Alan M. de León’s Reviews > Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time > Status Update

“This two-sided state, a state characterized by democratic advantages yet marked by antidemocratic pathologies, continues to constitute the world Americans inhabit. This, ultimately, is the legacy of the New Deal’s southern cage.”

“In the vital area of international and military affairs, especially atomic energy policy, the political processes of democracy do not operate… atomic energy appears to be one of a growing class of situations for which the traditional democratic processes are rather unsuitable and for which traditional theories of democracy provide no rational answer.”

“A state without substance is a state ripe for special interests to grab hold of key elements of government… From time to time, efforts have been made to counter the imbalance of money, organization, and access, but unless strong counterpressures can be mobilized, inequality grows, poverty is neglected, and equal citizenship is compromised.”

“By refashioning the context within which subsequent political strategies, decisions, and conflicts have unfolded, these relatively permanent boundary conditions bestowed an enduring legacy, and effectively demonstrated that a once-struggling and fearful democracy could, in fact, address the great issues of the time.”

“The war against Nazism and the post-war confrontation against the Soviet Union advanced the emerging movement for civil rights because the United States could not credibly fight for liberty abroad while practicing Jim Crow at home.”

“They claimed to be correcting the politics of division - whether between classes, factions, parties - in the public interest… The dictatorships defined superior, nonliberal democracy ‘as the absence of political division and the true representation of popular interests, the creation of a united mass public into a singular people capable of acting to solve society’s most pressing problems.’”

“Southern Democrats, by contrast, made up an essential and permanent part of the New Deal, for they commanded votes required for any of the domestic and international programs advanced by Presidents Roosevelt and Truman to become law. The Jim Crow South was the one collaborator America’s democracy could not do without.”

“Of The New Deal’s many achievements, none was more important than the demonstration that liberal democracy - a political system with a legislature at its heart - could govern effectively in the face of great danger.”