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By Root 241 0

every householder fetcheth whatsoever he and his have need of, and carrieth it away with him without money, without exchange, without gage, pawn, or pledge. For why should any thing be denied unto him, seeing there is abundance of all things and that it is not to be feared lest any man will ask more than he needeth? For why should it be thought that that man would ask more than enough, which is sure never to lack?” (78) And, of course, by ensuring that life’s necessities are plentiful, Utopia eliminates poverty, inequality, and want. “This fashion and trade of life being used among the people, it cannot be chosen but they must of necessity have store and plenty of all things. And seeing they be all thereof partners equally, therefore, can no man there be poor or needy” (84).

There is no denying Roosevelt’s revolutionary fervor. Whereas the Founders broke from tyranny, Roosevelt and the utopians broke from the Founders. Cass Sunstein, a former academic now employed by President Barack Obama as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in the Office of Management and Budget, in 2004 wrote approvingly that “America’s public institutions were radically transformed under Roosevelt’s leadership. The federal government assumed powers formerly believed to rest with the states. The presidency grew dramatically in stature and importance; it became the principal seat of American democracy. A newly developed bureaucracy, including independent regulatory commissions, was put in place. The foundations of the transformation are best captured in a changing understanding of rights, often requiring helping hands.… By 1944, Roosevelt argued, the real task was to implement the second bill [of rights].…”24 Sunstein proclaimed, “We live under Roosevelt’s Constitution whether we know it or not. The American Constitution has become, in crucial respects, his own.”25

Roosevelt’s Constitution, as Sunstein labeled it, is eerily similar in certain significant respects to the former Soviet Union’s list of Fundamental Rights, set forth in Chapter X of its 1936 Constitution. For example:

ARTICLE 118. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to work, that is, are guaranteed the right to employment and payment for their work in accordance with its quantity and quality.…

ARTICLE 119. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to rest and leisure.… The institution of annual vacations with full pay for workers and employees and the provision of a wide network of sanatoria, rest homes and clubs for the accommodation of the working people.

ARTICLE 120. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to maintenance in old age and also in case of sickness or loss of capacity to work. This right is ensured by the extensive development of social insurance of workers and employees at state expense, free medical service for the working people and the provision of a wide network of health resorts for the use of the working people.

ARTICLE 121. Citizens of the U.S.S.R. have the right to education. This right is ensured by universal, compulsory elementary education; by education, including higher education, being free of charge; by the system of state stipends for the overwhelming majority of students in the universities and colleges.…26

What are we to make of this? Whittaker Chambers, who had been a member of the Communist Party USA, Soviet spy, proponent of the New Deal, editor at Time magazine, and who later condemned communism and the New Deal, wrote in his 1952 autobiography, Witness, “I had to acknowledge the truth of what its more forthright protagonists, sometimes unwarily, sometimes defiantly, averred: the New Deal was a genuine revolution, whose deepest purpose was not simply reform within existing traditions, but a basic change in the social and, above all, the power relationships within the nation. It was not a revolution of violence. It was a revolution by bookkeeping and lawmaking. Insofar as it was successful, the power of politics had replaced business. This is the basic power shift of all the revolutions of our time.