Happy Birthday, FDR

Today is the birthday of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. In honor of this solemn and auspicious occasion, let’s all join in a rousing chorus of The Roosevelt Song. It is sung to the familiar music of America the Beautiful. The lyrics are below:

For infamy, for welfare state,

For fascist NRA.

You gave East Europe to the Reds

In Yalta one fine day.

Oh Roosevelt, oh Roosevelt,

God curse the likes of thee.

The bums you fed

Are glad you’re dead.

And so, by God, are we!

Regarding the origins of this song: In 1976, while we were both ballot petition “road warriors” for the Roger MacBride Libertarian Party Presidential Campaign, a young Tom G. Palmer (before he got Koched up and went Catonic) told me about an audacious “fight song” that members of the legendary Circle Bastiat used to sing while engaged in their gregarious camaraderie. The story of the Circle is lovingly told by Justin Raimondo in his superb An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard. Besides Rothbard and his wife, Joey, this merry band of brothers consisted of future libertarian scholars Ralph Raico, Leonard Liggio, George Reisman, Robert Hessen, and Ronald Hamowy  —  names familiar to LRC readers.

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7:04 pm on January 30, 2015