THE ROOSEVELT DEATH
Introduction
Fender Tucker
I found a copy of this book on my shelf recently. I have no idea where I got it. It was a black booklet with a big question mark on the cover and it looked like political crap from the 40s. The copyright date is 1947, the year I was born. Maybe that’s why I bought it.
The writing looked interesting so I checked the copyright renewals for 1975 and couldn’t find one for it. So I figured, why not add this to the Ramble House pack o’ loons page? The back cover revealed the booklet to be distributed by something called the “Christian Nationalist Brigade” out of Los Angeles and that sounded loony enough. Especially in 1966, which is the year the final essay on FDR’s “Adulterous life” was written, and apparently the year the copy I had was printed and sold. The first part of the book was evidently written in 1947.
If this was first published in 1947 it shows that the anti-war sentiment during the Second World War was stronger than we remember it today (in 2004), strong enough to survive past the war. At least in the minds of the CNB. Today we “remember” WWII as a time of national unity and FDR as a beloved leader, but G.L.K. Smith and the CNB seem to disagree—and maybe they’re right about that. There’s no modern political reason for remembering the ’40s as anything other than an all-for-one pull for victory, so maybe that’s why we remember it that way. Or phrased more ominously: maybe that’s why it was remembered for us that way.
Today we have the internet for crackpot glossolalia; in the ’60s we had booklets like the one you hold in your hand. Ramble House, of course, thrives at being fifty years behind—or perhaps ahead?—of the current trend, and makes booklets from internet e-texts—and the odd old book that stumbles into my library.
Maybe there’s something to be learned from studying the forgotten viewpoints of history? Even if only to compare their failed philosophies with our present ones. There may be more similarities than are comfortable.
I can’t decide. Read this book and tell me which side of the political spectrum the author would be on today. Back then, apparently conservative meant anti-war. Go figure.