Live Chat: Harvey J. Kaye

We won’t be getting started until 2 p.m. Eastern time, but you may enter your questions and comments for historian Harvey J. Kaye beforehand in this window.

A few notes on Mr. Kaye’s biography: Harvey J. Kaye is the Ben and Joyce Rosenberg Professor of Democracy and Justice Studies and Director of the Center for History and Social Change at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay.

An award-winning writer, he authored Thomas Paine and the Promise of America (2005), Are We Good Citizens? (2001), Thomas Paine: Firebrand of the Revolution (2000), “Why Do Ruling Classes Fear History?” and Other Questions (1996), The Education of Desire (1992), The Powers of the Past (1991), and The British Marxist Historians (1984). He has also contributed articles and essays to a diverse array of publications, including The American Prospect, The Washington Post, and The Chronicle of Higher Education.

And, of course, his most recent book, the subject of Bill Moyer’s interview and today’s live chat: The Fight for the Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and the Greatest Generation Truly Great. You can read an excerpt from the book on our site.

Thank you so much for joining us for our live chat with historian Harvey J. Kaye!

Hello!

Harvey is here with us.

Hello Harvey!

Why don’t we start by asking you to talk about why you decided to write your book about FDR.

The last book I wrote was on Thomas Paine and it impressed me that FDR quoted Thomas Paine early in the war to mobilize Americans to fight Fascism.

But it had to do with more than that really – my father was a WWII veteran who had served in the Army in the Battle of the Bulge

and when there was all the talk in the 1990s of the Greatest Generation, I felt something was sorely missing from the conversation.

There was no mention of what the Greatest Generation actually fought for. No mention of FDR’s pronouncement of the Four Freedoms.

Americans carry with them a good idea of what FDR was about but ever since the New Deal itself, Conservatives have sought to suppress the memory of the struggles for freedom, equality and democracy that FDR inspired in his speeches and policy initiatives.

The memory of the Four Freedoms has been under siege for decades now. Again, Conservatives fear freedom of speech, freedom from want and fear as ideals.

They do everything they can to either suppress them, corrupt them, or appropriate them oddly enough.

Thank you so much!!

Let me know what you think of it, please, when you finish reading. If you like it, join me in renewing the Fight for the Four Freedoms.

Thank you both!

FDR was media savvy. He knew newspaper moguls did not like him or the New Deal. So, he cultivated the reporters.

Also, I would note that when Eleanor began to write columns in the mid 1930s, she joined a union, the Newspaper Guild. Reporters must have liked that.

And don’t forget, FDR often spoke directly to the American people on the radio – the Fireside Chats.

I don’t know exactly what he would do today, but I have no doubt he would have come up with something.

Inequalities of power and wealth recall the Gilded Age. Our hard-fought-for rights are under siege – from the voting booth to Women’s right to choose.

The environment decays along with our public infrastructure. We are at the point when we must act. Not only through organizations but by turning out in the public square.

If our leaders won’t speak for us, we need to make noise and let each other know we are ready to take action.

Thomas Paine would have us do no less and FDR would have welcomed it. As he said, enacting new laws does not bring the millennium – laws require popular initiative.

Yes, organizing is essential. New organizations need to take shape but I cannot imagine an effective, progressive politics without labor unions – labor indeed needs to take the lead in mobilizing Americans in favor of the Four Freedoms.

Labor still has tremendous resources, many a brother and sister still go door to door at election time, canvassing.

At the same time, labor needs to be energized, readier to embrace movements such as Occupy.

Back in the 90s, a few dozen pro-labor academics organized SAWSJ – Scholars, Artists and Writers for Social Justice, in hopes of advancing Labor’s agenda in the public media. We failed. But we need that effort again all across the country.

I often think class scares the powers-that-be more than any other question.

It strikes directly at the distribution of power, wealth and income, the very questions that FDR raised in his speeches, questions that inspired Americans to not only take up the labors of the New Deal but also to organize unions, consumer campaigns and civil rights groups in the 1930s.

But there was something more that happened in the 1930s, American artists, writers, musicians, and other intellectuals committed themselves to the popular struggles of the day.

When we organized SAWSJ, we wanted to contribute as they did, we wanted to make history more democratic.

For too long, we who labor with words have talked to each other or merely to our students. It’s time we learned how to talk more effectively to our fellow citizens – young and old.

There are always Roosevelts around. The question we confront is “how do we make them known, how do we propel them to positions from which they can speak to us and so many more”

I think Roosevelt knew that. Moreover, he had great senators to work with – Norris of Nebraska, LaFollette of Wisconsin and Wagner of New York.

Today, we have Warren of Mass. Sanders from Vermont, Baldwin from Wisconsin.

But we need more of them! Don’t forget to vote in 2014.

Freedom is America’s premier value and ever since the 1770s, we have been involved in a struggle over what that means.

For the last 35 years, it seems the Right has had a monopoly in defining the meaning of Freedom. Indeed, the meaning of America.

FDR cited the Founding Fathers to bolster his argument that necessitous men are not free men.

So, we need to reclaim the Declaration of Independence – all men are created equal, life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

We need to remember the Preamble – we, the people, in order to form…

FDR in the 1930s articulated Freedom to mean Democracy, not individualism alone.

FDR said, education is fundamental, especially historical education. In 1941, he said A Nation must believe in three things. It must believe in the past. It must believe in the future.

It must, above all, believe in the capacity of its own people so to learn from the past that they can gain in judgment in creating their own future.

I sent Obama a letter in the 2008 campaign urging him to speak of FDR’s Four Freedoms -which he referred to in the AUDACITY OF HOPE… But I only saw him cite the Freedoms once – when he spoke of foreign policy matters in Miami….

I continued to hope he would embrace FDR’s promise – and even now I would love him to do so. But he focuses on policy and program not vision in his speechmaking.

WE need to remind him of the FOUR FREEDOMS. We should launch an email campaign perhaps…???

Looking ahead to 2016, we may want to start a campaign to re-re-elect FDR in hopes it will send a message to candidates. Have a look at this later: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fzdga0rGxQ

What a scary thought! No New Deal, no Social Security, no National Labor Relations Act…FDR himself may well have answered you, in a radio address in 1938 he said, “As of today, Fascism and Communism—and old-line Tory Republicanism—are not threats to the continuation of our form of government…

But I venture the challenging statement that if American democracy ceases to move forward as a living force, seeking day and night by peaceful means to better the lot of our citizens, then Fascism and Communism, aided, unconsciously perhaps, by old-line Tory Republicanism, will grow in strength in our land.”

The greatest disappointment about Obama is that a man so smart, so articulate, and so effective at inspiring young people failed to engage the young folk that he mobilized to vote for him after his election.

Instead of engaging their energies in a new New Deal, a new CCC for example, he spent his time negotiating with Congress.

While he negotiated, the Tea Party occupied the public spaces that we should have occupied.

Your mom is right, unfortunately. It’s time we consider enacting a National Service program.

This would enable young Americans to experience solidarity – a solidarity that would enable THEM to transform themselves and the Nation.

I repeat that I was very disappointed that Obama failed to create a new National Service opportunity for high school and college students, along the lines of FDR’s CCC – Civilian Conservation Corps.

Plus, we sure could use another WPA!

Agreed!

FDR said: A true patriotism urges us to build an even more substantial America where the good things of life may be shared by more of us, where the social injustices will not be encouraged to flourish.

It is inconceivable to me that we treat corporations as if they were human beings. Hell, as if they were citizens.

If it requires an amendment to the Constitution, so be it. FDR said that economic royalists complain we are trying to overthrow American institutions.

But really they fear we are trying to overthrow their power. And we are. As FDr said, American freedom, American history, demand that we do.

We must restore democracy to ourselves. We, the People.

We must not become pessimistic and cynical – we are not alone! Our fellow citizens in the great majority want what we want, as progressives.

We need to find ways of engaging their sense of what it means to be an American. I think the Left has failed to engage our imaginations.

We have spent too much time “critiquing” and not enough time speaking of America’s radical democratic tradition.

A tradition that stretches from Thomas Paine to the working men’s parties, to the Freethinkers, to the Women’s Rights advocates, to the Abolitionists, to the Suffragists, to the Populists, to the Progressives, to the Socialists, to Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, Workers’ Rights. That’s a hell of a tradition!

It’s that tradition that makes America great. In truth, that makes America exceptional. And we can redeem that tradition, we have so much experience to draw upon. The struggle starts now!

We can’t rely simply on Presidents to change people’s perceptions. We need to hear more from Union leaders, Church leaders, Civil Rights Leaders…

And when we do, we need to hear them speak of American history, of the struggles that went into making America great.

I believe Americans possess a sense of history that needs awakening. Of course, historians, liberal, progressive, radical, need to redeem that history as well.

We need to speak as often as we can to our fellow citizens, not only to our colleagues. We need to cultivate Americans’ progressive memory.

These are great questions – thank you!

When I was writing the Fight for the Four Freedoms, I kept hearing not only FDR, not only a host of women and men from the Greatest Generation, but also lines from the Passover Seder.

The Passover Seder calls on us to remember, it also calls on us to act, so let us indeed remember the words of FDR: the Four Freedoms – the fight for the Four Freedoms and let’s also remember the struggles of our parents and grandparents against injustices not only overseas but especially here at home in the 1930s.

We had our Seder last night. I was exhausted from traveling to DC and NY but I could not help but read the Four Questions – why is this night different from all other nights? Let’s make these days different from all other days.

Great. I think we’ll leave it there, Harvey.

Thank you – this was a pleasure. Indeed, it was fun.

Thank you so much for joining us today!

And thank you to everyone for all the great questions and comments.

If you’re interested in reading an excerpt from Harvey J. Kaye’s book, you can do that at BillMoyers.com:

https://billmoyers.com/2014/…

Again, the title of his book is The Fight for the Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and the Greatest Generation Truly Great.

Take care, everyone! Good bye.