The New Deal's War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR's Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance

Spying on citizens. Censoring critics. Imprisoning minorities. These are the acts of dictators, not American presidents.... Or are they?

The legacy of President Franklin D. Roosevelt enjoys regular acclaim from historians, politicians, and educators. Lauded for his New Deal policies, leadership as a wartime president, cozy fireside chats, and groundbreaking support of the “forgotten man,” FDR, we have been told, is worthy of the same praise as men like Washington, Jefferson, and Lincoln....

But is that true? Does the father of today’s welfare state really deserve such generous approbation? Or is there a dark side to this golden legacy?

The New Deal’s War on the Bill of Rights: The Untold Story of FDR’s Concentration Camps, Censorship, and Mass Surveillance unveils a much different portrait than the standard orthodoxy found in today’s historical studies.

Deploying an abundance of primary source evidence and well-reasoned arguments, historian and distinguished professor emeritus David T. Beito masterfully presents a complete account of the real Franklin D. Roosevelt: a man who abused power, violated human rights, targeted dissidents, and let his crude racism imprison American citizens merely for being of Japanese descent.

Read it, and discover how FDR:

• shamelessly censored critics of his administration, barred them from the public square, destroyed their careers, and even bankrupted them when possible;
• locked up Japanese-American citizens in concentration camps built on American soil;
• sowed the seeds of today’s out-of-control surveillance state;
• and much, much more...

Here is an all too rare portrait of a man who changed the course of American history ... not for the better.

Read it, and you’ll never view the fireside president the same again.

David T. Beito is a research fellow at the Independent Institute and professor emeritus at the University of Alabama. He received his PhD in history at the University of Wisconsin and is the author of T.R.M. Howard: Doctor, Entrepreneur, and Civil Rights Pioneer (with Linda Royster Beito) and From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State: Fraternal Societies and Social Services, 1890-1967. He is also co-editor of The Voluntary City: Choice, Community and Civil Society and the forthcoming Rose Lane Says: Thoughts on Liberty and Equality, 1942-1945.