Is FDR Dead... In The Current Democratic Party... Because if It Is...

[wyldwolf]

94. glad you asked.

First, your reply is another example of how 'progressives' seem to snub the idea of corroborating evidence. Secondly, this was KoKo's opportunity to tell how she views FDR before we start presenting evidence. But what the hell...

FDR was a one-percenter

Roosevelt's net worth in 1932 was $6o million (http://www.therichest.com/celebnetworth/politician/president/franklin-d-roosevelt-net-worth/)

Roosevelt saved capitalism and the principles of privately owned business for the U.S. economy... Roosevelt did not think in dictatorial or even anti-business terms. Amid speculation that his administration would nationalize the banks, Roosevelt's emergency banking bill extended government aid to help banks through the crisis... Roosevelt's New Deal reforms didn't challenge the system of private profit but sought to regulate and channel it.

In the New Deal there was a tug of war between those who favored a centrally planned economy and those who believed that a reliance on small business and decentralized economic power would bring about recovery. The decentralizers prevailed.

This belief in decentralized and democratic economic power characterized the most important reform of the Roosevelt era: Social Security.

Social Security, by guaranteeing income to elderly retired Americans, established the proposition that the individual has social rights.

But Roosevelt, against the advice of economic planners who would have made it solely a relief program for the poor, insisted on adding responsibilities by funding Social Security through taxes deducted from every wage earner's paycheck.

http://articles.latimes.com/1999/oct/25/news/ss-26179

He sensed a shift in the electoral mood in the early 1930s and went with it



http://books.google.com/books?id=z8wSCZG9O6AC&pg=PA406&lpg=PA406&dq=fdr+opportunist&source=bl&ots=uS-ItBAquz&sig=-g7THj75It4D9BiqplduDbcTr-o&hl=en&sa=X&ei=B4J2VLXvCs_ToASfiYDQAw&sqi=2&ved=0CFYQ6AEwCQ#v=onepage&q=fdr%20opportunist&f=false

Broadly representative measures of public opinion during the first years of the Depression are not available — the Gallup organization did not begin its regular polling operations until 1935...

... the most striking difference between the 1930s and the present day is that, by the standards of today’s political parlance, average Americans of the mid-1930s revealed downright “socialistic” tendencies in many of their views about the proper role of government.

http://www.pewresearch.org/2010/12/14/how-a-different-america-responded-to-the-great-depression/

National surveys suggest that the leftward shift in public opinion during the 1930s was even more extensive than indicated by third-party voting or membership in radical organizations.

http://www.hoover.org/research/how-fdr-saved-capitalism

Like President Obama and those in Congress who favor government programs to put people to work and ensure that all Americans can enjoy a healthy and productive life, FDR’s New Deal—including his passage of unemployment insurance and Social Security—was attacked as “undisguised state socialism” by one senator. Others went so far as to insist that FDR was a communist, including FDR’s erstwhile colleague Al Smith, who, as one of the founders of the right-wing American Liberty League, warned in the 1936 election that “the people could either breathe the clear fresh air of America, or the foul breath of Soviet Russia.”

FDR brushed aside these attacks in part by insisting that we were a rich nation that could “afford to pay for security and prosperity without having to sacrifice our liberties into the bargain.”

http://rooseveltinstitute.org/franklin-d-roosevelt-socialist-or-champion-freedom

He co-opted much of the left's rhetoric to keep progressive third party threats at bay

The economic crisis of the 1930s presented American radicals with their greatest opportunity to build a third party since World War I, but the constitutional system and the brilliant way in which Franklin Delano Roosevelt co-opted the left prevented this...

Franklin Roosevelt demonstrated his skill at co-opting the rhetoric and demands of opposition groups the year before his 1936 reelection, when the demagogic Senator Huey Long of Louisiana threatened to run on a third-party Share-Our-Wealth ticket. This possibility was particularly threatening because a “secret” public opinion poll conducted in 1935 for the Democratic National Committee suggested that Long might get three to four million votes, throwing several states over to the Republicans if he ran at the head of a third party. At the same time several progressive senators were flirting with a potential third ticket; Roosevelt felt that as a result the 1936 election might witness a Progressive Republican ticket, headed by Robert La Follette, alongside a Share-Our-Wealth ticket.

To prevent this, Roosevelt shifted to the left in rhetoric and, to some extent, in policy, consciously seeking to steal the thunder of his populist critics.

http://www.hoover.org/research/how-fdr-saved-capitalism

Progressives' of his day didn't care for him much

In my examination of the historical record, it is clear that Roosevelt endured vicious, unrelenting attacks from his left that often exceeded the level of vitriol directed at President Obama, and correspondingly, Roosevelt was not viewed by liberals of his day with the adulation and reverence liberals view him today.

In fact, it's pretty remarkable how closely the attacks Roosevelt experienced from his left echo the attacks that liberals make against Obama today. (numerous links and examples follow...)

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/08/11/891631/-UPDATED-Liberal-Criticism-of-Franklin-Roosevelt-and-The-New-Deal#

He cut deals with conservatives on civil rights to get parts of the New Deal passed, many of his policies were racist.

Most women and minorities were excluded from the benefits of unemployment insurance and old age pensions. Employment definitions reflected typical white male categories and patterns.[6] Job categories that were not covered by the act included workers in agricultural labor, domestic service, government employees, and many teachers, nurses, hospital employees, librarians, and social workers.[7] The act also denied coverage to individuals who worked intermittently.[8] These jobs were dominated by women and minorities. For example, women made up 90 percent of domestic labor in 1940 and two-thirds of all employed black women were in domestic service.[9] Exclusions exempted nearly half of the working population.[8] Nearly two-thirds of all African Americans in the labor force, 70 to 80 percent in some areas in the South, and just over half of all women employed were not covered by Social Security.[10][11] At the time, the NAACP protested the Social Security Act, describing it as “a sieve with holes just big enough for the majority of Negroes to fall through.”[11]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Social_Security_in_the_United_States#Initial_opposition

The harsh logic of Roosevelt's racial stance was expressed most clearly in 1938, when liberal congressmen attempted to pass federal anti-lynching legislation to halt the most horrific type of anti-black terrorism. (Several thousand blacks were killed by lynching in the United States between the 1880s and 1960s.) Southern Senators angrily filibustered, and FDR defied black leaders and his own wife by refusing to throw his support behind the measure. "I did not choose the tools with which I must work," he explained. "Had I been permitted to choose them I would have selected quite different ones. But I've got to get legislation passed by Congress to save America. The Southerners... occupy strategic places on most of the Senate and House committees. If I come out for the antilynching bill now, they will block every bill I ask Congress to pass to keep America from collapsing. I just can't take that risk."

http://www.shmoop.com/fdr-new-deal/race.html

He didn't intend for welfare to be a permanent government expenditure.

The lessons of history, confirmed by the evidence immediately before me, show conclusively that continued dependence upon relief induces a spiritual and moral disintegration fundamentally destructive to the national fibre. To dole out relief in this way is to administer a narcotic, a subtle destroyer of the human spirit. It is inimical to the dictates of sound policy. It is in violation of the traditions of America. Work must be found for able-bodied but destitute workers.

The Federal Government must and shall quit this business of relief.

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=14890

He was propagandist

This was propaganda. FDR's talks were scripted by policy advisers and stylized by the playwright Robert Sherwood. Through these homey "fireside chats" the aristocratic Roosevelt recast himself as a plain-talking everyman. ...

http://www.thenation.com/article/fdrs-democratic-propaganda#

He was a warmonger.

As World War II began, Roosevelt was among those concerned at the growing strength of the Axis Powers, and he found ways to help Great Britain, the Chinese Nationalists, and later the Soviet Union in their struggle against them. His program of Lend-Lease supplied military equipment to those powers despite the U.S. government's official neutrality.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Franklin_D._Roosevelt#Criticism_of_Roosevelt_as_a_.22Warmonger.22

Like I said, a great president in a profession where the bar is set pretty low. Certainly not the progressive hero the left has made him out to be.