FDR was a true Socialist.
"The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America."
-Franklin Delano Roosevelt, in his State of the Union Address on January 4, 1935. A moment later, he declared, "The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief."
later read
To say this is not to suggest that the two men were fundamentally similar; they had a much different understanding of the proper function of government. FDR's highly flexible view of good government closely mirrors the "living Constitution" school of constitutional interpretation among liberal jurists. But not all New Deal reforms were a bad thing. (The FDIC for the banking industry leaps to mind.) It was LBJ's Great Society that radically redefined the relationship between the individual and the state, to a point that FDR's spiritual progeny would hardly recognize.
Marking.
Great piece, Gennady. A little judicious pruning and the addition of an anecdote or two to personalize the ideas and you would have an essay suitable for popular media.
If you express yourself extemporaneously as well as you do in print, you have to find a microphone to get in front of.
FDR could claim his beliefs on Locke, Hobbes, or Rosseau..ultimately what matters is results. FDR turned over the treasury (and the US gold supply) to private bankers, he ushered in the era of big federal government, wasteful federal programs that he never scaled back despite claiming to do so, engaging in war against Germany when Japan alone had attacked us (and leading to hundreds of thousands of lost American lives), and sticking us with an inefficient and unworkable SS system that we must contend with today. FDR is the most overrated President in the 20th century. He bailed out the US by selling our country to private bankers whom we have been indebted to ever since. Go visit Ft. Knox- very little of the gold there is owned by the US govt.
As for Reagan, he lost no American lives. He won the Cold War through diplomacy and exploiting USSR's fundamental economic weakness. He managed to cut taxes, expand federal revenues, and increase govt. services; he would have balanced the budget had the Dem Congress not rejected his Grace Commission proposals. He brought an economy back from the dead without turning our remaining fortunes over to private bankers, like FDR. I'd be glad to argue this ad nauseum- FDR was one of the worst presidents in US history; Reagan was quite likely the best in modern times.
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