I just finished reading Amity Shlaes “The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression” and Folsom Burton’s “New Deal or Raw Deal?: How FDR’s Economic Legacy Has Damaged America.” Both were real eye-openers about Roosevelt and the damage he caused this nation. I had no idea how responsible Roosevelt was for the pure, unvarnished hatred of private enterprise and the roots of Marxism in the Democrat party.
The last chapter of “New Deal or Raw Deal?” is especially good because it examines the question of why media and the academy fell in love with Roosevelt and burnished his reputation posthumously.
It was interesting that around 1936 about 45% of US adults viewed Roosevelt as a “dictator.”
I highly recommend these books if you want to understand the origins of the pathologies in the Democrat party.
Now we need a complete re-writing of the history texts and an extensive re-education of the populace... that should be easy enough... :\
For a more contemporary take read “The Roosevelt Myth” by John T Flynn.
New Deal or Raw Deal is an excellent book. FDR perfected vote buying. He controlled all the money and if you were running for Congress you only received campaign money if you supported Roosevelt. It has been the Dems playbook ever since. We need to stop the Dems from taking our money and using it against us.
Mark Barabak, intrepid journalist of the LA Times, relentlessly attacks all of those who would challenge the Socialist dogma that is today’s historical narrative. He doesn’t even consider what the book has to say until he has placed it and its author firmly in the camp of all that is evil in the world. He is writing, of course, about the extreme right wing who are too ignorant and uneducated to understand the sophisticated rendering of history by the intellectual elite.
When he does finally get to a review of the book, all he can say is something akin to: Why, we all know that the New Deal was a wonderful success, it’s beyond question. Except that the book does question it, and does it quite well. This book serves as a great warning for the New Deal II that’s going on in Washington now.
I read about half the book. It was interesting, but not exactly a zippy page-turner, and I had to return it to the library. Plus, it was depressing.
FDR was a tyrannical lunatic. The idea that the stock market crash caused the great depression and the war ended it is laughable. FDR caused the great depression. We weren’t able to pull out of it until he was out of power (dead).
It is only when one of their saints is attacked that the scum of liberality even refer to re-writing History.
Roosevelt was an Elitist Socialist (socialism for thee, your Money for me).
ML/NJ
While I'm interested in what this guy Folsom might have brought to the table, and I never thought much of FDR's domestic policy, I really don't think the "Tea Party" cares much or at all about FDR. For me, it is all about Barack Hussein Obama and the out-of-control spenders that populate most of our legislatures. FDR is dead.
ML/NJ
Then for the next 100 years, the media and the Democrat Party will be claiming the economic recovery that followed is due to the "bold policies implimented on his watch and his strong, steadfast leadership".
My Grandfather had him figured out as well.
File this either under “What is past is prologue” or “Everything old is new again.”
This letter came to my attention many years after my grandfather went to his final reward. I am saddened that he never knew that some of us down-liners inherited his outrage gene. I am further saddened that he and I never had a chance to discuss these matters.
In the approximately once per generation economic excesses and insanity – almost always triggered by the existence of un-backed fiat paper “money” – a minority of citizens living through the madness grasp what’s going on. But only a small handful speak out about it.
I have been speaking out about it since my late friend Tupper Saussy introduced me to Roger Sherman.
I am proud that my grandfather was also one of those who spoke out.
Unfortunately, few have either the desire or capability to grasp the nexus of the problem let alone try to affect the necessary changes.
Yet we persist as the alternative is too grim to contemplate.
And if you don’t think YOU will not be impacted or – like Neal Boortz –think you can “outrun” what’s coming, that flapping sound you may hear are some very BIG buzzards coming home to roost — at YOUR house!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lIo8FJJMps8
**************
Coshocton, Ohio
May 13, 1938
Mr. Uncle Sam
c/o Henry Morgenthau, Jr.
Washington, D.C.
My Dear Uncle:
I am in receipt of a letter dated May 5th, from Mr. Morgenthau, which letter he signed as your Secretary of the Treasury. According to the dictionary, a Treasury is, among other things, a place in which stores of wealth are deposited, and as there does not seem to be any wealth in your Treasury, it would seem that he should have signed the letter as your Treasurer of the Deficit, as, according to the dictionary, a Treasurer is, among other things, an officer who receives the public money and disperses it and, as he has dispersed a great deal more money than he has received, he is in charge of a Deficit, instead of being in charge of the Treasury.
In his letter, he attempts to persuade me that I should lend you some money by buying Savings Bonds and he states that more than 1,260,000 people own more than $1,600,000,000 maturity value of these bonds, in addition to which, I understand that you owe about $36,000,000,000 on various other kinds of bonds and notes, and that you have a contingent liability of additional billions. In his letter, he states that the savings bonds mature in ten years from the date of issue, and that they may be redeemed for a stated amount at any time after sixty days from the date of issue. This all sounds very impressive, but when these bonds mature, or in case an effort is made to have them redeemed previous to maturity, I am wondering what you will exchange for them. Will it be food, clothing and housing, or will it be 59 cent dollars of some other much greater reduced value, which dollars, as was the case with the German Mark, under similar conditions, may be of value mainly as waste paper?
When considering an application for a loan, the reputation of the prospective borrower is generally considered to be of first importance, and to be real frank about it, your actions during the past five years have not been such as to inspire confidence in you, as in addition to spending in countless foolish ways, a great deal more than your income, you have not been absolutely honorable, truthful and reliable. After borrowing large sums of money upon the promise to repay it in gold, you decided not to do so. In addition, you took from your nieces and nephews all of the gold which we had and buried it in the hills of Kentucky. I am wondering if you think that by planting it, you can cause it to grow in value, or if, like whiskey, you think the quality of it will improve with age. You are also forcing your nieces and nephews to turn over to you large sums of money, which you have promised to save for us and to return to us when old age overtakes us. Instead of saving this money for us as promised, however, you have been spending it as fast as it is received, in what appears to be nothing more or less than a drunken joy-ride.
Even though one of your age and experience should realize that it does no good to prime a broken pump, especially after having tried it for several years without success, you continue to prime the business pump, and to kick and cuss it and work on it with a sledgehammer.
I addition to other things, the frequent use of a hypodermic has done you no good, and probably explains why you penalize and abuse your nieces and nephews who are thrifty and industrious, and reward those who are incompetent and lazy; why you killed five or six million little pigs, even though our political friends are always hungry for pork; and why you destroyed crops of cotton, wheat, corn, etc. to the advantage of producers in other nations.
Like any incompetent spendthrift who violates all the tried and tested laws of economics, there must be a day of reckoning for you at some time in the future, at which time you will find it impossible to pay your debts, or else you will be obliged to pay them in depreciated currency. In either event, it does not appear to be safe or wise to lend you any more money to be used by you in making whoopee and playing Santa Claus. In order to save you from yourself and to prevent the dissipation of what few assets you may have left, a guardian should be appointed for you but this will take time and probably cannot be accomplished previous to 1940.
Your distressed nephew,
Karl W. Bachert
I have always thought FDR was the Bill Clinton of his era. Alot of blow, not alot of go.
I never understood why people liked FDR; them man was a socialist.
True to LA Times form, the piece drips with snarky arrogance and concludes that we ignorant rubes should never look behind the clever media spin curtain regarding FDR. The squishy Left gets indignant when you challenge their finely crafted history hoaxes. We all know the drill: FDR was a saint, Kennedy was magical, Vietnam was all Nixon’s fault, LBJ was NOT a racist cracker, the Woodstock nation was without flaw.... blah blah blah.
Lectures from the Left grew old long ago, and God help anyone who giggles during their solemn recitations.
Many tea partyers, for instance, speak as though the Founders favored a small, circumscribed federal government, when in fact some wanted a more powerful Washington than we have today. (James Madison proposed a national veto over state laws.)Actually, it doesn't matter what the framers of the Constitution individually, and privately, wanted. What matters is what the people and the states ratified.
In a recent speech, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) extolled the Founding Fathers' efforts to end slavery, when they actually made inequality the law, passing legislation counting blacks as three-fifths of a person.The federal government did not make inequality the law. It did notoverturn the inequality already existing in state law. It did not do that because it could not, and still win ratification by the southern states. As to the "three fifths of a person" canard, the slaves did not have the vote. That scandal is compounded by the fact that the Constitution even three fifths of a person's worth of congressional apportionment for each slave. The congressional apportionment derived from the slave population actually represented the free population.Those who proudly heap contempt on those who did not give up the slaves whose service they were raised to expect as of right should consider whether they would give up the advantages which they take for granted over even Queen Victoria. Because an American secretary today would have to think long and hard before giving up all electric appliances, all mechanical transportation beside steamship and railroad, everything made of plastic, and all modern medical care which Queen Victoria did not enjoy. Life was hardly a bowl of skittles even for the favored few, back then.
No one will ever write enough bad about that dispicable anti american bastard to tell the truth!!!
The absolute worst President in my lifetime!
obama wouldn’t make a pimple on his ass in comparason to being the worst!
bm