By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
October 2, 2001 <
Three weeks after the terrorist massacre of 6400 civilians, it seems many things are back to normal. We still are tolerating eco-terrorism in the name of "freedom." The whiners and complainers are back to business as usual and members of Congress who can't believe we really are at war want to take up where they left off three weeks ago in blocking any real effort to catch terrorists.
Some people find any change hard to make, and, for many after Pearl Harbor, it was no different. Five months after Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt told the people that their lives were going to be changed until the war against those who attacked us was won.
A recent poll indicated that an overwhelming majority of Americans favored "racial profiling" to identify and neutralize those who fit the characteristics of the 19 terrorists who killed 6400 American civilians. In fact, it turned out, blacks were more in favor of racial profiling of Middle Eastern Muslims in our midst than whites, although they generally object to racial profiling when the police are looking for people of their race who have committed a crime.
During war, invariably there have been some restrictions on personal liberty. In World War II, the most dramatic example of that was the detention and relocation of the Japanese residents of the Western States, including those who were native-born citizens of the United States. When various phases of this program were challenged, the U.S. Supreme Court held that in order to prevent espionage and sabotage, the authorities could restrict the movement of these persons by a curfew order, even by a regulation excluding them from defined areas, but that a citizen of Japanese ancestry whose loyalty was conceded could not be detained in a relocation camp.
So, the Japanese who were removed from areas in California near military installations were separated. They were asked if they supported Japan or the United States. If they admitted to supporting Japan, or they refused to answer, they were sent to relocation camps. Part of that relocation at the time was motivated by the fear that, in an invasion of California, which was believed to be imminent, the invading Japanese Army would be able to force even loyal American Japanese to betray America to save the lives of their relatives in Japan. To prevent that, they were removed from areas thought prime targets for invasion.
That, of course, is never mentioned today. Also, it is rarely mentioned that EVERY civilian during World War II lost some of their personal liberty. On April 28, 1942, in fact, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt spelled out exactly what those changes in our lives would be: This speech was made at a time when France had just had its government changed to one supporting the Nazis, the Philippines had fallen to the Japanese, and The Malayan Peninsula, Singapore and the Netherlands East Indies were almost entirely occupied.
Yet, the first words spoken by President Roosevelt indicated many Americans still had not gotten the picture:
49 Fireside Chat.
April 28, 1942My fellow Americans:
It is nearly five months since we were attacked at Pearl Harbor. For the two years prior to that attack this country had been gearing itself up to a high level of production of munitions. And yet our war efforts had done little to dislocate the normal lives of most of us.
Roosevelt outlined our military situation, very similarly to what President Bush has done, and then he explained what it really meant:
Although the treacherous attack on Pearl Harbor was the immediate cause of our entry into the war, that event found the American people spiritually prepared for war on a worldwide scale. We went into this war fighting. We know what we are fighting for. We realize that the war has become what Hitler originally proclaimed it to be- a total war.Not all of us can have the privilege of fighting our enemies in distant parts of the world.
Not all of us can have the privilege of working in a munitions factory or a shipyard, or on the farms or in oil fields or mines, producing the weapons or the raw materials that are needed by our armed forces.
But there is one front and one battle where everyone in the United States -- every man, woman, and child -- is in action, and will be privileged to remain in action throughout this war. That front is right here at home, in our daily lives, and in our daily tasks. Here at home everyone will have the privilege of making whatever self-denial is necessary, not only to supply our fighting men, but to keep the economic structure of our country fortified and secure during the war and after the war.
This will require, of course, the abandonment not only of luxuries but also of many other creature comforts.
Every loyal American is aware of his individual responsibility. Whenever I hear anyone saying "The American people are complacent -- they need to be aroused," I feel like asking him to come to Washington to read the mail that floods into the White House and into all departments of this Government. The one question that recurs through all these thousands of letters and messages is: "What more can I do to help my country in winning this war?
To build the factories, to buy the materials, to pay the labor, to provide the transportation, to equip and feed and house the soldiers, sailors, and marines, and to do all the thousands of things necessary in a war--all cost a lot of money, more money than has ever been spent by any Nation at any time in the long history of the world.
We are now spending, solely for war purposes, the sum of about $100,000,000 every day in the week. But, before this year is over, that almost unbelievable rate of expenditure will be doubled.
All of this money has to be spent -- and spent quickly -- if we are to produce within the time now available the enormous quantities of weapons of war which we need. But the spending of these tremendous sums presents grave danger of disaster to our national economy.
When your Government continues to spend these unprecedented sums for munitions month-by-month and year-by-year, that money goes into the pocketbooks and bank accounts of the people of the United States. At the same time raw materials and many manufactured goods are necessarily taken away from civilian use; and machinery and factories are being converted to war production.
You do not have to be a professor of mathematics or economics to see that if people with plenty of cash start bidding against each other for scarce goods, the price of those goods goes up.
Yesterday I submitted to the Congress of the United States a seven-point program of general principles which taken together could be called the national economic policy for attaining the great objective of keeping the cost of living down.
I repeat them now to you in substance:
First. We must, through heavier taxes, keep personal and corporate profits at a low reasonable rate.
Second. We must fix ceilings on prices and rents.
Third. We must stabilize wages.
Fourth. We must stabilize farm prices.
Fifth. We must put more billions into war bonds.
Sixth. We must ration all essential commodities which are scarce.
Seventh. We must discourage installment buying, and encourage paying off debts and mortgages.The important thing to remember is that each one of these points is dependent on the others if the whole program is to work.
Some people are already taking the position that every one of the seven points is correct except the one point which steps on their own individual toes. A few seem very willing to approve self-denial -- on the part of their neighbors. The only effective course of action is a simultaneous attack on all of the factors which increase the cost of living, in one comprehensive, all-embracing program covering prices, and profits, and wages, and taxes and debts.
The blunt fact is that every single person in the United States is going to be affected by this program. Some of you will be affected more directly by one or two of these restrictive measures, but all of you will be affected indirectly by all of them.
Are you a businessman, or do you own stock in a business corporation? Well, your profits are going to be cut down to a reasonably low level by taxation. Your income will be subject to higher taxes. Indeed in these days, when every available dollar should go to the war effort, I do not think that any American citizen should have a net income in excess of $25,000 per year after payment of taxes.
Are you a retailer or a wholesaler or a manufacturer or a farmer or a landlord? Ceilings are being placed on the prices at which you can sell your goods or rent your property.
Do you work for wages? You will have to forego higher wages four your particular job for the duration of the war.
All of us are used to spending money for things that we want, things, however, which are not absolutely essential. We will all have to forego that kind of spending. Because we must put every dime and every dollar we can possibly spare out of our earnings into war bonds and stamps. Because the demands of the war effort require the rationing of goods of which there are not enough to go around. Because the stopping of purchases of nonessentials will release thousands of workers who are needed in the war effort.
As I told the Congress yesterday, "sacrifice" is not exactly the proper word with which to describe this program of self-denial. When, at the end of this great struggle, we shall have saved our freeway of life, we shall have made no "sacrifice."
The price for civilization must be paid in hard work and sorrow and blood. The price is not too high. If you doubt it, ask those millions who live today under the tyranny of Hitlerisms.
Ask the workers of France and Norway and the Netherlands, whipped to labor by the lash, whether the stabilization of wages is too great a "sacrifice."
Ask the farmers of Poland and Denmark, of Czechoslovakia and France, looted of their livestock, starving while their own crops are stolen from their land, ask them whether "parity" prices are too great a "sacrifice."
Ask the businessmen of Europe, whose enterprises have been stolen from their owners, whether the limitation of profits and personal incomes is too great a "sacrifice."
Ask the women and children whom Hitler is starving whether the rationing of tires and gasoline and sugar is too great a "sacrifice."
We do not have to ask them. They have already given us their agonized answers.
This great war effort must be carried through to its victorious conclusion by the indomitable will and determination of the people as one great whole.
It must not be impeded by the faint of heart.
It must not be impeded by those who put their own selfish . interests above the interests of the Nation.
It must not be impeded by those who pervert honest criticism into falsification of fact.
It must not be impeded by self-styled experts either in economics or military problems who know neither true figures nor geography itself.
It must not be impeded by a few bogus patriots who use the sacred freedom of the press to echo the sentiments of the propagandists in Tokyo and Berlin.
And, above all, it shall not be imperiled by the handful of noisy traitors- betrayers of America, betrayers of Christianity itself--would-be dictators who in their hearts and souls have yielded to Hitlerism and would have this Republic do likewise.
I shall use all of the executive power that I have to carry out the policy laid down. If it becomes necessary to ask for any additional legislation in order to attain our objective of preventing a spiral in the cost of living, I shall do so.
I know the American farmer, the American workman, and the American businessman. I know that they will gladly embrace this economy and equality of sacrifice- satisfied that it is necessary for the most vital and compelling motive in all their lives -winning through to victory.
Never in the memory of man has there been a war in which the courage, the endurance, and the loyalty of civilians played so vital a part.
Many thousands of civilians all over the world have been and are being killed or maimed by enemy action. Indeed, it was the fortitude of the common people of Britain under fire which enabled that island to stand and prevented Hitler from winning the war in 1940. The ruins of London and Coventry and other cities are today the proudest monuments to British heroism.
Our own American civilian population is now relatively safe from such disasters. …
Our soldiers and sailors are members of well-disciplined units. But they are still and forever individuals - free individuals. They are farmers, and workers, businessmen, professional men, artists, clerks.
They are the United States of America.
That is why they fight.
We too are the United States of America.
That is why we must work and sacrifice.
It is for them. It is for us. It is for victory.
I was a young teenager at the time. Looking back, everything Roosevelt said we needed to do, we ended up doing. Do today's young people have that kind of determination and love of liberty? My generation had never seen anything but economic hardship. Can a generation raised on boxes full of toys and closets full of clothes make the kind of sacrifice for freedom their grandparents made?
I look at my 25 grandchildren and one great-grandchild, ages 1 month to 24 years, and I say, yes, they can. Hopefully, they can bring with them most of their sixties generation parents.
To Comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com