And I am almost certain that "Jessica" (I will not use her real name to protect the innocent and avoid hard feelings) is another. "Jessica" is a far left liberal. I know because her posts on Facebook range from pro-abortion to utter contempt for anything anti-Obama. She tows the liberal line so well that I could finish her sentences before she does. Recently, she posted a video on YouTube. It was titled, "FDR: Warning about Today's Republicans". It is classic liberal democratic gibberish. No substance. No proof of anything. Just a wrong-minded opinion (in my opinion). Just scare tactics.
But let me digress just a little. Let's talk about FDR and what he stood for. Let's focus on the mantle (FDR) that is being held highly by my liberal friend, and my Union buddies down the street that are building cars at the former Saturn plant .
First of all, FDR's policies were failed policies. In a UCLA blog written in 2004 (UCLA is not exactly a bastion of Republican ideas), Meg Sullivan wrote, " UCLA economists say they have figured out why the Great Depression dragged on for almost 15 years, and they blame a suspect previously thought to be beyond reproach: President Franklin D. Roosevelt. After scrutinizing Roosevelt's record for four years, Harold L. Cole and Lee E. Ohanian conclude in a new study that New Deal policies signed into law 71 years ago thwarted economic recovery for seven long years. 'Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,' said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA's Department of Economics. 'We found that a relapse isn't likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.' (Uh-oh!!) '"High wages and high prices in an economic slump run contrary to everything we know about market forces in economic downturns," Ohanian said. "As we've seen in the past several years, salaries and prices fall when unemployment is high. By artificially inflating both, the New Deal policies short-circuited the market's self-correcting forces."
In addition to FDR screwing up the economy for 7 years, he held headstrong in his beliefs that African Americans were inferior. He refused to support federal anti-lynching legislation and refused to integrate the armed forces. In addition, the New Deal particularly affected black people. It threw them out of work, raised the food prices during the depths of the Great Depression, and granted monopoly bargaining powers to racist unions. And it wasn't just the African-Americans that FDR targeted. If you had anything but "white" skin, you were a target of FDR. In short, an historian and author, Jim Powell writes, "Black people were among the major victims of the New Deal. Such a conclusion doesn't merely reveal FDR's often indifferent attitude toward minorities -- in passing wartime travel restrictions and internment rules on Italian Americans, for instance, he derided them as "a bunch of opera singers" -- it suggests that a thorough, fact-based re-evaluation of FDR's mythic status as a champion of the underdog is long overdue." Amen!!
Want to know more about FDR and the president that my liberal friend is praising for his rebuking of the Republican Party? The corruption with which FDR's public-works projects were filled with is well-established. I don't have to quote anyone to prove my point here.
But is was his agricultural policies that gave new meaning to the word insanity. Convinced that falling prices were hindering economic recovery, FDR decided that prices were now to be raised by any means necessary. Agriculture Secretary Henry Wallace, as "thoroughgoing a Soviet dupe as this country has ever seen, described the wholesale destruction of crops and livestock in which he and FDR engaged in order to boost farm prices as "a cleaning up of the wreckage from the old days of unbalanced production" (as Tindall and Shi quote him, approvingly). Wallace, you see, knew precisely what quantity of production would bring things into "balance." Tindall and Shi assure us that "for a while these farm measures worked." Well, if by "worked" you mean they succeeded in their goal of raising the prices of food and clothing at a time when people were desperately poor, then I suppose they did "work." Slaughtering some six million pigs and engaging in the destruction of enormous supplies of wheat and cotton did tend to increase the prices of these items. Congratulations.
Not surprisingly, while this program was under way, the Department of Agriculture released a study regarding the American diet during these lean years. The Department constructed four sample diets: liberal, moderate, minimum, and emergency (below subsistence). Its figures were sobering: America was not producing enough food to sustain its population at the minimum (subsistence) diet. Isn't that ironic given the agricultural policies instituted by FDR? (hint: read that last sentence with sarcasm in your voice) John T. Flynn, a liberal journalist-turned-New Deal opponent, mused in his 1948 biography of Roosevelt: "How to better this may be a problem, but the last course a government run by sane men would adopt to get it solved would be to destroy a good part of what we do produce."
It is also no secret that FDR had failing health, both physically and mentally, during his final term as president. Because of his poor health and executive dysfunction, FDR failed to study the comprehensive State Department reports (Bohlen, 1973). FDR's lack of preparation and poor behavior and appearance were observed by the American-British delegation, undermining their confidence in the Commander in Chief (Fleming, 2001; Bohlen, 1973; Weinstein & Vassiliev, 1999). FDR's executive dysfunction led him to adopt a hopeless strategy at the Yalta conference: attempting to charm and appease Stalin. It was senseless to try to charm a mass murderer, and FDR failed to appreciate the fundamental differences between the democratic and totalitarian governments. In other words, his foreign policy was also a failed disaster.
FDR and his presidency can best be summarized by a quote from Professor Clyde Wilson. He states, "The same intellectuals who condemn the Confederates who fought for states' rights- a recognizable American principle with a venerable lineage in the nation's history- also praise unreserved connivers like FDR, whose innovations had no roots in anything historically American and who willfully undermined the Constitution, the rule of law, and every major principle for which our ancestors stood."
I understand that everyone sees their reality through their own experiences, upbringing, and circumstances. However, I find it disturbing that people will blindly ignore history, facts, and common sense while spouting a party line in a loud, ignorant, and annoying manner for hundreds and hundreds of people to observe. I will not answer "Jessica" on Facebook because I can't express my opinions in 160 characters. I don't spout party lines.
I love you as a human being "Jessica" but I wonder about your reasoning skills, your common sense, and your insistence of jumping over the cliff like a good liberal lemming. Even Howard Shultz, the CEO of Starbucks and a left liberal darling, is calling for real government leadership and for real, meaningful changes to the budget. Party lines should go by the wayside and we all should take a look at what has been proven to work. Please don't let your abortion opinions override your fiscal responsibility as an American.
Have a happy, enjoyable, and restful Labor Day holiday folks!
P.S. The following is the video that "Jessica" posted.
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