[Cicero]

I was a little boy when Roosevelt was president, but I heard plenty of muttering about him at the time. People were just a bit careful not to raise their voices, or somebody would respond with the standard put-down: “Shut up. Don’t you know there’s a war on?”

But I knew a lot of grown ups who hated Roosevelt, and I grew up thinking that way myself. And later, though not very often, I would come across the suggestion that the world would have emerged from the Depression in 1936 if Roosevelt hadn’t plunged us all back in again.

No, he wasn’t just a leftist, he was surrounded by Communists, and was probably covertly a Communist himself, although probably he never carried a card.

Even the war, considered to be his greatest accomplishment, succeeded in defeating Hitler and Tojo, but also succeeded in setting Stalin up as the conqueror of much of Europe—indeed, for a while it looked like he might get all of it, with the help of Communists in France and Italy.

Roosevelt handed over Eastern Europe to Communism, and he began the process of handing over China to Communism.

And he left the heritage of the Welfare State, that has undermined our freedoms and increased the size of the Underclass ever since.

[Enchante]

"No, he wasn’t just a leftist, he was surrounded by Communists, and was probably covertly a Communist himself, although probably he never carried a card."

Certainly he was incorrigibly soft on communists, and invincibly naive about the real nature of "Uncle Joe" Stalin who Roosevelt persisted in viewing through rose-clouded spectacles to the very end. I don't think Roosevelt ever consciously wanted rule by any communist party, but I do think he was hopelessly ignorant and naive about the implications of Yalta, etc. Roosevelt was the classic liberal machine politician who thought that he could beguile and coopt and manipulate Stalin, never grasping that Stalin had been through an immensely tougher, more ruthless school of "hard knocks" than any NY pol.

[Verginius Rufus]

Didn't Eleanor say that the Communists were just liberals in a hurry?

One thing we should be grateful to FDR for is not dying during his third term--or we would have had his disastrous choice for VP as President (Henry Wallace). All of Western Europe might have wound up in the Soviet orbit.

FDR's percentage of the popular vote in 1944 was only 53%. Two percent higher than Bush got in 2004.

[jpl]

Personally, I've always felt that the lefties have given FDR more credit for defeating Hitler than he probably deserves. The British and the Russians did a lot more fighting and dying on that front than we Americans did.

Granted we did provide most of the material and equipment to enable the Allies to keep going, but I've never felt that that alone was enough to make him deserving of getting more credit than Churchill and Stalin.

[Colonel Kangaroo]

I don’t think Roosevelt was a communist. He was no atheist and he had too much respect for US traditions and history for a commie. But he was extremely ignorant of the way his path was leading to. I suspect he did not really understand communism and the ultimate development of a system of intrusive government. But that does not mean he was not extremely harmful over the long haul. If no Roosevelt, then no LBJ and the Great Society.

[TopQuark]

I am surprised that the author has missed the most obvious reason for the absence of a critical reevaluation of Roosevelt, namely, that the “thinkers” of the second part of the century actually share Roosevelt’s leftist views and see no contradictions in them.

[DugwayDuke]

“I was a little boy when Roosevelt was president,...”

My father lived through the Great Depression. In fact, he lost his job because he was the only one on the crew who wasn’t married. He lost the job the day before he got married.

I asked him once about FDR. His comment was “GD socialist”. He normally didn’t cuss.

[freedomdefender]

What do you mean “our” reverance for FDR? Speak for yourself, Tonto.