Free Republic

On this day in 1937, sixteen Republican Senators voted against confirming a former Ku Klux Klan member to the U.S. Supreme Court. Senator Hugo Black (D-AL) was known to have been in the KKK, but President Franklin Roosevelt and the Democratic Party kept the documentary proof hidden until after his confirmation.

It's been 75 years since the federal government, on the spurious grounds of fighting the Great Depression, ordered the confiscation of all monetary gold from Americans, permitting trivial amounts for ornamental or industrial use. This happens to be one of the episodes Kevin Gutzman and I describe in detail in our new book, Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush. From the point of view of the typical American classroom, on the other hand, the incident may as well not have occurred. A key piece of legislation in this story...

June 20, 2008, 0:00 p.m. What’s the Frequency?New Deal narcissism and what FDR wrought. An NRO Q&A The New Deal celebrates its 75th anniversary this week. National Review Online editor Kathryn Lopez checked in with New York Times bestselling author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression, Amity Shlaes, to mark the occasion. Kathryn Jean Lopez: How are you celebrating the New Deal’s 75th? Amity Shlaes: I’m participating in the Roosevelt Reading Festival at Hyde Park Saturday! One of the people I will see there is Nick Taylor, author of his own book, American Made,...

D-DAY, FDR, June 6 1944 FDR, PRAYER, GOD, D-DAY, TODAY No matter what we may think of FDR—and what I think is ambivalent at best—the man had a soul and seemed to love his country. Same goes for JFK, along with a comparable ambivalence. However, this speech by FDR, delivered while the invasion of Normandy was in progress, stands in stark contrast with the thinking of too many of our leaders today. That invasion didn’t take a day, of course. Dubbed “Operation Overlord,” it consisted of a great armada of some 7000 ships and landing craft, almost 200,000 allied naval...

Liberal Fascism is a must-read in this age of creeping statism--which one worries may advance with greater speed after November. ... Goldberg debunks the widely held view that communism was the opposite of fascism. In fact, the only thing that separated the two main branches of 20th-century totalitarianism was that the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was born of an international movement while the National Socialist German Workers Party was explicitly nationalist. Both cancers were inspired by Karl Marx. Both asserted the need for a “new man” torn from religion. In his youth, writes Goldberg, “Hitler often stayed up nights...

Michelle Obama has spoken frequently on the campaign trail about the amount of student loans she and Barack had to take out to get through Harvard and Princeton. Worse yet, she had to pay them back! As she has many times in the past, Mrs. Obama complains about the lasting burden of student loans dating from her days at Princeton and Harvard Law School. She talks about people who end up taking years and years, until middle age, to pay off their debts. “The salaries don’t keep up with the cost of paying off the debt, so you’re in your...

In this earlier thread I commented on the incredible ignorant statement by Obama that FDR and Truman talked to our enemies: The other side can label and name-call all they want, but I trust the American people to recognize that it’s not surrender to end the war in Iraq so that we can rebuild our military and go after al Qaeda’s leaders. I trust the American people to understand that it’s not weakness, but wisdom to talk not just to our friends, but our enemies – like Roosevelt did, and Kennedy did, and Truman did. Its a breathtaking quote and...

My mother was conceived from a rape. Her mother was a light-skinned Black woman, who at the age of 19 saw her family burned to death in a fire. While she was recovering from shock in a hospital, a White doctor on staff had his way with her. Out of that horrific act, my mother was born. The doctor was never punished and disappeared into the dustbin of history. My mother was subsequently adopted by a Black family and my biological grandmother, victim of the crime, was rendered insane in a mental institution for the rest of her life. Ironically...

In 1931, when Franklin Roosevelt was considering whether he should, and could, run for the presidency, he called in three physicians to advise on his physical capability. They reported that the man who had contracted polio ten years earlier, losing all movement in his legs, was indeed in good health—and, furthermore, that he had "no symptoms of impotentia coeundi." "In plain English," writes historian Joseph E. Persico, "he could sustain an erection." It is a significant detail for Persico, given the questions he seeks to answer in his new book, "Franklin and Lucy: President Roosevelt, Mrs. Rutherfurd, and the Other...

"Americans just now need what Amity Shlaes has brilliantly supplied, a fresh appraisal of what the New Deal did and did not accomplish...." -George F. Will, Columnist

Presidential Personality Cult Deconstructed by: Malcolm A. Kline, April 25, 2008 So many generations have been taught that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt ended the Depression that it has become an article of faith for historians in and out of academia and, naturally, their media acolytes. “The life of Franklin Roosevelt has been well-analyzed through the lens of politics and policy,” the editors of U. S. News & World Report write in the April 28/May 5 issue of the magazine. “As the president who lifted the country out of economic despair and stood up to foreign military aggression, FDR offers historians...

Violent chickens roost on candidates' shoulders: exploring the liberal/Marxist nexus Wes Vernon April 21, 2008 Last week's Clinton/Obama debate opened a new door on an old coalition: What is it about Marxists (violent or otherwise) that attracts liberals (well-meaning or otherwise) to their defense? What is their common goal (to the extent that they have one)? The counterculture sixties Here is the mantra of the Weather Underground, as enunciated by one of its leading disciples: "Kill all the rich people. Break up their cars and apartments. Bring the revolution home, kill your parents. That's where it's really at." Who said...

From what I know of history, I know that Franklin Delano Roosevelt did not like to be photgraphed sitting in his wheelchair. So when I saw this photo of Bill Clinton unveiling a statue of FDR at the San Juan, Puerto Rico Capitol Building on 4/7/08, I went to work. I contacted the FDR Library, and asked them the following qeustion: "On Monday, April 7, 2008, Bill Clinton unveiled a statue of FDR at the Capitol Building in San Juan, Puerto Rico. From what I recall, FDR went through great lengths and was always trying his hardest not to...

On Monday, breweries throughout the U.S. celebrated the 75th anniversary of the end of National Prohibition. The thing is, according to the Constitution, National Prohibition ended Dec. 5, 1933. The “Noble Experiment” was caused by a confluence of events that eventually pitted prohibitionists against the “cabal” of German-American-owned saloons and breweries. Congress gradually fell under the relentless lobbying efforts of the well-financed Anti-Saloon League, showing a willingness to end the manufacture and sale of alcohol with the 1913 ratification of the 16th Amendment that brought us the income tax (on a side note, April 15 is just around the corner!)....

I found an on line full text. "FDR once said "In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way." He was in a good position to know. We believe that many of the major world events that are shaping our destinies occur because somebody or somebodies have planned them that way. If we were merely dealing with the law of avenges, half of the events affecting our nation's well-being should be good for America. If we were dealing with mere incompetence, our leaders should occasionally make a mistake in our favor. We...

The Great Depression... hit in waves, making everyone feel helpless. First came the crash of the stock market, then the failure of the local banks, then the failure of larger ones, then joblessness, and more joblessness, and hunger. By the time the country elected Franklin Roosevelt on his New Deal platform in 1932, one in four was unemployed.... Overly efficient factories, [economists] said, were producing too many goods for a market that could not keep up. Factories therefore had to lay off workers. It all amounted to "vicious industrial Darwinism," as Nick Taylor terms it in "American-Made: The Enduring Legacy...

Seventy-five years ago this month Franklin Delano Roosevelt was inaugurated as the 32nd President of the United States. Within days after swearing to uphold the U.S. Constitution, through a Presidential Proclamation he closed the U.S. Mint to gold. Recall that the Mint had been established by the Constitution to protect the people’s right to sound money. Roosevelt had been elected on a platform of sound money. Barely in office, he reversed himself. He grabbed the gold of the people, marked up its value, leaving Federal Reserve notes in the hands of the people that were to lose 95 percent of...

All: the Independent Film Channel (or whatever it's called) ran a documentary called "Joe Louis: An American Hero---Betrayed" ("Betrayed" in red, for effect). Much of it is well done, although it's quite clear from the interviews with a writer for one of the main communist papers (not "New York Times" but something like the "Daily Worker") that it is a primarily liberal slant. For those who don't know, Joe Louis was an amazing boxer, beating Max Schmeling (Hitler's darling) and ending the comeback of Jim ("Cinderella Man") Braddock, who has his own touching and inspirational story. Louis, tagged as the...

Consider the modern MSM and Hollywood's insistence that dissent is patriotism. Click on the link and see how much "dissent" was practiced in America of the 1930s. It brings the meaning of Liberal Fascism home in ways that most of us have not experienced. Roosevelt and his administration did things that, if implemented by George Bush, would have led to his impeachment. As for the NRA logo, it’s a reminder of the happy days of FDR’s attempts to revive the economy by pouring a bowl of alphabet soup over its face. The NRA, among other things, was intended to prevent...

Racially Stacked New Deal by: Malcolm A. Kline, February 28, 2008 Although academics routinely credit President Franklin Delano Roosevelt with ending the Great Depression, winning World War II and saving western civilization, the actual historical record does not augur in favor of any of these assertions. ... For one thing, Archie never used the N-word that Mr. Fireside Chat was all too comfortable with. Bruce Bartlett shows this side of the four-term president in his book Wrong On Race: The Democratic Party’s Buried Past. To be fair, unlike his mentor Woodrow Wilson, FDR did not act on these inclinations, although...

Establishing my principles upon upon this preamble, namely, that we are all creatures of a beneficent God, made to love and serve Him in this world and to enjoy Him forever in the next; and that all this world's wealth of field and forest, of mine and river has been bestowed upon us by a kind Father, therefore, I believe that wealth as we know it originates from the natural resources and from the labor which the sons of God expend upon these resources. It is all ours except for the harsh, cruel and grasping ways of wicked men who...

New Deal Role Models by: Malcolm A. Kline, February 12, 2008 Who compared President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal to both Stalinist communism and Adolph Hitler’s Nazi program in the same sentence? Why, none other than FDR himself. “What we were doing in this country were some of the things that were being done in Russia and even some of the things that were being done under Hitler in Germany,” the squire of Hyde Park privately acknowledged. “But we were doing them in an orderly way.” “Ah yes,” author Jonah Goldberg observes, “the great defense against the charge of fascism:...

Alter's readers would never suspect that [FDR] scores as badly if not worse on the typical kinds of charges hurled against George W. Bush and his administration: militarism, ideological cabals, secrecy, lies and lying-us-into-war, unscrupulous punishment of political enemies, disrespect for the Constitution and our political traditions, run-amok Wilsonianism, special favors for Big Business, and, most of all, incompetence. As historian William Leuchtenburg documented in his essay "The New Deal as Moral Analogue to War," Roosevelt's presidency was drenched in martial metaphors and militaristic appeals to loyalty and unity long before World War II. The New Deal's Public Works Administration...

Putin's role model Vladimir Putin has had some great publicity lately. Time magazine recently dubbed him the Person of the Year. What that says about "You" — the previous recipient of the P.O.Y. designation — I don't know. Time gave Putin that title because he represents a mounting preference for authoritarianism over the chaos of democracy and the uncertainty of the free market. He "has performed an extraordinary feat of leadership in imposing stability on a nation that has rarely known it and brought Russia back to the table of world power," the editors declare. While Time saw fit to...

President George W. Bush’s initial assessment of Russian President Vladamir Putin was grossly exaggerated. "I was able to get a sense of his soul, a man deeply committed to his country and the best interests of his country," Bush declared after their 2001 visit. This obviously preceded the entire sordid Yukos Affair. (Don’t worry; the second half of this pdf is in English!) While Mikhail Khodorkovsky is not the universally revered innocent victim his supporters make him out to be, we saw a good deal of Vladamir Putin’s soul on display when he dealt with Russia’s version of T Boone...

This year I am speaking on Christmas Eve not to this gathering at the White House only but to all of the citizens of our Nation, to the men and women serving in our American Armed Forces and also to those who wear the uniforms of the other United Nations. I give you a message of cheer. I cannot say "Merry Christmas"-for I think constantly of those thousands of soldiers and sailors who are in actual combat throughout the world-but I can express to you my thought that this is a happier Christmas than last year in the sense that...

I want to marry Fred Thompson and bear his children. I'm not pledging him my vote in the New Hampshire primary, though -- I'm not quite ready for that level of commitment. I've said numerous times that I think one of the key elements in winning the presidency has to be a sense of humor. The American people seem to prefer to vote for the candidate who comes across as warmer, funnier, more ready to laugh at themselves and with people than one who is not. That trend has held true in every election since 1980, and (once you skip...

President Franklin D. Roosevelt's speech to Congress and the nation. December 8,1941

Older Americans tend to think of Social Security as something we ought to be able to afford. Indeed, many seniors tell themselves that when Washington pours extra cash into the New Deal pension program, the action is something like investing in a new Volvo. The purchase may look extravagant but is, in reality, deliciously necessary. This attitude is also held by some of our most respected pension officials. The longtime Social Security Administration commissioner Robert M. Ball wrote on this page recently that "it's the essence of responsibility, in my view, to insist on no benefit cuts" ["A Social...

President Vladimir Putin, Kremlin political consultants and state-controlled news media have found an American to admire: Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR, according to a consistent story line here, tamed power-hungry tycoons to save his country from the Great Depression. He restored his people's spirits while leading the United States for 12 years and spearheaded the struggle against "outside enemies," as the mass-circulation tabloid Komsomolskaya Pravda put it. Translation: Putin rescued an enfeebled Russia from the chaos of the 1990s, banished or imprisoned dangerous billionaires and regained respect for his newly enriched country on the world stage. And Roosevelt ran for a...

FDR essentially got the Supreme Court to ignore the 10th A. so that the Court would give the green light to his constitutionally unauthorized federal spending programs. Then, as a consequence of having the political license to ignore the 10th A., renegade, anti-religious expression justices then unconsitutionally limited our religious freedoms. More specifically... Justice Owen Roberts rewrote constitutional history in the Cantwell v. Connecticut opinion by writing the following. "The First Amendment declares that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. The Fourteenth Amendment has rendered the legislatures of the states...

Although Senator Clinton evidently wants to impress everybody with her undisciplined creativity concerning how to spend our tax dollars, she is actually ignoring her oath to defend the Constitution. This is because she is ignoring that the federal government doesn't have the constitutional power to decide new ways to spend taxpayer's money in the first place. She is irresponsibly carrying on the unconstitutional federal spending policies of FDR. More specifically, FDR essentially talked the Supreme Court into ignoring the 10th A. protected power of the states and broadening the interpretation of the vaguely worded general welfare clause. He did do...

By Burt Prelutsky I grew up in a home in which Franklin Roosevelt was regarded as a saint. Is it any wonder that it took me so many years before I finally saw the light? As a rule, I don’t approve of people who lay their own shortcomings at the feet of their parents, but when I realize that for no other reason than the way I was raised that I actually voted for Jimmy Carter, it’s awfully tempting to blame my folks. But whoever is at fault, it is certainly high time to acknowledge how much harm was done...

The official presidential portrait of John Fitzgerald Kennedy tells quite a story. His pensive expression, curled shoulders and folded arms are not mere emblems of the physical ailments he so manfully absorbed; they help cut the figure of a northeastern liberal -- a Democrat -- who through inspired oratory and steely resolve faced down Soviet communism. This, at a time when many were resigned to the inevitability of its expansion. But Kennedy -- historic though his presidency was, and beatified though it has become -- in his time was not breaking the mould of the Democratic party in the United...

In his 1932 campaign, Franklin D. Roosevelt had talked about helping someone he called “the forgotten man.” He was thinking of the poorest man, or as he put it—invoking the time of the pharaohs—“the man at the bottom of the economic pyramid.” The phrase came from an essay (and later a book) written decades before, called The Forgotten Man. Written by a famous Yale professor named William Graham Sumner, this essay defined “the forgotten man” differently. Sumner employed an algebra to explain what he meant: A and B want to help X, he wrote. This is the charitable impulse. The...

On May 7, 1933, just two months after the inauguration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the New York Times reporter Anne O’Hare McCormick wrote that the atmosphere in Washington was “strangely reminiscent of Rome in the first weeks after the march of the Blackshirts, of Moscow at the beginning of the Five-Year Plan.…America today literally asks for orders.” The Roosevelt administration, she added, “envisages a federation of industry, labor and government after the fashion of the corporative State as it exists in Italy.” That article isn’t quoted in Three New Deals, a fascinating study by the German cultural historian Wolfgang Schivelbusch....

A stranger stood at the gate of Hell And the Devil himself had answered the bell He looked him over from head to toe And said “My friend, I’d like to know What you have done in the line of sin To entitle you to come within?” Then Franklin D. with his usual guile Stepped forth and flashed his toothy smile. “When I took over in ’33, A nation’s faith was mine”, said he “I promised this and I promised that, And I calmed them down with a fireside chat. I spent their money on fishing trips And I fished...

To the Congress of the United States: Yesterday, Dec. 7, 1941 - a date which will live in infamy - the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the Empire of Japan. The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of Japan, was still in conversation with the government and its emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in the Pacific. Indeed, one hour after Japanese air squadrons had commenced bombing in Oahu, the Japanese ambassador to the United States and his colleagues delivered to the Secretary ...

WHAT MAKES the current field of candidates so timid? It is clear listening to figures from both parties this year that they still believe Social Security is untouchable. This despite the fact that bringing Social Security into solvency is a relatively easy task. When it comes to the more serious fiscal burdens upon our grandchildren, the candidates are likewise timid. This despite the fact that those burdens only become heavier as we delay. We speak of 2008 as an election year, but it is also the year when the tide of Social Security cash begins to recede with the retirement...

Why Did FDR Invade North Africa?By James Lewis   One of the clichéd questions of the Left is "Why did Bush invade Iraq? We were attacked by Saudi Arabians on 9/1 !" Or so goes the customary narrative.   This mantra is supposed to expose President Bush's stupidity. But in fact The Question reveals the asker's own clueless blunder about war and strategy. The proper answer is to point to other presidents and other wars. Like FDR after Pearl Harbor.    After the "day that will live in infamy" FDR's first land attack took place in Morocco and Algeria, then...

"Fine the lenders!" writes Barack Obama here. Hoping to prop up his poopy presidential primary campaign, Obama says we should round up "the unlicensed, unregulated, fly-by-night mortgage brokers who are hoodwinking low-income borrowers into taking on loans they cannot afford" and treat them as "the criminals they are." Who, exactly, are these criminals? How does one identify them? What laws does one use to punish them? Obama, the lawyer, oddly never answers these questions. In her wonderful book, The Forgotten Man--the book of the year--Amity Shlaes writes how FDR would tell his minions to ignore or retroactively change the law...

Given on Monday, December 8, 1941 Yesterday, December 7, 1941 — a date which will live in misunderstanding — the United States of America was apparently suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of a people we can’t name without being racially and culturally insensitive. The United States was at peace with that nation and, at the solicitation of a country populated by people different from us – although such diversity can be and is often a strength worth celebrating -- was still in conversation with its Government and its Emperor looking toward the maintenance of peace in...

The late Arthur Schlesinger Jr. was a true liberal--a man who welcomed debate. Just before he died this winter, he wrote, quoting someone else, that history is an argument without end. That, Schlesinger added, "is why we love it so." Yet concerning Schlesinger's own period of study, the 1930s, there has been curiously little argument. The American consensus is Schlesinger's consensus: that FDR saved democracy from fascism by co-opting the left and far right with his alphabet programs. Certainly, an observer might criticize various aspects of the period, but scrutiny of the New Deal edifice in its entirety is something...

In her vital and fascinating new book, "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression," Amity Shlaes tells a story about national icon President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Shortly after FDR took office, Shlaes explains, he began arbitrarily tinkering with the price of gold. "One day he would move the price up several cents; another, a few more," writes Shlaes. One particular morning, Shlaes relates, FDR informed his "brain trust" that he was considering raising the price of gold by 21 cents. His advisers asked why 21 cents was the appropriate figure. "It's a lucky number," stated Roosevelt, "because...

FDR Deconstructed by: Matt Hadro, June 15, 2007 Franklin D. Roosevelt’s progressive economics during the Great Depression left behind the working taxpayer and overshadowed the remarkable deeds of many Americans of that time period, according to Amity Schlaes, author of The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression. Schlaes was on hand to discuss her work on Roosevelt’s “Forgotten Man” and “New Deal” economic policies at the Heritage Foundation last week. Also, she reflected upon the forgotten men and women who embodied the true character of America’s “Greatest Generation,” helping one another through the hard times. Franklin Roosevelt’s...

If you have any doubts government-mandated minimum-wage laws kill jobs for the poor rather than lift them out of poverty, just take a look at what is happening right now in American Samoa. The latest minimum-wage law passed by Congress calls specifically for hikes in the U.S. territory – 50 cents a year annually until the continental rate of $7.25 is reached. This Washington-knows-best, one-size-fits-all approach is killing jobs in Samoa already – just days after it was signed into law by President Bush last Friday. StarKist had planned to expand its tuna production next month by hiring some 200-300...

Wednesday - June 5, 2007D-DAY A/K/A OPERATION OVERLORD AND THE BATTLE OF NORMANDYSixty-three years ago on this day allied troops stormed the beaches of Normandy in what is still, to this day, the largest seaborne invasion in the history of the world. Just a little historical oddity, but the name for the overall operation to retake Western Europe from Hitler's Nazis was Operation Overlord. The name for the actual June 6th invasion of Normandy was Operation Neptune. Neptune began on June 6, 1944, and ended 24 days later on June 30th. The allied forces suffered about 10,000 causalities on D-Day....

http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=56031 This is probably a John Edwards primping in the mirror-level vanity, but it really is in the news today...honest! Thanks to our U.S. troops...this is for them. Excerpt: From another era, an unwavering voice speaks slowly, its gravity punctuated by ministerial pauses: "Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. ..." It was June 6, 1944, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt first addressed a nation beset by war. While American, British and Canadian...

I stumbled across the audio of the radio broadcast of FDR's D-Day prayer and was first immediately amazed at how boldly "religious" his prayer was. This prayer by G.W. Bush would have libs foaming. It would be considered illegal and/or unethical. Congressional hearings, etc. The second thing that struck me was that the prayer could be prayed today concerning the WOT being primarily fought in Iraq. Once you see the photos with the words (as I did in my head) the parallels may grip you as well. Video link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rgawfZAqgiE

March 2007 “Roosevelt’s or Reagan’s America? A Time for Choosing” John Marini University of Nevada, Reno John Marini, a professor of political science at the University of Nevada, Reno, is a graduate of San Jose State University and earned his Ph.D. in government at the Claremont Graduate School. He has also taught at Agnes Scott College, Ohio University and the University of Dallas. He is on the board of directors of the Claremont Institute for the Study of Statesmanship and Political Philosophy and a member of the Nevada Advisory Committee of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission. Dr. Marini is...