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Notable New     Yorkers
Select     Notable New Yorker

John B. OakesJohn B. Oakes
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increasingly concerned about the Communist influence on the Loyalist side. My whole sympathy, of course, was for what was the original Democratic Socialist government, which was, of course, eventually overthrown by Franco.

My sympathies always were on the moderate political left, typified, I guess, by Roosevelt, by FDR. Because I was a very strong, enthusiastic supporter of Roosevelt, except that when I lived in Washington, working for the Washington Post I was attacked by some of my housemates, some of whom were rabid New Dealers, for not being sufficiently pro-Roosevelt, because I was a real downer on such questions as the third term. I didn't like that idea. I didn't like the idea of the third term, which, of course, was a big issue. If you were a true Roosevelt-lover you were very much in favor of the third term. While I felt I was an extremely strong supporter, in my own view at least, of FDR and what he was trying to do in liberalizing the economy and the political structure of the country, I didn't like the idea of a third term because I thought it tended to be undemocratic.

This carried on until after the war, when my own political views never much deviated from what I've just described. I became what you would call in those days, and what I would still call today, a liberal -- somewhat more conservative on economics but certainly more liberal on social policy always. I spent a lot of my early editorial career on the Times writing and working on behalf of the refugees and displaced persons. I had a more liberal attitude toward immigrants. The displaced persons' problem post-World War II was a very major political problem, and I always did a lot of work on the liberal side of this. I became increasingly -- This was even before the war, of course, when I covered the House Un-American Activities Committee, for example. I was very hostile to what the Dies Committee was doing, I covered some of it -- I may have mentioned that earlier -- I covered that, but tried to cover it absolutely





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