The First Weapon

Sixty two years ago, President Emeritus Herbert Hoover traveled throughout the country to challenge the American people to love liberty.  He was deeply distressed by the socialist ideals, then called the “New Deal,” that overtook America under the Roosevelt administration.  His warnings are as fresh as today’s newspaper, and instructive to those of us who still love liberty.  This week, we will consider again the sage advice of a man who led America through the Great Depression.  When silenced and smeared by the powerful media, he took his message on “the American Road.”   This week’s posts are addressed to all Americans who will accept the challenge to Liberty.

Government Propaganda Is the First Weapon of Dictatorship
By Herbert Hoover, September 28, 1938

It has never taken much effort or literary skill to tell the truth about what goes on in government.  Yet this [Roosevelt] administration has installed some hundreds of skilled propagandists.  The deluge of free mail sent out by the Government Departments in 1937 would have required $34,000,000 in postage if they paid it…Surely it now takes a powerful effort to tell the truth.

But beyond all this is the radio.  Every hour of the day somewhere in the country some person is painting the glories of this abundant life, or to use the more recent term, “our objectives.”  The whole of this propaganda is impregnated with suppression of fact, the distortion of statistics, the creation of misleading slogans, the building of prejudice or hate.  The Democratic New York World-Telegram estimates the cost of these propaganda officials at over twenty million dollars a year.