As far as a comparison of RR and FDR, well, here: Another Viewpoint
By the way, as far as Kennedy’s quote about us what believes in this being fringies, well, let me put it this way: I went to John Birch Society meetings with my father in the 1960’s, where they said lots of nasty things about the sympathies of our leaders. Most of which turned out to be true (like, describing Martin Luther King as “not a communist, but pink” in 1965, which was heresy then, but fact now). We were Goldwater Republicans in Arizona (Tucson, in fact) when that definitely wasn’t cool with the libs in the East. Hell, my sister was a Goldwater Girl from Arizona at the ’64 Convention (along with the Hildebeest)! So you can call us card carrying Vast Right Wing Conspiracy Members. So, you bet. I’m a fringy. And the past 50 years of history and the Venona papers proved us right. One more thing. Your handle is LincolnDefender. That’s nice. My Great-Great Grandfather was an abolitionist who left North Carolina in 1852 because of Slavery (and alcohol traffic). His sons – my g-g uncles – were Union soldiers who fought his brothers and their cousins who stayed home and fought in Confederate Regiments. Our family was split because of the War: the Unionists – who were some of the first Republicans (the real ones) went North and West into the Free States, and the other folks stayed in the South or went West into the new Slave States. We have been Republicans for 150 years, and defending Mr. Lincoln is something we do reflexively. That still doesn’t stop me from being skeptical of Lincoln’s tactics with regard to the Copperheads or the question of Secession and its “legality”. As Gale Norton said, maybe the Southerners just picked a bad issue to resolve State’s Rights. I think the topic is quite timely at the moment.
Hi there. Took a break to do some work. So let’s wrap it up: You are of the opinion that FDR was a great guy because he shook a sleeping, isolationist America out of it’s uncaring slumber and got us to be the international savior that we’re supposed to be. Yeah, that’s the dogma I was taught too. Even saw the Capra films where they derided the Lazy Americans for being that way. We all know the conspiracy theories about FDR “letting” Pearl Harbor happen to get things going. Some of the same noise is going around right now about 911. Who knows. Only George. There is truth to that viewpoint. I didn’t dispute that – I disputed other things. Some people would point out that had a lot of things been done, WWII wouldn’t have happened. What ever. It did. At the time, the US had virtually no immigration, its ties to the rest of the world seemed remote, and most WASP’s could care less about the outrages happening to the Jews in Germany. Witness the famous turning away of the St. Louis. I can tell you that my Grandfather had no such illusions about Germany, having been present for the German occupation of the Sudetenland. He was all for war with the Axis, and that’s not the crux of the argument here. The crux again is FDR’s – and the American Left’s – perception of the character of Socialism, and in specific, Internationalist Socialism, allegedly dead by the ice pick to Trotsky’s head. FDR and the Democratic Party in the 1930’s WERE socialists – as they are today! Social Security and a lot of other things were borrowed straight from Norman Thomas’ party platforms, specifically the 1928 platform:
Socialist Party Platform of 1928
Many of these are reality today, and would probably be considered good (I like having weekends off!). But the point is, Communism, Socialism etc were seen as the modern future by many Democrats, who couldn’t bring themselves to go so far as to admit to being Socialists. So they borrowed ideas, and ignored troubling little stories coming out of the USSR about the nature of the regime there. They convinced themselves that some unpleasantness attended all revolutions, and besides, the evil landowners probably deserved it anyway, right? Stalin was really a great guy just trying to build a great country. Occasionally he went a little over the top. So what?
It’s these attitudes that would lead someone to say – in the aftermath of Stalin not upholding his agreements for Eastern European self-determination after the war (“Stalin did not hold free elections in Eastern Europe and the American press turned increasingly hostile to Russia”) that perhaps FDR, Hull and others were credulous when it came to Stalin. Stalin had honored his commitments during the war, but that was pragmatism; he was interested in surviving. After the war he was interested in solidifying his power, and could not be expected to go along with high minded crap like elections in Poland or other places, at least not elections that he couldn’t control.
So we come to Yalta. The standard line is: Roosevelt had to make concessions to secure Soviet participation in the Far East, because who knew what would happen when Japan was invaded? They needed to tie up the Japanese Manchurian forces. Or maybe not – if the bomb worked. But they couldn’t bank on that. So Mr. Roosevelt had some horse trading to do, and these were the horses he sold:
- Russia's demand for $20 billion in reparations from Germany - Poland to the Curzon line - 3 seats in the United Nations - territory in the Far East including Outer Mongolia, south Sakhalin Island, the Kuriles
These were, of course, the ‘secret protocols’ that were referred to as the sell-out. But it all went further, right? Here’s Churchill doing a little world shuffling:
'The moment was apt for business, so I said “Let us settle about our affairs in the Balkans. Your armies are in Rumania and Bulgaria. We have interests, missions and agents there. Don’t let us get at cross-purposes in small ways. So far as Britain and Russia are concerned, how would it do for you to have ninety per cent predominance in Rumania, for us to have ninety per cent of the say in Greece, and go fifty-fifty about Yugoslavia?” While this was being translated I wrote out on a half a sheet of paper: Rumania Russia 50% The others 10% Greece Great Britain 90% Russia 10% (in accord with USA) Yugoslavia 50-50% Hungary 50-50% Bulgaria Russia 75% The others 25% 'I pushed this across to Stalin, who had by then heard the translation. There was a slight pause. Then he took his blue pencil and made a large tick upon it, and passed it back to us. It was all settled in no more time than it takes to set down, ... After this there was a long silence. The pencilled paper lay in the centre of the table. At length I said, “might it not be thought rather cynical if it seemed we had disposed of these issues, so fateful to millions of people, in such an off-hand manner? Let us burn the paper”. “No, you keep it” said Stalin'.All of this just to get Stalin into the war with Japan, and the other excuse being that “he had a lot of troops there, so what could we do?” Methinks not. I can see that Churchill was brazenly pragmatic, and probably had no illusions about Stalin. But I think Roosevelt was open to the deals, because, again, he was a socialist himself. The other rationales are just cover. For a different viewpoint on this then your buddy Mr. Drucker, see CAUGHT BETWEEN ROOSEVELT AND STALIN.
The “sell out” is the opinion of many people, not just me. You have many justifications for it, i.e., military reality, the need for Russia in Japan, etc. Well, for the Congress in 1951, that wasn’t good enough: they passed a resolution condemning it (so what, right? Just politics). Articles were written: Human Events, 1950. This points out something even far worse: the fall of China as a result.
These are cataclysms in human history. No one should get a pass on them. What would China have been under the KMT? Look at Taiwan today. Then look at the mainland. And because of a few “realpolitik” considerations? Nah. He just didn’t think it would all be that bad, since he and the people around him were, in many cases, sympathizers. Remember that many Leftists fought in WWII because it was considered a “sacred cause” (like Bill Kunstler, in the Phillipines, or Herbert Marcuse in the OSS). The trial of Alger Hiss, the rise of Joe McCarthy, was related to all of this. I don’t care what you think of McCarthy, I feel that history has vindicated him. There WERE communists in the State and War departments. And they were influential. They were tolerated because of the attitudes of the Democratic party, and FDR.