Posted on 02/20/2007 8:16:56 AM PST by Al Simmons
A typical "FDR was God, yet didn't act" red herring. Re-read my post again - it address that issue.
And OBTW, you are speaking to one of those 'slaves' - who had the ingenuity to get out long before the wall fell.
Had Hitler won the war, I would not be here because my entire family would have been exterminated (a number were indeed slaughtered by the Nazis in civilian reprisal massacres, and my Dad fought the Krauts behind enemy lines for 4 years).
All due respect, this is a pile of rubbish.
Up until Roosevelt, all Americans understood the basic founding concept: that our rights come from God (or nature if you must), and that the purpose of governments is to secure these rights.
Roosevelt turned that equation on its head, so that the purpose of government became the guarantee not of God-given rights, but of so-called "rights" (actually entitlements) that God never gave us and which cannot exist).
The idea that the government should provide "Freedom from want," and that it should provide material benefits to its citizens is a fundamental break of faith with America's founders, and we have been paying for it ever since.
It's because of Roosevelt that most Americans now believe the government should solve all of our problems, and that there should essentially be no limit on the powers it may exercise in pursuit of the so-called "public good."
Apart from the damage to the economy that he did with his New Deal (unemployment never went below 14% throughout Roosevelt's term, until after we entered World War II.
The Roosevelt mythology is at the core of America's current addiction to Progressivism, which became the dominant political philosophy of the 20th century.
True, Roosevelt was a good CIC, although in that capacity he exercised powers that Bush could never dare imitate. So I'll give him credit for winning that war.
But domestically, he put us on the wrong road as a nation, and we are still paying dearly for that today.
Oh, BTW, did I mention Social Security -- that phony typically Democrat Ponzi Scheme that threatens to bankrupt our government when the bill finally comes through later this century? I still haven't found anything in the Constitution that remotely allows such a program.
So let's not get all choked up about FDR. His administration replaced God with government as the source of our rights and prosperity. The faster we get around to deconstructing and rejecting the Progressive mythology that was his legacy to our sad nation, the sooner we can restore our country as the land of the free and the home of the brave.
The Russians always had the weather on their side.
Then he should have said so. "During World War II" would have been accurate.
Both Roosevelts also strongly disliked the Germans and the Japanese. TR was an early advocate of US intervention in WWI and during the war authored such charming sounding essays as "The Hun within our Gates." Yet the interventionism of TR (perhaps because he was a Republican) is considered patriotic jingoism while FDR's is considered leftwing internationalism.
TR also seems similar to Otto von Bismarck in advocating "radical" economic policies while being adamantly opposed to radical organizations (an inconsistency FDR apparently did not share). This anti-Communism seems for many on the Right to mitigate his own near socialism.
Recordings of TR's voice are also available (thought that was before electricity was used in the recording process, so the quality is not that good) and show that he also sounded much like his cousin.
I only wish that contemporary liberals and Democrats would recall that in FDR's day none of today's mainstream liberal causes (abortion, euthanasia, homosexual rights) were even on the radar screen. Unfortunately, liberals seem to regard this continual lurch to the Left as a simple fact of reality and therefore consider today's opponents of such unheard of things as "dangerous radicals." I'll never understand it.
I don't think so. If anything, Roosevelt was either blind to the issue of Communism in America, or was tacitly complicit. He certainly was aware of the allegations against Alger Hiss that did not come to a head until after WWII, but he was told about Alger Hiss and dismissed it with a wave of his and an insult to the bearer of that information.
There was never any real threat of a Communist revolution in the US - there was never even a single local Communist-led uprising in any American community between the wars, let alone a national revolution.
The closest we came to such an incident was the Bonus Army - and they were dealt with in pretty short order, with general public approval.
FDR's greatest legacy however was dumping Henry Wallace from the VP slot during his last term. Had Wallace become President rather than Harry Truman, the world would have been very different. For starters Wallace, an admirer of Stalin, would have capitulated to the Soviets giving them a victory in the Cold War by about 1950.
It was during FDR's administration that Communists began to infiltrate the government, as documented in books such as Witness by Whittaker Chambers.
Second, had we remained with our heads in the sand, the war in Europe would have been won by Hitler, and we would have faced an enemy light-years ahead in technology, with ICBMs that would have soon been improved to reach our coast - and we would not have had the A-bomb either to serve as a deterrent.
Don't take this personally, but your post displays an amazing shallowness in your knowledge of 20th century history.
In the early 1930s masses of people were storming banks attempting to lynch the owners for all the foreclosures.
Politically impossible. So you wanted a few million additional American dead as Russia kicked us out of Europe, followed by a nuclear holocaust - that's just nuts.
The T-37 was a light tank, used for reconnaissance, that wss developed in the 1930's. I doubt that it played a significant role in the war.
Most incisive post of the day. Sums up the TR/FDR similarity better than I could have done. Thank you.
"Then he should have said so. "During World War II" would have been accurate."
If you had taken the time to read the post, it would have been obvious what he meant. Another 5 yard penalty for arguing about it.
An excellent book critical of the New Deal is "F. D. R.'s Folly," by historian and economist Jim Powell.
Was it FDR that corrupted the press into covering for his illness? Would he have been reelected if the general public knew he was crippled?
Is FDR the reason that we now have a press that has a tradition of providing cover for the Democrats?
I would suggest "FDR's Folly" by Jim Powell for an examination of FDR's adverse effect on the depression and the rise of the social welfare state
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.