*The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights*

That is the new book by David Beito, and the subtitle is The Untold Story of FDR’s Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance.  Here is the closing passage:

If Roosevelt’s civil-liberties reputation meant anything to mainstream Americans at the end of the 1950s, it was not for witch hunts against gays in the navy, mass surveillance of private telegrams, crackdowns on free speech, inquisitorial investigations, sedition prosecutions, or the internment of Japanese Americans in concentration camps.  Far more central in the memories of most was his authorship of the four freedoms and the Fair Employment Practices Committee and the appointment of Black and Douglas to the Supreme Court.  But that was not the whole truth, or even the beginning of the whole truth.

There you go.  I don’t think these facts are much contested, though the accompanying mood affiliation hasn’t changed very much.

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