The Very Worst President of the United States

Enter Stage Right ^ | Aug. 11, 2003 | Bruce Walker

[JohnGalt]

"Because Wilsonianism is a major part of Internationalist Conservatism or neoconservatism so he is a bit of hero in some part of the Right."

Clearly I distinguished between Wilsonianism and Wilson the man. 'Bit of a hero' hardly puts Wilson in the ranks of such neoconservative favorites as Truman and Scoop Jackson but apparently you needed clarification.

Max Boot runs with what are often called neoconservatives, but they claim only anti-Semites believe in neoconservatives, so he calls himself a conservative.

I quoted a paragraph from his essay to show that one neoconservative intellectual was attempting to make the connection. In 'my eyes,' Max Boot, neoconservative, thinks Wilsonianism is legit rather than a world view equal to Bolshevik Marxism.

Your last paragraph basically concedes that you are a Truman/FDR Republican. If being called a 'conservative' is important to you that is great, but the onus is on you to prove that liberal points of view that you hold fit into the larger scope of the conservative intellectual movement.

Otherwise, it just sounds like French Revolution liberalism with some patriotic and militaristic rhetoric.

[William McKinley]

Holy semantics Batman!

As for if I am a 'FDR/Truman' Republican, I point out that

1) I consider the New Deal to have been mostly a destructive force,

2) I find when reading of the policies and positions of the politicians of the day, the one I agreed with the most was Robert A. Taft (although I disagree with his views in two significant areas), who was about as far from FDR and Truman as you could get,

3) I believe that judicial restraint is one of the most important things in the governance of our country, and that said restraint was injured under FDR than at many other times in our country.

You see, you can try to paint me any way you like, but you will fail because I am a conservative, to the core.

[jwalsh07]

The Very Worst President of the United States...

was undoubtedly one Lyndon Baines Johnson.

[DonQ]

It takes some effort to figure that Woodrow Wilson was a worse president than, say, Harding or Coolidge.

[danielmryan]

Amazing that thrashing things out here leads to more truths than found in university textbooks. (You might be interested to know that this function tends to be taken up by novel writers in France; The Three Musketeers is oppositional to the judgement of the mainstream of French historians regarding whether or not Cardinal Richelieu was good for France.)

The point I was hoping to emphasize was that the American liberals seem to contain more that a few anti-Semites, of which three are identified in the article above: Wilson; Bryan; and, to a degree, Truman. This gives "liberal anti-anti-Semitism" a fanatical tinge, and has brought suffering on the heads of conservative Catholics, in part because Hitler was born a Roman Catholic.

Us Canadian conservatives seem to be veering into doing Walt Trowbridge duty. (This is a reference to It Can't Happen Here.) The roots of it, for those that are suspicious of our motives, is in part a career strategy for young Canadian conservative writers, and in part is a putting out of the welcome mat to any right wingers that are kicked around to the point of stomping out. The Canadian Left does this for your lefties, too.

As far as Japan being marginal is concerned, you could argue that the people who wanted to treat Japan as a rising world power were overly impressed by the Japanese victory against Russia [which was a major power back then, as it is now] in 1905, but the subsequent economic performance of Japan suggests that using that victory as an indicator of future greatness on the world stage might not have been inaccurate. If Wilson's aim was to slam down a nation which he considered "uppity," and this was taken as an insult to Japanese honor, then a tie between that and Pearl Harbor could plausibly be made.

Asians tended to be underestimated by Europeans. Remember what Imperial Germany's slam-down of the Chinese led to? It wasn't exactly subordination for a thousand years....

[Doctor Stochastic]

And the lack of a 17th for Johnson's acquittal.

[Protagoras]

For me, no way could Wilson have been worse than the treasonous Clinton.

In terms of damage done to the country, Clinton was a piker.

[JohnGalt]

And yet you say you can see no real difference between your views and say, Michael Ledeen, Max Boot, Daniel Pipes, Bill Kristol...?

I can't say I follow you.

I'd file you under Victims of the Mainstream Right, as clearly I was wrong in the box I built for you, but why defend that bunch instead of your friends to the Hard Right who are Taft Republicans as well?

[Chancellor Palpatine]

Tom Fleming? Mr. "I love white Europeans lots more than Americans" Fleming?

[JohnGalt]

I take it Amazon.com isn't in the Favorites?

Best remain silent and thought a fool, rather than post and remove all doubt.

[Scott from the Left Coast]

Why don't these facts appear in the mainstream textbooks, even as an "Alternate Point of View";

Because textbooks are NEA propoganda, and little else.

[William McKinley]

And yet you say you can see no real difference between your views and say

I said nothing of the sort, despite your efforts to try to put words in my mouth.

However, I will say out of those four, I often agree with Ledeen and Pipes, and rarely agree with Kristol, and am not familiar enough with the views of Boot to comment.

It seems that you are suggesting that there is no difference between the views of these four from each other, and also no difference in their views and those of Dick Cheney or Paul Wolfowitz. I would love to see you substantiate this view.

BTW, using Boot's argument (which you are backpedling from quickly, understandably), we would be forced to categorize Robert A. Taft as a 'soft-Wilsonian', since the good Senator was an advocate of international law and multinational organizations. But that's just piling on.

[JohnGalt]

I think Boot is an idiot, that is to say I disagree with his analysis.

Why are you ascribing his rantings with views that I hold?

[William McKinley]

Because you are the one who brought him up as some sort of evidence.

Evidence of what? Oh yeah, that Cheney finds Wilson to be a hero. Except the same 'logic' that would find proof that Cheney considers Wilson a hero would also find proof that Reagan considered Wilson a hero. Yet you immediately backed away from that when I pointed it out.

So I guess you brought up someone you consider an idiot, you labelled him a self-described neocon when he did the exact opposite, and you used his words as evidence of something while saying his same words applied to Reagan are evidence of nothing. And now you wonder why I am talking about Boot.

I'll show some mercy on you. I'll act like you never brought up Boot, and let you start again. Please provide some evidence that Wilson "is a bit of hero in some part of the Right".

[Ditter]

later

[JohnGalt]

Wait, now I see. You did not read the article. I pulled a paragraph from his essay as a sampling of what was in the link.

Uh-boy...

[JohnGalt]

More Max Boot in the Weekly Standard:

http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/002/867lqbsv.asp

[Protagoras]

It takes some effort to figure that Woodrow Wilson was a worse president than, say, Harding or Coolidge.

If Bill Clinton was the worst person ever to be elected President, (as some say) then Coolidge was certainly one of the best. We should have such good men as candidates today.

He had a grasp of the proper role of government in a free society that is lost on all of the dopes who run today.

[billbears]

b

[JohnGalt]

Coolidge bump.