Posted on 09/23/2014 9:49:15 AM PDT by iowamark
My seventh-grade son recently wrote a U.S. History paper extolling the virtues of President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal. “It ended the Great Depression,” he wrote with great certainty. He’s only 12 and parroting what the history texts and his teachers told him.
That’s his excuse. What’s Ken Burns’?
Mr. Burns’ docudrama on the Roosevelts — for those who weren’t bored to tears — repeats nearly all the worn-out fairy tales of the FDR presidency, including what I call the most enduring myth of the 20th century, which is that FDR’s avalanche of alphabet-soup government programs ended the Great Depression. Shouldn’t there be a statute of limitations on such lies?
Ask nearly anyone over the age of 80, and they will say that FDR cared about the working man and “gave the country hope,” a point that Mr. Burns emphasizes. Roosevelt exuded empathy, which isn’t a bad thing — remember Bill Clinton’s memorable line “I feel your pain”? — but caring doesn’t create jobs or lift gross domestic product.
Nor does spending government money revive growth, despite the theories put into practice by the then-dean of all economists, John Maynard Keynes. Any objective analysis of these facts can lead to no other conclusion. U.S. unemployment averaged a rate of 18 percent during Roosevelt’s first eight years in office. In the decade of the 1930s, U.S. industrial production and national income fell by about almost one-third. In 1940, after year eight years of the New Deal, unemployment was still averaged a god-awful 14 percent...
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Ken Burns is a radical avowed leftist
It was the End of FDR’s policies that ended the depression, not the war
From wiki ....
A second, smaller Bonus March in 1933 at the start of the Roosevelt Administration was defused in May with an offer of jobs for the Civilian Conservation Corps at Fort Hunt, Virginia, which most of the group accepted. Those who chose not to work for the CCC by the May 22 deadline were given transportation home.[2] In 1936, Congress overrode President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s veto and paid the veterans their bonus years early.
No thread discussing Ken Burns is complete without a pitch to go see “The Old Negro Space Program” documentary, which is done in his style.
On a cellphone, don’t have a link, but it’s easily found on YouTube.
The end of WW2 and the death of FDR is what ended the Depression
“over the age of 80, and they will say that FDR cared about the working man”
OMG, 20 years ago I had a secretary in our office who was of that group, and she said exactly that. I wasn’t overly combative at that point, so I just frowned and bore it. She was also such a nice lady.
But I was raised by parents a bit younger who didn’t buy that. Of course, neither did their parents who actually lived it. Mom told me her mother reacted with total nonchalance when her neighbor, who loved FDR, spread the news about his death. She was melodramatic about it and grandma basically said, “sorry for you, but no skin off my nose”.
ROFL
lol
I call it THE RAW DEAL!
The rest of the world suffered thru the Depression.
America suffered thru the GREAT Depression due to FDR’s FOLLIES!
I have read a lot of books about him and W Wilson.
AMEN TO THAT!
Alphabet soup of tyranny!
Exactly the same, including the fact that it’s really all his predecessor’s fault. Despite many years to correct it, and having a friendly Congress.
Would that his “little vignettes” were ONLY “little” and not 8 hours long.
They should have shot Wickard and sent Filburn to Congress.
Yes, I know what ended the Great Depression. I watched the series and at no time did Ken Burns say that FDR ended the Depression. He clearly showed that the ramp up to WWII is what ended the Depression. I watched specifically to see if he would say it but he didn’t say what everyone seems to think he said.
read
FDR’s Folly: How Roosevelt and His New Deal Prolonged the Great Depression
http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/fdrs-folly-jim-powell/1111529532?ean=9780307420718
look it up on Amazon and you can ‘Look Inside”
I often had this discussion with my economics students. Unemployment disappeared when millions of men were drafted into the military starting in 1940 and war time industries ramped up production. However this boom was paid for with high taxes and millions of Americans being coerced into buying war bonds. War is one of the few times when government spending can cause economic growth, but does so by taking millions out of the work force for military service and with huge deficits.
The “ramp up to WW2” did not end the depression. Americans were still using ration cards and such weren’t they? America itself was still in the depression during the war. The war was being funded through debt, which is not good for an economy.
The depression was ended after the war.
My father, if he had lived, would be an “over 80”. He knew the truth about FDR, and wasn’t afraid to say it. Even so, I wish FDR had lived another six months so that he could have celebrated the victory in WWII.
FDR did not end the Depression.
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