Capitalism's Savior (Everything You Believe About FDR Is False)

Wall Street Journal ^ | Wednesday, October 29, 2003 | CONRAD BLACK

[presidio9]

Those worried about the recent sluggishness of the American economy should look to the time of Franklin D. Roosevelt. When he entered office in 1933, unemployment was at 33%, there was almost no public-sector relief for the jobless, 45% of family homes had been -- or were in imminent danger of being -- foreclosed, and the Chicago Grain Exchange, the New York Stock Exchange and the banking system had collapsed. Almost no one was engaged in agriculture on an economically sustainable basis and the nation's food supply was apt to be severely interrupted at any time.

[presidio9]

Can we drop the GofNY reference?

Sorry we can't. You appear to have no other source of knowledge of the Irish Immigration experience. And of course we are related. We all came from Africa originally. I love the fact that I have an Irish heritage among other things, but I am an AMERICAN. I have more in common with Clarence Thomas than Bertie Ahern.

[Pan_Yans Wife]

ping

[Restorer]

Do I think that all women who have had abortions should be punished in some way? No, although I have no particularly logical reason why I feel this way.

Certainly it is utterly impractical from a political standpoint, since by the time you add up the family and friends of these 20,000,000 women you have a large majority of voters who would oppose sending these women up the river. Not to mention that the Constitution does not permit the punishment of people for things that were legal when they did them.

You apparently believe that the freeing of 4,000,000 people not from metaphorical slavery, but rather from literal slavery, was not worth 600,000 American lives. I disagree.

If America truly believes in freedom, the presence of slavery amongst us was an insult worth almost any cost to remove. If we don't believe in freedom, our talking about it constantly and patting ourselves on the back for being free is nothing but despicable hypocrisy.

BTW, it is a tad disingenuous to use 600,000 lives as the cost of getting rid of slavery. A little under half of those lives were lost in its defense. If I remember correctly, 380,000 died for the Union. That was the cost of freeing the slaves.

220,000 died in a failed attempt to preserve the institution.

[presidio9]

nature of the Republic should have been abolished to eliminate a social evil

Sorry, but the nature of the Republic is not valid as long as some of its members are held in involuntary servitude. You might understand this if your skin was a differnet color. And that realization wouldn't make you a liberal.

[JohnGalt]

England led the way in outlawing the abhorrent institution of slavery. They did so without violence. I was raised to believe blessed are the peacemakers and my primary complaint about Lincoln is that he was anything but a peacemaker.


Too bad, your response to the abortion question was rather lame for anonymous cyberspace. But I will work with it to see if we can break some new ground. Lets us suppose for a moment that the abortion question was returned to the states after Roe V Wade was/ is (dare to dream) overturned.

Some states no doubt will outlaw the procedure all together and some states, no doubt will keep have "moderate" regulations, and some states will have a completely unregulated abortion market (they will wrap themselves in laisez faire language and talk about property rights no doubt.)

Would you favor invading a state, conquering its people subduing the capital and imposing a 'right to life' regime on the state/states?

[Dead Dog]

No, I'm saying the culture that stoked the draft riots is no less racist then the Antabellum south. The north has no moral highground. The ONLY reason they were predominently more abololitionist was that the industry could get uneducatred and starving immigrents cheaper to work factories then they could buy slaves.

Irish people dodging the draft because they perceived the Civil War to be about "helping n-ggers."

That's my point

I'm also saying the Southern States didn't attempt to split in order to save slavery, they did it to protect their trade from tarifs only favorable to the overrepresented North. The Union recruited under the banner of the Abolutionists, but it was simply about tax policy.

[dyed_in_the_wool]

Sorry, but the nature of the Republic is not valid as long as some of its members are held in involuntary servitude.

Good point.

You might understand this if your skin was a differnet color.

Another good point. The Irish had similar experiences in Ireland. Really horrific suppression, but this is where they came to escape that. Slave descendents have 'nowhere' to go, so to speak. (Rhetorical, not a factual point.)

It's an unfortunate chapter in the nation's history, but at what point do we move on? Will we ever?
More importantly, when does it stop becoming an excuse for the abhorrent behavior of people like, oh, John Street in Philadelphia for example?
I think that's the stuff that drives most conservatives up the wall.

[JohnGalt]

Your posts wreaks of the intellectual laziness in calling my position idiotic. My ancestors owned no slaves but had no interest in paying taxes to the Northern Industrialists who propped up the Lincoln administration. They knew what freedom for an Irishman in New York was all about, and they preferred the quite ways of their farm in South Carolina, land their grandfather had fought for with the Swamp Fox 85 years prior.

My Northern ancestors, on the other hand, left their farm in Maine (a father and four sons) to go kill people in the hopes of obtaining an abstract.

So what do you mean by free?

Federalis freedom often meant starvation, rape by federal soldiers, looting, forced separation from their white friends who suffered the same fate. The federalis had plenty of laws in the North that forbid blacks from settling in their states so blacks had little place to go, and the federalis robbed the South blind during Reconstruction.

[Dead Dog]

BTW, lecturing freepers on history is a bid like wallowing in your own self-delusion.

[presidio9]

I told you how I felt about abortion, but I also told you I won't persue your irrelevant tangent. Until you accept the fact that ending slavery by any means was a good thing, this conversation is pointless. The South was never going to change its mind and end slavery bloodlessly.

[Restorer]

England led the way in outlawing the abhorrent institution of slavery. They did so without violence. I was raised to believe blessed are the peacemakers and my primary complaint about Lincoln is that he was anything but a peacemaker.

Southerners would never have allowed peaceful elimination of slavery, even with compensation. Even the border states, towards the end of the war when it was obvious that slavery was on its last legs, rejected Lincoln's desperate attempts to provide for gradual, compensated emancipation.

Would you favor invading a state, conquering its people subduing the capital and imposing a 'right to life' regime on the state/states?

Do you believe pro-abortion states under such a scenario have a moral or legal right to secede, expel government officials, and wage war on the Federal government?

The imposition of antislavery regimes on the South was a result of the war the South started, not its cause.

How would you suggest dealing with a state or states that waged war on the Union?

[JohnGalt]

Northern Copperhead Abolitionist, here, but I hate seeing people write about my ancestors that way.

The Irish simply did not want to die needlessly when some West Point WASP told them to make suicidal attacks against their cousins from the homeland, entrenched in fortified positions.

[SteveH]

What about the "bank holiday" that FDR declared in 1933, and the subsequent revocation of the citizens' right to own gold, among other atrocities. which FDR was responsible for?

(Obligatory sheesh)

[presidio9]

The Union recruited under the banner of the Abolutionists, but it was simply about tax policy.

...and "WHERE ARE THE WEAPONS OF MASS DESTRUCTION MR PRESIDENT," right? Even if I stipulate that the Civil War was not solely about ending slavery, it does not change the fact that ending slavery alone made it a net positive.

[Riley]

I'm starting to smell great, acrid clouds of black powder smoke in here.

Fascinating discussion.

[presidio9]

BTW, lecturing freepers on history is a bid like wallowing in your own self-delusion.

Please clarify.

[aculeus]

The United States would be better off if the Constitution and the Old Republic's respect for 'states rights' was maintained and the two countries went their separate ways.

Translation: The United States would be better off if it did not exist.

Why is this c**p tolerated on FR?

[JohnGalt]

I am all for secession as a political alternative to war. War is the enemy of civil society as us Christians were raised to believe. I certainly don't care to have a state in the union that finds the practice of abortion worthy of secession, which is the same way I suspect I would have felt about states seceding over slavery. Fine let them, I don't want them to be part of my union if they insist on maintaining such an institution.

Let me ask the reverse, if a state wanted to secede from the Union simply because they did not want to guarantee a First Trimester abortion, would you favor an invasion?