We were demon possessed, and have forgotten about it.

From Wikipedia:

The Blue Eagle, a blue-colored representation of the American thunderbird, with outspread wings, was a symbol used in the United States by companies to show compliance with the National Industrial Recovery Act. It was proclaimed the symbol of industrial recovery on July 20, 1933 by Hugh Samuel Johnson, the head of the National Recovery Administration.[1][2][3]

The design was sketched by Johnson, and based on an idea utilized by the War Industries Board during World War I.[1][3] The eagle holds a wheel, symbolizing industry, in its right talon, and bolts of lightning in its left talon, symbolizing power.[4]

All companies that accepted President Franklin D. Roosevelt‘s Re-employment Agreement or a special Code of Fair Competition were permitted to display a poster showing the Blue Eagle together with the announcement, “NRA Member. We Do Our Part.”[1][2][3] Consumers were exhorted to buy products and services only from companies displaying the Blue Eagle banner.[1][3] According to Johnson,

“When every American housewife understands that the Blue Eagle on everything that she permits into her home is a symbol of its restoration to security, may God have mercy on the man or group of men who attempt to trifle with this bird.” [5]

On September 5, 1935, following the invalidation of the compulsory code system, the emblem was abolished and its future use as a symbol was prohibited.

According to Jonah Goldberg:

Not surprisingly, victims of the Blue Eagle received little sympathy in the press and even less quarter from the government. Perhaps the most famous case was Jacob Maged, the forty-nine-year-old immigrant dry cleaner who spent three months in jail in 1934 for charging thirty-five cents to press a suit, when the NRA had insisted that all loyal Americans must charge at least forty cents. Because one of the central goals of the early New Deal was to create artificial scarcity in order to drive prices up, the Agricultural Adjustment Administration ordered that six million pigs be slaughtered. Bountiful crops were left to rot. Many white farmers were paid not to work their land (which meant that many black tenant farmers went hungry). All of these policies were enforced by a militarized government.

Read more and a lot worse here.

4 thoughts on “We were demon possessed, and have forgotten about it.

  1. AJ

    Glad you love the book. This was one of those books Doug Wilson loved and Doug Jones hated, so I was curious for a third opinion.

    Reply
  2. pentamom

    Hard to imagine the justification for fighting the Nazis, then, other than “It’s okay when we do it to our own people, but nobody else is allowed to.” Which has an eerie ring of familiarity.

    Reply

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