Word: fascisms
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When our children's children read the story of the 20th century, they will see that above all, it is the story of freedom's triumph: the victory of democracy over fascism and totalitarianism; of free enterprise over command economies; of tolerance over bigotry. And they will see that the embodiment of that triumph, the driving force behind it, was President Franklin Delano Roosevelt...
...century's struggle for freedom, Roosevelt won two decisive victories: first over economic depression and then over fascism. Though he was surrounded by turmoil, he envisioned a world of lasting peace, and he devoted his life to building a new era of progress. Roosevelt's leadership steered not only America but also the world through the roughest seas of the century. And he did it with a combination of skilled statesmanship, innovative spirit and, as Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. put it, "a first-class temperament...
...defeat the merciless aggression of fascism, President Roosevelt created an international alliance to defend the world's freedom, and he committed the United States to lead. He proved that our liberty is linked to the destiny of the world, that our security requires us to support democracy beyond our shores, that human rights must be America's cause. In the 20th century's greatest crisis, President Roosevelt decisively, irrevocably committed our country to freedom's fight...
...world." It was the century's earliest epitaph, and is still perhaps its most powerful one. And Yeats had yet to conjure with the metaphors of modern science--the theory of relativity; the uncertainty principle; the looming figure of Freud, pseudo-scientific poet of our subjectivity--let alone with Fascism and Stalinism. Or, possibly most addling to a poet, the rise of industrialized mass culture...
However much stronger the Western democracies were after the war, as they went on to discredit not only fascism but communism as well, that strength still came at a terrible cost. "How much happier a world it would be if one did not have to mount crusades against racism, segregation, a Holocaust, the extermination of 'inferior peoples,'" notes presidential historian Robert Dallek. "We don't need evil. We'd do fine without Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot. Think of the amount of money and energy used in World War II--if only they could have been used in constructive ways. Good...