which he has greater" knowledge.
 * If you LesLein whant to take it to the NPOV noticeboard your free to do it. --Pass3456 (talk) 22:10, 14 July 2013 (UTC)
 * LesLein, you need to stop pushing your edits here without consensus. Your false accusations and statements are interfering with any sort of Talk page discussion that could be happening to gain some consensus for your edits. If they are not accepted, it does not mean you can just keep adding them. Please stop it. This is an article about the 1930's New Deal program, not on how much you seem to think FDR admired Il Duce or The Fuhrer. Thanks

Problems with citations
There is no citation for the sentence saying that communists charged the New Deal with being fascist. I don't think American communists are a credible source anyway.

I marked the von Mises sentence "failed verification." The von Mises book does not define fascism as the article claims. It only mentions the New Deal once. It does not say the New Deal was fascist. It says the New Deal was a "replica" of Bismarcks sozialpolitik (social policy). Either a direct quote showing otherwise or a new reference is needed. LesLein (talk) 02:40, 7 August 2013 (UTC)


 * I would like to wait one or two days and see if Rjensen whants to add the citations. Just if you have the patience.
 * I have a non communist current source in mind for the communist characterization of the New Deal.
 * The 1930s use of fascism was a pretty muddle anyway. --Pass3456 (talk) 22:17, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
 * I too would rather rjensen go through this first. He's more of an expert, leans to the conservative side and seems to edit in a NPOV manner. Thanks. Dave Dial (talk) 22:22, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Was asked to provided a source. -- Moxy (talk) 20:40, 12 August 2013 (UTC)
 * In 1933-34 the Communists Party denounced the New Deal as fascist. (It then turned 180 degrees) see for details. Rjensen (talk) 05:31, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * In 1933-34 the Communists Party denounced the New Deal as fascist. (It then turned 180 degrees) see for details. Rjensen (talk) 05:31, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
 * In 1933-34 the Communists Party denounced the New Deal as fascist. (It then turned 180 degrees) see for details. Rjensen (talk) 05:31, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Disputed
The subsection on fascism states "After 1945 only few observers continued to see similarities." The source is Kiran Klaus Patel,

James Q. Whitman stated the opposite in an academic article. He wrote "By the late 1980s it became almost routine for New Deal historians to list resemblances between the New Deal and fascist governments." Whitman provides plenty of examples in the 1991 article; he also identifies prominent historians who felt otherwise. Since then plenty of other works have been published (Patel, Dan P. Waterman, Wolfgang Schivelbusch). According to Whitman the topic was somewhat taboo after 1935 and 1936 (not 1945) until 1973 articles by Garraty and Hawley.

I think Whitman is more credible here. Patel is naturally pushing his book and can't begin by saying that his topic has been covered before.

By the way, if you search the Whitman article for "admirable" you will see that I didn't create the notion that Roosevelt admired Mussolini. LesLein (talk) 01:09, 15 August 2013 (UTC)


 * The text you challenge continues, "Later on some scholars as Kiran Klaus Patel, Heinrich August Winkler and John Garraty came to the conclusion that comparisons of the alternative systems don´t have to end in an apology for Nazism since comparisons rely on the examination of both similarities and differences". Your link btw says that comparisons are "revisionist", indicating that they are not a major view.  And there is no reason to challenge the facts presented by Patel since academics do not normally falsify facts in order to support their views.  Incidentally, Mussolini was universally admired in the U.S., except by the Left.  That does not mean that most Americans were fascists.  TFD (talk) 04:19, 15 August 2013 (UTC)
 * +1. According to Whitman the topic was somewhat taboo ... until 1973 when according to Patel some scholars with a different approach did some comparisons. There is no contradiction. --Pass3456 (talk) 18:43, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

---

I was accused of smearing FDR by saying that he expressed admiration of Mussolini. Indeed, Mussolini had a popular following in the U.S. Roosevelt also studied some of Italy's programs for implemention in the New Deal. It is too bad the article can't mention this. BTW, the example Whitman provided and I mentioned before was deurbanization, which is probably innocuous.

Historical revisionism can often become the predominant view. The Wiki article on the subject provides plenty of examples. It quotes James McPherson saying that "revision is the lifeblood of historical scholarship."

There is quite a contradiction between "some comparisons" (Pass3456) or "few observers" (article) and "almost routine" (Whitman). The dispute still exists.

The main contradiction is between the article's presentation of Patel's views and the reality of Patel's book. The article states that according to Patel "the crises led to a limited degree of convergence" on the level of economic and social policy. On the page in question Patel wrote "both nations subsequently employed what were often strikingly similar instruments of economic and social policy; on this level, the crisis led to a limited degree of convergence." Earlier in the paragraph Patel wrote that the political responses were very different. It was the political differences that caused an overall lack of convergence; Patel thought the German and New Deal social and economic programs were very similar.

On the previous page Patel wrote that while having differences, the German Labor Service and CCC had a "special closeness." He writes that the similarities provide the "larger background" to his book. None of this comes through in the article. It always seemed mystifying that Patel would write a lenghty book about programs that had little in common.

The article misrepresents John Garraty's comparisons as well. The Wiki article links to his article at JSTOR. Garraty says that the New Deals and National Socialism were very different "in totality." He states that politically they couldn't be more different. So far, so good. But Garraty says that their anti-depression programs "displayed striking similarities." That is the exact opposite of the article's summary of his views. Patel's and Garraty's summary of economic programs are strikingly similar. This is highly relevant since the New Deal article's first sentence says "This article is about the economic program."

The paragraph ending with the quote from Isaiah Berlin does not represent of Patel's findings. This paragraph is intended as a summary of the New Deal's defenders on this topic. The next paragraph summarizes the views of critics who perceived a convergence. To include only one paragraph violates NPOV.

Isaiah Berlin was a famous scholar, but his article providing the quotation was an opinion piece. The statement that America was the "only light in the darkness" is false. The U.S. was not the only democracy that resisted fascism; off hand I can think of at least half a dozen others. The guidance on quotations says "Never quote a false statement without immediately saying the statement is false." The quotation needs to be removed.

The problem can't be resolved by simply removing Patel's material. If Patel's statements on differences are relevant, then so are the similarities that he used for his book's background.

Finally, I don't see why it is harmful to point out that the New Deal drew on radical foreign governments for some economic policies. It doesn't bother me that the article on the Interstate Highway System makes it plain that Eisenhower was influenced by the German autobahns. Even the worst governments can generate a good idea; it is not unreasonable to point out the striking economic similarities. LesLein (talk) 00:34, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

the crises led to a limited degree of convergence
"In an attempt to achieve that goal (overcoming mass unemployment and the global Depression), both nations subsequently employed what were often strikingly similar instruments of economic and social policy; on this level, the crisis led to a limited degree of convergence." So the quintessence is that "on this level (economic and social policy), the crisis led to a limited degree of convergence". It is not up to us to puzzle about whether Patel may have summarized his findings wrong.

Patel wrote that the Labor Service was not an invention of fascism. Bulgaria had it since 1920, Switzerland, Sweden and Great Britain in the early 1930s. It is a bit of an academic Nazi exploitation to compare New Deal and fascism. In fact neither fascism nor the New Deal developed new economic ideas, they both relied on existing ideas. --Pass3456 (talk) 20:30, 1 September 2013 (UTC)

Even if nazis may have had sexual orgies - sexual orgies aren´t the essence of nazism.


 * And neither is vegetarianism. -) I agree with you (there's a first time for everything) that Patel's paragraph is confusing, possibly because English is a second language to him.  That is a good reason to avoid using it, or providing a fuller summary.  If you check Patel's book he indicates that the head of the AFL-CIO, the Nation, and The New Republic worried that the CCC's somewhat militaristic nature could lead to fascism (I'm paraphrasing from memory).


 * The paragraph still summarizes Garraty's views incorrectly. Garraty admired FDR; his main complaint was that the New Deal didn't follow Keynes' advice on deficit spending.


 * FWIW I don't think the CCC was fascistic, it is an example of some similarities. There were differences, too, particulary in that CCC participation was voluntary.  LesLein (talk) 00:07, 9 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Kiran-Klaus Patel is a german-british historian so I guess he is bilingual.
 * Patel wrote somewhere that Roosevelt prohibited the CCC to be militaristic to avoid similarities with the (even then) daunting Reichsarbeitsdienst.
 * I agree with you and everyone else that the CCC was not fascist. The idea of the labor service was developed in Bulgaria, Switzerland, Sweden and Great Britain before Hitler even came to power. --Pass3456 (talk) 20:22, 10 September 2013 (UTC)


 * FWIW, later on Patel notes that in August 1941 the CCC members started performing 15 minute military-type drills and wore military-type drills. This was probably wise considering what was about to happen.  Leuchtenberg notes that the CCC was run by the Army.  Garraty quotes one person saying that six months in the CCC was worth a year's Army training.  Every day the CCC employees heard taps and reveille.  They had to take a "position of alertness" when addressing superiors and call them "sir."  They could receive a "dishonorable discharge."  This just shows that Roosevelt turned to the Army to get the program running quickly, there was no sinister intent. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LesLein (talk • contribs) 23:46, 15 September 2013
 * And at the End of 1941 Roosevelt started building tanks, bombers and submarines - just like Hitler ;-) --Pass3456 (talk) 21:02, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Near the top of page 5 of Kiran Klaus Patel’s book, he starts a paragraph on the politics of the New Deal and National Socialism. He later writes “In an attempt to achieve that goal [reducing unemployment] both nations subsequently employed what were often strikingly similar instruments of economic and social policy; on this level, the crisis led to a limited degree of convergence.” The phrase on “strikingly similar” policies on economics was omitted in the article. Instead, it says that the limited degree of convergence applied to economics.

As the article states, the book says “After 1945, few observers continued to see these similarities …” But the next paragraph says that “Interest in comparative studies revived only with the growing realization that comparisons do not necessarily amount to an apology …”  The word "revived" is omitted in the article. It goes on to say that articles in the early 1970s addressed the issue.

On page five Patel summarizes the views of Roosevelt’s defenders and detractors. The article only includes the defender’s views. The critics are completely omitted. The defender’s views are presented as Patel’s. Actually, the similarities are the background for Patel's book.

There is no place in Patel’s book where he says that John Garraty found “a limited degree of convergence in economic policy” as the article claims. On page 908 of Garraty’s article, he writes that the New Deal and National Socialism couldn’t have been “more antithetical” politically. "In totality" they "were fundamentally different." On economics though, they “displayed striking similarities.”

In its current state the article gets all of this wrong. LesLein (talk) 03:47, 3 October 2013 (UTC)


 * Patel says that “In an attempt to achieve that goal [reducing unemployment] both nations subsequently employed what were often strikingly similar instruments of economic and social policy; on this level, the crisis led to a limited degree of convergence.” We obviously whant to tell the readers about the result: -> on this level (economic and social policy), the crisis led to a limited degree of convergence.
 * I don´t whant to take "often strikingly similar instruments" out of context. In the chapter "Charges of fascism" every reader would have to understand this as an prove for american fascism. But this is exactly not what Patel, Garraty et alt. say.


 * Listen, what you permanently try do do is a Non_sequitur_(logic):
 * Hitler was a fascist doing some economic and social policy
 * FDR did often similar economic and social policy
 * FDR was a fascist


 * In fact Hitler´s economic and social policy was neither original nor fascist. If one was searching for a model "Labor service" one would have to look at Bulgaria, Switzerland, Sweden and Great Britain which had created Labor services in advance to the US and the German Reich p.3.


 * Hitler actually was a fascist who did fascist things: Gleichschaltung, Nuremberg Laws, Holocaust and so forth. FDR did not do these things.
 * Patel´s intention was "not stop at the deep chasm that separates the German dictatorship from the American democracy in fundamental ways. Instead, it uses the labor service as an instrument to plumb anew the gulf between these two societies." We (Wikipedia users) should not try to fill the gulf with rhetorical nonsense and out of context material.


 * If you whant to say that nowadays scholars think that FDR´s economic and social policy was fascist show us a reliable source which says exactly that.
 * If not we will find an appropriate article where a limited convergance between Europe and the US can be presented without making an argumentum ad hitlerum. --Pass3456 (talk) 14:08, 3 October 2013 (UTC)

NRA
Historians such as Hawley have examined the origins of the NRA in detail, showing the main inspiration came from Senators Hugo Black and Robert F. Wagner and from American business leaders such as the Chamber of Commerce. The model for the NRA was Woodrow Wilson's War Industries Board, in which Johnson had been involved too (Ellis Hawley, The New Deal and the Problem of Monopoly, Princeton University Press, 1966, ISBN 0-8232-1609-8, p. 23). The War Industries Board was developed well before fascism. Due to the timeline fascism can´t have been the model. --Pass3456 (talk) 20:39, 1 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't think Hawley's and Garraty's views are mutually exclusive. Amity Schlaes said that the NRA had 1000 influences.  You are right that the War Industries Board was a major influence, but there were many others.  Hawley says that the War Industries Board was a "comparable project that could serve as a precedent."  To me a precedent is a bit different from a model, but that may just be semantics.  The "war socialism" Germany developed during World War I was an influence on many efforts to expand government's role in the economy, so there is a common lineage.  Hugh Johnson admired Mussolini.  Leon Keyserling, who worked for Wagner, said the Swope plan was the starting point for drafting NRA legislation.  Hoover and Rothbard thought the Swope Plan and NRA were "fascist."


 * On page 135 Hawley says that the NRA was a disappointment in part because of "the basically false analogy that was drawn between its tasks and those of the earlier War Industries Board ..." Unfortunately, he doesn't elaborate.


 * According to Whitman, in 1973 Hawley found similarities between the New Deal and fascism. It was an essay in Heinrich Winkler's book that the article alludes to.   Unfortunately, it is in German; my only foreign language is tourist.  The only English material I can find about it is a book review by Gerald Nash in a scholarly journal.  If you go by Nash, Winkler himself only found superficial similarities, so the article may be wrong on Winkler's views.  According to Nash, Hawley says America and Germany diverged because of American "organizationalism."  Nash mentions Garraty; he doesn't mention similarities or indicate that anyone disputes Garraty.


 * I am not sure if book reviews can be used are references. This seems to be a good review.   LesLein (talk) 00:07, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Relating to Heinrich August Winkler I have answered in the next paragraph.
 * A precedent is different from a model since you don´t need models when you have a precedent. --Pass3456 (talk) 21:16, 10 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree that World War I economic programs were more influential on the New Deal than fascism. The problem is that this isn't a great defense against charges of fascism.  William Leuchtenberg wrote a 40 page essay called "The New Deal and the Analogue of War."  He wrote "World War I marked a bold departure.  It occasioned the abandonment of laissez-faire precepts and raised the federal government to director, even dictator, of the economy."  Leuchtenberg listed government agencies that managed the economy.  The War Industries Board was first.  Stuart Chase, who first coined the term "New Deal," said the War Industry had "super management" like the Soviet Gosplan.  Rex Tugwell called the War Industries Board "America's wartime socialism" and lamented (Leuchtenberg's word) that the Armistice ended the experiment.


 * This doesn't mean that Wilson or Roosevelt were fascists, just that there were some commonalities. It would be interesting to know where the philosophy behind Wilson's wartime economics came from.


 * If you search this Janet C. Wright you will see that civil servants saw similarities between the NRA codes "Fascist Principles."  (Not my term)  The similarities could be that the New Deal reflected progressive corporatism, which probably shares some elements with fascist corporatism.  See Corporatism article. LesLein (talk) 23:46, 15 September 2013 (UTC)


 * The philosophy behind Wilson's wartime economics came from necessity. It is utterly impossible to win a war against an equipollent opponent with laissez-faire precepts and rugged individualism. War economy is as ugly as necessary. Most historians agree that in practice the War Industries Board didn´t do a good job in WW I. The coordination of war production was managed a lot more successfull in other countries. The US obviously learned from the mistakes of the War Industries Board and the NRA since the coordination during WW II was excellent. --Pass3456 (talk) 21:02, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

opponents view
Patel wrote: "By contrast, other opponents ... feared that the political programs of Hitler and Roosevelt were connverging. They saw the use of modern mass media to promote politics, large-scale national programs, the rhetorical invocation of the exertions and sacrifices of World War I, and other developments as evidence that the US was becoming more like the Nazi Regime ... After 1945, few observers continued to see these similarities..." He explains that the opponents view was marked by the:
 * uncertainty about the criteria on which to assess fascism/nazism
 * openness and fluidity of the situation
 * awareness that in the end the fears proved unnecessary. --Pass3456 (talk) 20:30, 1 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I agree that the vagueness of the definition of fascism make things difficult, both here and elsewhere. This applies to both sides.  Incidentally, some leading scholars on fascism say that Hitler wasn't really a fascist; he only mentions fascism twice in his book.


 * I'm not sure that the fears proved unnecessary. According to Brinkley, books by Hayek and Burnham resonated with the public because they expressed something that the public already suspected.  Brinkley says that the most effective criticism of the New Deal was that it limited personal liberty.


 * My complaint is that the article presents Patel's summary of the supporters' view as Patel's own view. LesLein (talk) 00:07, 9 September 2013 (UTC)
 * The fears obviously proved unnecessary. Before 1945 quite some americans feared that the US was becoming more like the Nazi Regime. Afterwards just a few weirdos.
 * Since the 1970s some scholars did comparisons between New Deal and fascism but not in the pre 1945 way but by saying that the german populations initial perception of Hitler was not the weird war-mongering mass-murder he proved to be, but a leader who promoted reasonable ideas of economic and social policy similar to those implemented in western democracies. Obviously there is a tendency to think that everything Hitler did must have been wrong. We all know that vegetarianism does not lead to antisemitism (Reductio ad Hitlerum) ;-) Hitler actually did bad things right from the beginning (Gleichschaltung and so forth) but initially he did a lot of things similar to those that allready had been implemented in democracies like Great Britain and that are perceived to be helpful in overcoming the depression. When Heinrich-August Winkler or some other german historian did comparisons they never intended to say that the New Deal was fascist or in some way wrong. --Pass3456 (talk) 20:55, 10 September 2013 (UTC)


 * On page 4 of his book Patel says that "on the whole there was a special closeness between the German Labor Service and the CCC, just as there was a whole series of similar initiatives in social, cultural, and economic policies in Nazi Germany and under the New Deal. To accurately summarize Patel's views the article should include some of this.


 * Do you have anything on Hawley's 1973 essay? The article may need a little updating.  After reading Nash's review of Winkler's book it doesn't seem like Garraty and Hawley were in serious disagreement.  (Next week I'll add some updates on Garraty's views on the NRA's sources.  It shouldn't bother anyone.  I never intended to say that the New Deal was fascist, just that it had similarities to fascism and some fascist influences (FDR said the same thing.)


 * Hayek wrote the Road to Serfdom in 1944. I think he got carried away a bit, but he didn't change his views after 1945.  Friedman said that some New Deal labor programs were necessary as emergency measures, but political freedom and limited government went hand in hand.  The Nobel Prize doesn't go to weirdos.


 * — Preceding unsigned comment added by LesLein (talk • contribs) 23:46, 15 September 2013


 * All Hayek says about the New Deal in the Road to Serfdom is that it was experimentation, which is the mainstream view anyway. TFD (talk) 02:23, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
 * Milton Friedman supported New Deal relief and recovery without reservation: MILTON FRIEDMAN: You're now talking not about the Depression, but the post-Depression. At least the bottom of the Depression was in 1933. You have to distinguish between two classes of New Deal policies. One class of New Deal policies was reform: wage and price control, the Blue Eagle, the national industrial recovery movement. I did not support those. The other part of the new deal policy was relief and recovery... providing relief for the unemployed, providing jobs for the unemployed, and motivating the economy to expand... an expansive monetary policy. Those parts of the New Deal I did support. INTERVIEWER: But why did you support those? MILTON FRIEDMAN: Because it was a very exceptional circumstance. We'd gotten into an extraordinarily difficult situation, unprecedented in the nation's history. You had millions of people out of work. Something had to be done; it was intolerable. And it was a case in which, unlike most cases, the short run deserved to dominate." In fact Friedman worked for the Works Progress Administration at that time. --Pass3456 (talk) 21:02, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

only light in the darkness
It is a fact that Isaiah Berlin - looking back after WW II - wrote ″The only light in the darkness was the administration of Mr. Roosevelt and the New Deal in the United States.″ (Kiran Klaus Patel, Soldiers of Labor: Labor Service in Nazi Germany and New Deal America, 1933-1945, ISBN 978-0-521-83416-2, Cambridge University Press 2005, p.5). This is reported by Kiran Klaus Patel and several other sources, so it is true. Patel interprets it in the light of the facts that:
 * the USA were not simply any democracy but the world`s leading economic power
 * the USA became one of the chief victims of the depression
 * Roosevelt´s reform program formed a positive counterweight to fascism and communism. --Pass3456 (talk) 20:30, 1 September 2013 (UTC)


 * I don't dispute Berlin's qualifications or the accuracy of the quote. My dispute is that taken literally, the word "only" results in a false statement.  I can now list 11 countries that remained democracies.  For example, Switzerland bordered the two largest fascist countries; had a majority German population; and a substantial Italian population.  Yet it resisted fascism.  Elsewhere the article identifies other democracies that didn't go fascist (Britain, France, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand).  If Berlin had said "the leading light in the darkness" or "a light in the darkness" it would be accurate.  Quotations of statements that are factually false require immediate rebuttal.


 * Berlin's article is an opinion piece originally published in the Atlantic in 1955. It wasn't intended to be a scholarly and the quote shouldn't be presented as a fact.


 * "Only light in the darkness" is a figure of speech. The New Oxford American Dictionary defines rhetoric in part as "the use of figures of speech and other compositional techniques."  The Wiki rules on quotations say to avoid rhetorical quotes.


 * Pass3456 disputed my summary of Rothbard's description of fascism. I put this in to provide an example of a libertarian making a charge of fascism.  I think Rothbard provides an excellent definition of corporatism, which isn't necessary fascism.  I don't care if Rothbard's statement is removed.  But if it is removed, then there is no point to the subarticle.  The Communists took dictation from Stalin.  In the 1930s they called everything they disliked fascist.  To retain this subarticle, with its current title there has to be at least one reasonably credible source making the accusation.  LesLein (talk) 00:07, 9 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Berlin did not say that the U.S. was the only democracy. His point was that it was the only democracy that did anything to alleviate the depression.  TFD (talk) 18:30, 9 September 2013 (UTC)


 * The article you and I linked to is an opinion piece. Berlin's quotation should not be presented as fact. A paraphrase may be okay, along with something from Hayek or Brinkley.  According to another subarticle on the New Deal, America wasn't the only democracy to respond.  France and New Zealand did as well.  According to Patel, Great Britain, Sweden, and Switzerland implement CCC or German Labor Service type programs.  The Berlin quote is a false statement (the article only has the sentence I object to).  You didn't deny that it was a rhetorical quote.  Rhetorical quotes violate NPOV. (See guidance on Quotations.)LesLein (talk) 23:46, 15 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Both New Zealand and France adopted their policies after 1935. France 1936-1937 was hardly a beacon of light, especially to a liberal, and New Zealand was too small and remote.  Workcamps alone were not a significant response to the Depression.  Canada's Conservative government for example introduced them in 1932 but, as the article points out, their attempt to introduce a Canadian version of the New Deal in 1935 failed when the Liberals won the election.  Berlin's statement is not presented as a fact but as a direct quote.  We already balance his views with how Communists and libertarians called it fascism.  TFD (talk) 01:36, 16 September 2013 (UTC)
 * "At a time of weakness and mounting despair in the democratic world, Mr. Roosevelt radiated confidence and strength. He was the leader of the democratic world". That is pretty much a fact. And according to Kiran Klaus Patel it perfectly summarizes the perception of the New Deal by many democrats in Europe and the United States. --Pass3456 (talk) 21:02, 18 September 2013 (UTC)
 * The key to Berlin is "light" -- no other democracy shone its beacon worldwide. Switzerland for example kept its light to itself. Democracy ripped France apart before the war. New Zealand?? where did it shine its little candle? The US worked very energetically to fight the nazis in many countries, as in Latin America. I recommend reading Berlin's entire 1955 essay: Rjensen (talk) 03:46, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

conclusion
Peolple obviously do all sorts of comparisons for a lot of different reasons. The question is wether it does make sense for an encyclopedia to cover all kind of comparison topics. The work of Claude Monet was compared to Cubism though it was not cubism. Donald Trump has been compared to an Orangutan though he isn´t. It seems that we all agree (in accordance with historians) that the New Deal was not fascist. Do we need to stress Godwin's law? --Pass3456 (talk) 21:02, 18 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Comparisons should be included when they are notable. TFD (talk) 09:20, 19 September 2013 (UTC)