Hating Woodrow Wilson

[mgc1961]

Of all the eccentricities of today's resurgent right, one of the strangest has to be the virulent, obsessive hatred of Woodrow Wilson. For a long time, conservatives have talked about turning back the clock to a period before America veered off course. Typically, though, they have wanted to repudiate the 1960s—politically, to repeal the Great Society; culturally, to beat back the sexual, civil, and women's rights revolutions. Occasionally, as when policymakers debated a New Deal-style response to the 2008 recession, conservative polemicists have reached back further, blaming our woes on FDR and Keynesian economics.

But it has been a long time since Woodrow Wilson—intense, private, cerebral—galvanized much anti-government fury. If anything, the reformist president of the Progressive Era, once a great icon of democrats worldwide, has been flayed more often by the left—for his idealistic internationalism (given a bad name by George W. Bush), his wartime suppression of dissent (of which Bush, again, reminded liberals), and his racist predilections (a stain on his record now impossible to ignore). The right had largely ignored or forgotten him.

Until now. Thanks largely to Glenn Beck, who in turn seems to have been influenced by a tiny cluster of academics at conservative outposts like Hillsdale College, Wilson has emerged as the Tea Party's No. 1 "President You Need to Hate," as he's described on the "Beck University" Web site, the talk-show host's repository of baroque counter-histories. Lambasting Wilson has become, according to Mark Liebovich of the New York Times, "a secret handshake among Beck followers." The craggy-faced Virginian who became a leading political scientist and university president; the celebrated governor of New Jersey who, as president, led the nation to victory in World War I, is faulted for the income tax, the Federal Reserve, bureaucrats, socialists, eugenics, and even the rise of Nazism.

Read more at http://www.slate.com/id/2271202

[no_hypocrisy]

1. I have issues with Woodrow Wilson and his policies, but nothing like Beck.

Wilson was a racist because he was raised that way in the South not long after the end of the Civil War. He invited a screening of "Birth of a Nation" at the White House and heavily praised it.

Wilson refused to meet with Ho Chi Mingh, a young lawyer from Vietnam who wanted the U.S. to help his country gain independence from France. Imagine the course of history if Wilson had given him that audience.

Wilson was very ill at the time of the negotiations for the Treaty of Versailles. That allowed France and Britain to exact an inordinate amount of reparations from Germany (and repayment to Wall Street that lent the money to France and Britain), thus setting the stage for the ascent of Hitler, the Third Reich, and the advent of the Second World War.

Not to mention that Wilson in 1916 won the presidential election by bragging "He kept us out of (the) War" and the very next year he committed our country to the very same war he kept us out of, including the Draft.

AND Wilson fought against the constitutional amendment that would allow women to vote universally.

You don't hear John Birchers and Beck go there, do you?

[hedgehog]

5. It's worse than that - John Barry documented how Wilson

was making plans for "total war" even as he campaigned as a peace candidate. (See The Great Influenza: The Epic Story of the Deadliest Plague In History ). Barry noted that Wilson's plans to involve every single citizen in the war effort had an effect on how the country responded to the flu epidemic. WIlson also jailed people who opposed the war.

[burnsei sensei]

6. To bring up Wilson's racism is fair.

It's fair because one can prove beyond doubt that he was a racist.
He was a Southerner first, and reactionary in most of his politics.
The first true Progressive advocate in the White House was Theodore Roosevelt.
Beside Wilson, his record stands impeccable in Progressive terms.

[The_Casual_Observer]

2. The really old school John Birchers used to rant about Wilson & the

League of Nations. The whole teabag thing is just recycled birch bullshit.

[BlueMTexpat]

15. Absolutely. And the JBS hatred of the League of Nations carried over

completely to the LoN's successor entity, the United Nations. They still get apoplectic over the UN.

There is a lot of fair criticism to be directed Wilson's way. Much of what he did wrong (at least in retrospect) stemmed from his own experience as well as the age he lived in. But from the perspective of the global community at least, he did more right than wrong.

[mediaman007]

3. If you hated Wilson, you have to despise Teddy Roosevelt!

Roosevelt push corporate America's influence into the Pacific. He made backroom deals with Japan and China. He sold out the Koreans. He had a Philippine native ready to start a Democracy in the Philippine Islands, yet Roosevelt ignored him and went with corporate lackeys. If there is any one president who set up the United States for failure in the 20th Century, it was Teddy Roosevelt. In addition, Roosevelt was a true believer in the Aryan destiny: whites are born to be leaders.

[provis99]

10. yep. I despise both Wilson and Roosevelt.

Most American presidents have been shits; really Wilson and Teddy Roosevelt were par for the course. Is anyone proud of Presidents Coolidge, Harding, Polk, Grant, Hayes, Pierce, Hoover, Adams, Jackson, Fillmore, Van Buren, I mean the list goes on of absolute mediocrities and shits.

[burnsei sensei]

11. But unlike Wilson, and most conservatives today,

Roosevelt understood the tremendous threat the polarization of the society of the Gilded Age posed to American social stability.
He realized that without some reform, far left elements had a real case against the status quo.
While one might find it easy to "hate Roosevelt," it is hard to hate the Pure Food and Drug Act, and it is also hard to hate his even-handed approach (unusual and even ground-breaking in its day) during the Anthracite Strike of 1902.
People in history should be defined by what they actually say and do, not by the dictates of present-day ideology.

[proteus_lives]

12. Very true.

Roosevelt was a great president.

A true progressive.

[Ozymanithrax]

4. Growing up in the 50's and 60's, John Birchers and other far right types...

hated Wilson. This hate a carryover from that flawed intellectual stream.

Wilson also order the only real privatization of an American industry, the railroads with the U.S.R.A. They improved rail travel by standardizing engines and equipment, and U.S.R.A. railroads ran fine until they were turned back over to the for profit idiots who bankrupted several rail-lines because there is a difference between running a line efficiently to break even and running a line to make as much profit as possible.

Also, they are jealous, because Wilson and FDR (who they call a traitor to his class) were Democrats who fought and won the two biggest wars of the 20th century. Republican wars, Korea and Vietnam, were disasters.

[Faygo Kid]

7. Did you read The New Yorker article on Beck? He's Bircher and beyond.

The whole Tea Party movement is starting to mirror the John Birch Society. Beck himself has gone even beyond the Birchers in his wild conspiratorial theories.

[Ozymanithrax]

9. Yes, I've read about his Birching...

The were shown the door by the Republican Party in the 50's, and they have now returned.

[pnorman]

14. Is this the article you mean?

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/18/101018fa_fact_wilentz

[Faygo Kid]

18. Yes, that's the one. Extraordinary; a must-read.

Shows that Beck is further out than even the Birchers.

[BlueMTexpat]

16. In all fairness, US military intervention was not the only reason that WWI and WWII

were "won" - the US, for example, came into WWI as the struggle was literally in its last gasps. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I

As for WWII, once the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor in December 1941 had furnished FDR with a reason to enter the conflict, it is true that US military intervention, especially in the notable battles of the South Pacific in 1942 and 1943, helped turn the tide for the war in the Pacific. Insofar as the European part of that war was concerned, however, the Europeans did a lot to help themselves.

There were resistance movements in each Axis or Axis-occupied country, including Germany itself, that were more or less successful depending on individual circumstances. In BushCo terminology, of course, members of such groups would be labelled as "insurgents" or even "terrorists." In addition to these, British failure to succumb to the German air war, Russians fighting desperately in their own territory, including battles such as Stalingrad, and the Allied, primarily British-led, campaigns in North Africa in 1942 did a lot to decimate German military strength even before the Allied invasions of Sicily in 1943 and Normandy in 1944 where American troops were represented among Allied Forces in large numbers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II

It's not quite fair to characterize either the Korean or Vietnam Wars as "Republican" Wars. At best, the record is mixed. US troops had actually occupied South Korea from 1945-1949; Russian troops had occupied the North until 1948. US authorities had not taken the threat of invasion seriously despite power struggles between the North, supported by the communist governments of Russia and China, and the South supported by us. The North invaded the South in June 1950 when Truman was President and the US response was to use US troops still stationed in nearby Japan. The armistice was actually concluded under Eisenhower in 1953-1954. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korean_War

Although the Vietnam War is offically credited with beginning in 1955 (while Ike was Prez), US "advisors" had been in the area since 1950, supporting the French, as Vietnam was part of the French colonial empire. Eisenhower continued this particular support but would not actively commit US troops to the area, unless the British would also commit to participating - which they would not do. The French left in 1954 after the battle of Dien Bien Phu and advised the US to get out too. We should have listened. The subsequent Geneva Conference granted independence to Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Unfortunately, the North and the South were not reconciled; the US ended up as puppetmaster for yet another anti-democratic tyrant - something we seem to keep repeating. JFK's role was apparently minimal, although he was President when the anti-democratic tyrant (Diem) was assassinated in November 1963; JFK himself was assassinated a couple weeks later. After that, LBJ expanded the scope of the war and it became what those of us who came of age during that period remember. Tricky Dick inherited that war in 1969. The Paris Peace Accords were signed in 1973 during Nixon's term, but it wasn't until after all US troops had left after the fall of Saigon in 1975 under President Gerald Ford that we were considered to have "lost" that war. So Vietnam was both a Democratic and a Republican war - with lots of blame to go around - and lots of light still to be shed on the various shenanigans involved. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War#Exit_of_the_Americans:_1973.E2.80.931975

I do believe that it is fair to say that Afghanistan and Iraq are "Republican" Wars because they were both begun with deliberate intent by an Republican Administration in order to secure oil and/or oil pipeline resources for Big Oil. There are absolutely none of the nuances of Korea or Vietnam, even though oil may have been a partial factor in Vietnam. This is in spite of all propaganda to the contrary about Al Qaeda, or making the world safe from terror, or Saddam's WMD (non-existent as it turned out) or even 9-11 - which provided them with a lot of cover for what they intended to do anyway. That they received Democratic support for these wars is beside the point. As we all know now - and many of us knew then - the intelligence was wholly concocted to make people believe things that were not true. That some Dems were stupid enough to believe it should make us look for more intelligent candidates to replace them. Obama inherited these wars and, IMO, he had darn well better put an end to them - sooner rather than later. But so far, they are not "his" ... not quite yet, at least.

[awoke_in_2003]

8. suppression of dissent...

is never a good thing, but otherwise I am "meh" on Wilson- he was rather milquetoast.

[Citizen Worker]

13. And don't forget the infamous Palmer Raids conducted by Wilson's AG.

The raids targeted Unions, leadership and members, with many ending up in jail. It was the Palmer Raids that caused Big Bill Haywood to leave the US for the USSR. Anti-Union animus has a long and sordid history in the land of the free and hoome of the brave.

[underpants]

17. It is easy to understand why Beck goes after Wilson - he gets to write the history

not re-write the history, to his listeners (and most Americans) they have little idea about Wilson. FDR, JFK (THE Kennedy's), LBJ etc. people have some sort of knowledge of them but Wilson is a mystery and Beck gets to tell the whole story using his take.

Eugenics is a blight on our history but Beck, of course, fails to tell that it was the eastcoast elites who decided that something had to be done and how (miserably) it should be done. Beck goes off on Margaret Sanger but fails to tell listeners that Planned Parenthood was/is funded by the Feds due to an uppermost echelon elite writing the law that funded it.....his name?.... George Herbert Walker Bush.

[struggle4progress]

19. I'm hating King Ethelred the Unready for the rest of this year. It might could be a while before

I work my way up to Wilson. But thanks for the suggestion, Glenn!

[verges]

20. If he had studied more

he might have been ready!! That stupid bastard!

[rpannier]

21. Gotta agree with you there

He's not called "The Unready" for nothing
He began the fall of the Anglo-Saxon hold on England and everything in western society has gone downhill ever since
We should dig up his grave and burn his bones