Posted on 03/10/2010 8:12:29 AM PST by eeevil conservative
My daughter is doing a report on FDR. She is in 5th Grade.
I have the book FDR wrote, Looking Forward.
The information must be relevant to WWII. I am determined to teach not just my daughter and her fellow students, but even the teachers things about FDR that they don't know and won't find in our "cleaned up" progressive history teaches.
I am particularly interested in something I heard years ago about FDR writing letters with a high up Soviet years before we entered into war. If I recall correctly, he was a fan and admirer of this Soviet, but any searches I have done have come up dry...
ANY HELP WOULD BE APPRECIATED!
THANKS!
“The Roosevelt Myth” by John T. Flynn.
VOYAGE OF THE ST. LOUIS
http://www.ushmm.org/wlc/article.php?ModuleId=10005267
On May 13, 1939, the German transatlantic liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, for Havana, Cuba. On the voyage were 938 passengers, one of whom was not a refugee. Almost all were Jews fleeing from the Third Reich. Most were German citizens, some were from Eastern Europe, and a few were officially “stateless.” ...........
Sailing so close to Florida that they could see the lights of Miami, some passengers on the St. Louis cabled President Franklin D. Roosevelt asking for refuge. Roosevelt never responded. The State Department and the White House had decided not to take extraordinary measures to permit the refugees to enter the United States. A State Department telegram sent to a passenger stated that the passengers must “await their turns on the waiting list and qualify for and obtain immigration visas before they may be admissible into the United States.” U.S. diplomats in Havana intervened once more with the Cuban government to admit the passengers on a “humanitarian” basis, but without success.
You obviously don't want your daughter to get an 'A'.
Also I’d say there’s always conspiracy theories floating around. Be careful not to get trapped into writing any of those, lest it be labeled nutty, as in “FDR delibrately let Pearl Harbor get bombed so we would have a war”.
Frankly, I wouldn’t be surprised (a family member who went through the war in the Pacific told me he did), but people start treating you like you are a truther.
Stick to the obvious facts, like FDR tried to wreck the Supreme Court, made the US more socialist, betrayed us to the communists, prolonged the depression.
And remember - it’s her report!
New Deal, Raw Deal by Burt Fulsom. professor at Hillsdale college. Excellent book, very readable. Also Amity Schlaes, Forgotten Man.
Double dittos on Amity Schlaes book and don’t forget to tell your daughter to make sure she emphasizes that Truman not FDR won WWII.
This is a study by two UCLA economists, so it should pass the school's Political Correctness tests.
Check out F.D.R.’s Deadly Secret — has info about his double dealing friends and political allies as well as lying to the public (with help from the press and his own staff) about the perilous state of his health. Information that he knew before he ran for his third term, let alone his (unfinished)fourth term.
If he had died before he had chosen Truman as VP for the fourth term would Henry Wallace, his then VP and a Soviet sympathizer and Socialist, have run for the next term and possibly won. As bad as Yalta was for the west and the eastern Europeans it abandoned to the tender mercies of Stalin, think how much worse it might have been with an idiot like Wallace at the helm. Come to think of it that’s what we have now.
Read FDR’s Folly( http://www.amazon.com/FDRs-Folly-Roosevelt-Prolonged-Depression/dp/140005477X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268240243&sr=1-1) and Liberal Facists(Jonah Goldberg./http://www.amazon.com/Liberal-Fascism-American-Mussolini-Politics/dp/0385511841/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268240180&sr=8-1).
I think FDR was simply a socialist snot, a monied elitist. I could not say that he had ties other than admiration of the Soviet communists that many elites like him in the Democrat party of the time held.
However, I think Eleanor Roosevelt was a different story altogether. I suspect she had ties to the communists through the work programs such as The Civilian Conservation Corps.
I also believe (as did some at the time) that General George Marshall was promoted in the 1930’s to flag rank at the behest of communists, who he was apparently in sympathy with, and the conduit for that was through Eleanor Roosevelt and her ties to the CCC, which Marshall was working within.
This was what Marshall was doing during the 1930’s during the Roosevelt Administration: Marshall briefly (1932-33)commanded posts at Fort Screven, Georgia, and Fort Moultrie, South Carolina, where one of his key duties was creating and running Civilian Conservation Corps camps. Between 1933 and 1936, he was in Chicago as senior instructor to the Illinois National Guard. He was promoted to brigadier general in October 1936 and given command of Vancouver Barracks, Washington, and its CCC district (1936-38).
As anyone who knows the Army can guess, these were backwater posts, given to someone like him who failed at his first opportunities to lead men. Later, Marshall was promoted over hundreds of other officers who had better records of performance (both in combat and command) and more time in service. Many people wondered why.
There are people who believe it was due to his close ties to Eleanor Roosevelt, cultivated while he was assigned to the CCC. So, many thought that even though Marshall may not have been the lapdog of the communist party, he was sympathetic and friendly to their cause.
This is hard to swallow, I understand.
Joseph McCarthy gave a speech on the Senate floor in 1951, and later wrote a book that expounded on and backed up his points that he made on the floor, called “America’s Retreat from Victory”.
Like many people, I was unwilling to attach any negative aspirations or actions to someone like George Catlett Marshall who was hailed as a war hero and one of the greatest men of the 20th century.
McCarthy was not so shy, and was willing not only to say what he thought publicly, but to back it up with documentation, which he did in his book mentioned above (A copy of which I purchased a couple of years ago)
It is a stunning book, but how it relates to this subject here is this: In his analysis, Joseph McCarthy made the point that if some of the things that were done by Marshall that helped the communists were simply the result of a poor analysis or choice on his part, someone with his intellect (and he WAS a smart man) would be likely to choose correctly at least SOME of the time, as a matter of averages. And that rarely happened. Without fail, nearly every choice and action in which Marshall was part of, they all were to the advantage of both the Soviets and the Chicoms.
If the appalling cumulative negative bulk of his actions were due to his stupidity or inexperience, at least some of his actions would be helpful to our country (vis-a-vis the communist states) simply as a result of the laws of averages.
Very few were.
The book, "Smoke Screen" is a good read even if she doesn't use it in her paper. It can be purchased on Amazon for around $10. It should be required to study both sides of FDR to explain how we got here, but I'm sure your daughter will get a bad grade if she prints a discouraging word. My daughter was home schooled, so we were able to show her both sides of every argument. She is a senior in Stephen F. Austin now. As a matter of fact, her major in college is Political Science. Who knew?
I don’t have any info specifically on FDR at my fingertips, but I’ll give you a little advise from one mom to another: DON’T rely solely on public school curriculum to educate your child. There is nothing stopping you from purchasing used textbooks (like Abeka) if you’re on a shoestring budget or directly from www.abeka.com. Supplement your child’s education at home — that’s what I did. I’d keep him home from school once a quarter to take him on educational fieldtrips (i.e., the local zoo, the American Museum of Science and Energy, etc.). It was a win-win situation — relaxed vs. hurried bonding time, entertainment time, as well as delving into the educational aspect (sneaky, isn’t it). He would have to write a one to two page report on our activity for me, and I would write an excuse note for school. I realize this doesn’t help your immediate problem, but if you start now on the big picture you won’t have these little emergencies cropping up. That’s my two-cents worth.
“The New Deal began, like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flop-houses and disturbing the peace.” ~ H.L. Mencken
Amazon is your friend. Don’t know if these books will help or not as I have not ready any of them but they appear to pertain to your daughter’s project, and provide the balance that is lacking in “traditional” education.
Just search Amazon for FDR for further titles, previews, and even some book excerpts.
Of course, as others say on this thread, just approching certain topics (such as even mentioning Joseph McCarthy without a derigeur denunciation or slander) will be enough to evoke shrieks of horror and outrage at the child.
Maybe you should sign up for 5th grade then. Your need to control the whole situation sounds excessive.
And tell the teacher to get bent, that you, as her engaged parent, were her muse. She still did all the work, the reading, the writing, the presentation, but you offered elder guidance, a balanced view point, and helped to “peer review” the sources to stand up to the social scrutiny that you knew would pursue.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.