Black on White

Time there was when American political institutions could be tagged and classified roughly in relation to their major tendencies. This body or party was relatively liberal, the other was a bulwark of conservatism. Congress was inclined to be rash and self-assertive. The United States Supreme Court was a collection of nine superannuated lawyers trying to stem the tide of progress.

These last few years, however, have upset all classifications. The very concept of radical or conservative has lost all recognizable contours. Is a Republican who opposes excessive concentration of authority in the hands of the Chief Executive a mossbacked conservative blocking the New Day? Or is he, rather, defending democratic institutions against Fascist methods of government?

The Supreme Court, that monument of conservatism, has just placed itself squarely across the path of Fascism. The basic attribute of Fascism in any of its manifold forms is the enthusiastic retirement of the representative legislature and the vesting of all governmental functions in a single body, whether it be one person or a commission or a class. As long as an elected legislature operates genuinely, and the power to issue edicts is withheld from the executive, Fascism is crippled.

Well, here is what eight of the nine Supreme Court judges have just asserted in a decision invalidating a section of the oil laws under NRA:

“The Congress manifestly is not permitted to abdicate, or to transfer to others, the essential legislative functions with which it is thus vested.”

As long as that principle prevails, legalized Fascism, supporting itself hypocritically on the Constitution, will be impossible. The spectacle of Charles Evans Hughes and his associates in the role of a bulwark against Fascism is not without its overtones of paradox. The decision, and others along the same line which seem inevitable, may put a large part of the New Deal into the discard. But in essence it would seem to be a curb upon elements which are fascinated by the vision of an American Mussolini or an American Hitler.

Of course, when an American Hitler or Mussolini arises, he may ride roughshod over the Supreme Court as well as over everything else. But that’s another story.

Long, long ago, as far back as 1930 and 1931, the unemployment dole was a foreign importation. It was un-American, an insult to our national manhood and a lot of other dreadful things. It was Big Business, in particular, which hurled these epithets. It would not permit the rugged individualism of American workingmen to be sullied by official hand-outs. Rather starve in genteel self-respect than eat unearned bread…

Today the same Big Business spokesmen are favoring Federal relief—which is to say, the unemployment dole—as against President Roosevelt’s plan for putting the unemployed to work on longrange national projects. These government undertakings, they argue, will of necessity compete at many points with private enterprise.

They will put private industry on the defensive and intrude upon domains heretofore reserved for private capital.

Stick to the dole. Big Business now insists, and eschew un-American notions such as State operation of industrial projects. And it is President Roosevelt, curiously enough, who argues for the rugged individualism.

It’s a grand circus. The pity of it is that the acts affect all of us too intimately and we cannot enjoy the show as unreservedly as we might.