By BENJAMIN DeCASSERES
BEFUDDLEMENT!
No word more precisely describes the mental flounderings of the Sanhedrin of professors who hatch the word-eggs of the “new order” in Washington.
There is nothing courageous, well-defined or creative in the books, pamphlets or the verbose proclamations of these professorial and professional rigmaroleans.
Now and then they flutter around the red flame of Communism. When they feel they are in danger of getting politically scorched, they blithely trip away to the frogpond of near-Socialism.
Here, comfortably squatted, they croak “rugged individualist,” “capitalist” and “Tory” at the self-reliant, aggressive, self-made Americans who pass by.
These horn-rimmed nunkey-donkeys of the New Deal are already immortalized by what they do not know.
Their thoughts hop around pathetically on their flypaper brains.
Their mucilaginous political views prevent their puny ideas from ever taking wing.
Hence they have no historical sense, no knowledge of men at first hand, no psychological penetration and no sincere belief of any kind except in the financial rewards of publicity and that their jobs MAY some day be turned into a soft life-commissarship.
Befuddlement!
Of all the hopelessly befuddled minds of the “new order,” Rexford Guy Tugwell, deputy commissar in the department of agriculture, seems to be most muddle-headed.
He is the most perfect type of the yes-and-no man, of the right-wing-left-wing-no-wing man, of the high-diddle-diddle-jump-over-the-fiddle, the phoney-baloney young man.
One has but to read his latest bull on the New Deal, called “The Battle for Democracy,” to see plainly that the grand junta of Brain-Trusters is very like Br’er Rabbit: It come in by the same hole it went out at.
Someone said economics was the deadly dull science. This is sheer nonsense. Nothing is dull to a live, vital brain.
It isn’t economics that is dull. It is the brains of the political-professorial press agents of the New Deal that are atrophied.
Befuddlement!
Listen to Mr. Tugwell:
“What the old order describes as ‘rugged individualism’ meant the regimentation of the many for the benefit of the few.”
ONE OF THESE “FEW” IS REXFORD GUY TUGWELL.
The “old order” and “rugged individualism,” which he despises, built the dozen or so universities from which Mr. Tugwell drank at the bubbling founts of Marx, Engels and the other czars of collectivism.
It was the “old order” and “rugged individualism” that made possible Mr. Tugwell’s job of deputy commissar of agriculture, with its emoluments and the revenues he derives from his royalty-laden proclamations.
If the “old order” meant, as Mr. Tugwell says, “The regimentation of the many for the benefit of the few,” THEN WHY HAVE THE WORKING CLASSES OF ALL THE WORLD BATTERED AT OUR DOORS FOR ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTY YEARS? WAS IT TO BE REGIMENTED AND EXPLOITED?
The “old order” and the “rugged individualism” of the American character built the only country in the world WHERE THERE WAS NEITHER COMPULSORY MILITARY SERVICE NOR REGIMENTED HUMAN BEINGS; WHERE LABOR UNIONS ACHIEVED MORE IN FIFTY YEARS THAN ALL THE LABOR UNIONS OF EUROPE HAD ACHIEVED IN A CENTURY.
“Malefactors of great wealth” and “plutocrat” having become shopworn, the “new order” demagogues have invented the new bugaboo of “rugged individualism” to scare the old ladies of both sexes.
It is “rugged individualism.” physical, mental and political, that is the very core of the character of Mr. Tugwell’s humane chief, President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
“Rugged individualism” is a mighty, an inspiring phrase that should be hung on every wall in every home and office in America.
The antonym to “rugged individualism” is milksop, weakling, chicken-heart.
Under which banner does Mr. Tugwell prefer to march?
More befuddlement!
“What is demanded of us in America today is the making over of the institutions controlled and operated for the benefit of the few so that, regardless of their control, they shall be operated for the benefit of the many.”
As they do in bled-to-the-bone Russia, where a small bureaucratic Camorra own 170,000,000 people body and soul? Here Mr. Tugwell flutters around the red flame.
I spoke of Mr. Tugwell’s lack of historical sense. I suggest that he throw his abstractions out of the window and read concrete American history.
From the foundation of America, THE MANY HAVE BENEFITTED BECAUSE THE FEW HAVE BENEFITTED.
The working classes of America are literally dragged upward when the few prosper by the inexorable law of supply and demand.
Besides, where have 99 per cent. of Mr. Tugwell’s “few” come from in America?
They have risen because of their RUGGED INDIVIDUALISM and their SUPERIOR COMPETENCE right out of the ranks of the “many.”
And who is to “operate” these “institutions” for the benefit of the many?
Why, of course, Rexford Guy Tugwell and the rest of the vast army of mentally befuddled “new order” crusaders who only wait the signal to doff their masks of “democracy” and turn to the duped “many” the face of Lenin.
Original publication
Benjamin DeCasseres, “Mr. Tugwell,” Syracuse Journal, January 15, 1935, editorial page (number unresolved).