what is the legacy of Woodrow Wilson ?

[WearyOne]

how would he be regarded by liberals ?

I have to attend a function in 4 weeks in Sydney to honour (?) our Bush lickspittle Prime Minister John Howard and a conservative donating business mogul who are to receive
" Woodrow Wilson Awards" from the Woodrow Wilson Int Center for Scholars.

I need to be prepared to fire off some questions ...

[expatriot]

1. well first of all, Wilson was an internationalist

who was critical in the founding of the League of Nations which, of course, the US never joined because the Senate refused to ratify it. I am not a historian but it seems you have an argument right there... Howard is an accomplice to Bush's neo-fascist unilateral world order by being one of Bush's bitches, thereby doing great disservice to the Wilsonian ideals of internationalism.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. Well, you've got a month...

to dig up stuff. Short bios aren't all that difficult to find, and I don't think modern libs would like him all that much-- aside from the League of Nations and that bunch of points, he didn't do a whole hell of a lot that we would approve of.

Here's a couple of interesting lines of inquiry...

Wilson gave us the income tax and some new tariffs.

Wilson was a racist. Born in 1856, he was a kid down in Georgia and South Carolina during the Civil War and Reconstruction. Later, as President, he was adamantly against anti-discriminatory programs or legislation.

One line of thought about WWI was that our entry was really brought about by industrialists wanting to make a buck from the spoils of war. The steel industry, amongst others, wwas pushing for war and that whole business about the Lusitania was extremly stinky. Sound familiar?

Oh, and there was Versailles, which was obscenely anti-German and very likely led indirectly to the rise of Hitler and WWII. Not a good start for someone who wanted an international organization.

I've always been fascinated by how he was incapacitated toward the end of his Presidency, and his wife actually ran the White House, not the Vice President. Apparently she was more reliable in trying to get some of his programs thorugh.

Obviously, I don't think much of him but perhaps there are others who can find some good points about him.

[Spinzonner]

3. Not the first or the last word

But a source:

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/wilson/

[oscar111]

4. didnt he begin the regulation of business

then pundits called it "the 4th branch of gov."

Sure is needed again.

re-regulate is the idea.

[T Town Jake]

6. That was Teddy Roosevelt, not Wilson.

(n/t)

[liberalitch]

7. partisanship and ww2

Wilson was a racist.
BUT he also believed in the right to self determination..... as long as it wasn't here.

Congress thwarted him potically and probably the rest of the world... by not ratifying the versailles treaty and the league of nations for partisan reasons (saying that no organization would make OUR decisions.....sound familiar)
While I don't like him much what republicans in congress did by removing us from the international stage was a chain reaction.
We did not ratify versailles and the league
so we were absent from the processes that would have made the treaty more fair to germany and would have made the league effective.
Creating situations in europe that gave rise to facism.
World War Two happened as a result

So you see.... congressional republicans caused world war two

[T Town Jake]

8. I don't necessarily disagree with you, though I quibble...

...with the simplicity of your "congressional republicans caused world war two" analysis: there was plenty of blame to go around for that one.
My only point was that TR was the first "trust-buster" in the Oval Office who attempted to bring Big Business to heel with serious policies aimed at curbing their previously unrestrained power.

[liberalitch]

17. You're right about TR..... I just wanted to blame the rethugs for WW2

I thought my rationale was pretty good though

[T Town Jake]

5. His Vice President coined a memorable phrase...

"What this country needs is a good five-cent cigar..." -Thomas Marshall.

[WearyOne]

9. thanks for your help !!!!

[Bucky]

23. He was a solid progressive on some issues, tried to make peace w/Russia

But of course he had the usual HUGE blind spots of the men of his age. He championed Polish independence, but not Ukrainian. He wanted Czechoslovakia independent, but didn't give a flip about Korea or Vietnam. Race had a lot to do with his choices there. He wasn't quite as naive as some people made him out to be in the wake of the League failure. But he also crassly grinned and rejoiced when he got news that Teddy Roosevelt died.

On the other hand, he was a pretty good typist.

[hunter]

25. Peace with Russia???

Yep, Wilson tried to make peace w/Russia.

Ooops, sorry about those troops we sent over to suppress your communist revolution... :sarcasm:

For reasons long lost to U.S. history, the Soviets didn't forget that.

[Bucky]

26. It's a little more complicated than that, in case you're interested.

America's involvement with the occupation of Russia began as an attempt to keep our ally, Japan, from taking over half of eastern Siberia in the chaos following the October Revolution. The Brit were the ones pushing for reinstatement of the White Russian parties. During Versailles Wilson and British prime minister David Lloyd George made several attempts to bring the Bolsheviks to the treaty table and cut them in on the reparations deal. Clemenceau was the one pushing the hardest for toppling the Bolsheviks (they weren't being called "Soviets" yet) along with British Conservatives who were part of Lloyd George's coalition cabinet--mostly because of all their capital investment in Russian property.

And Wilson was on record as wanting to let Russia hang on to most of the countries that the Czars had conquered over the years -- Poland being the only major exception. He genuinely thought that if they could just quit murdering their enemies, the Bolshis could turn into fair decent liberal reformers. Your cutesy "dripping sarcasm" icon aside, there's really quite a lot of interesting lessons to learned by how the West dealt with the Russian Revolution. And Wilson's track, had he been successful, was a great deal more promising than the aggressive stand France and Japan tried to take.

[Karmadillo]

10. A warmonger, a liar, a lunatic?

Walter Karp's Politics of War may not be the last word on Wilson, but it does a good job of keeping one from falling into the Wilson the Saint trap. You owe it to yourself to read it:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1879957558/ref=pd_sxp_f/002-8433106-5053607?v=glance&s=books

Here's a brief review that doesn't really do it justice:

http://antiwar.com/stromberg/?articleid=3347

Karp was even unhappier about Wilson’s crusade for overseas "democracy" and perpetual peace, the latter to be achieved by immediate catastrophic war. He shows nothing but contempt for conventional historians’ emphasis on Wilson’s "idealism" and peaceful "intentions." If Wilson did not want US entry in the European bloodbath, he should not have followed policies that made involvement inevitable. This might be called Karp’s methodological rule #1: look at what they do, not what they say. To people who see Wilson’s actions as reflecting his Presbyterianism, Karp retorts that it was precisely the unchristian sin of "vainglory" that drove the President on (p. 146).

Karp believed that from the outbreak of war in Europe, Wilson had harbored the vision of settling the war himself and building a great new order of perpetual peace. His unfortunate invasion of Mexico – to teach Mexicans good government – ought to have been a clue as to his methods. To settle the European war, America would have to be in it, and Wilson accepted that logic, but with a great display of public reluctance and much peaceful blather. Karp also notes Wilson’s strong Anglophile leanings as another reason for his conduct. Critics "accused him openly of putting British interests ahead of American interests," which "had the misfortune of being true" (p 228). Wilson’s policy was peaceful "only in the Wilsonian sense that entering the war meant ending war" (p. 274), but his rhetoric allowed Republican oligarchs, who had their own reasons for war fever, to attack him for terrible weakness and professorial ineptitude.

Thus, the election of 1916 was a choice between two war parties and the Democratic slogan "He kept us out of war" was so much hot air. As for the merits of "freedom of the seas" and other war pretexts, Ralph Raico4 has dealt with them ably – with the skepticism they merit – and I won't pause here to review them. US intervention set up an incredible "great leap forward" in raw government power and interference in Americans' lives, enforced by a federal reign of terror against dissenters and suspected "pro-Germans" and, later, "pro-Bolsheviks." Wartime mobilization furthered state economic management ("war socialism"), whose alleged successes inspired the later New Dealers and their alphabetic agencies.

more....

[oscar111]

13. Karmadi, how is the New Deal a bad thing?

if WW set the stage for the agencies like WPA, it was a fine thing to do. IMO.

[Karmadillo]

16. The rise of the WPA

was not one of Wilson's goals in attempting to maneuver the US into WWI.

[no_hypocrisy]

11. Aside from making WWII Part 2 of WWI, how about his stroke?

The President of the United States is completely debilitated and incapicitated. Instead of resigning (there was nothing in the Constitution I believe at that time to appropriately instruct), he instead delegated his duties to his second wife, Edith Galt Wilson. She looked over the papers, conferred with his cabinet, and signed legislation in his place. Now remember, she was not an elected or appointed government official. No less a citizen than you and me and she was running the country.

Also Wilson was sick before his stroke when he went to Paris for the Versailles Treaty conference. He was too weak to go against Clemenceau and Lloyd George when they wanted to exact revenge against Germany, thereby eventually contributing the worldwide economic collapse, not solely Germany's. He was not a full participant in the Conference and the only thing he was obsessed about was his League of Nations which died on the vine anyway.

BTW, he just LOVED D.W. Griffith's "Birth of a Nation". Especially the part about the Klan. Imagine having a democratic candidate with those sentiments in this day and age.

[bemildred]

12. A great expansion of the national security state.

And the firm establishment of the principle that the USA should be a busybody interventionist in World affairs, and that that activity was a MUCH more important activity than looking after the affairs of our citizens.

[knight_of_the_star]

14. Also very sexist

He only gave in to Women's suffrage when it became too strong for him to oppose.

[hunter]

15. Woodrow Wilson is very much like Ronald Reagan...

The official U.S. History is almost entirely fabricated.

Some terms to research:

Racism, eugenics, anti-communism, Russia...

"It is like writing history with Lightning. And my only regret is that it is all so terribly true."

- Woodrow Wilson, after viewing the pro-KKK movie Birth of a Nation

[bunny planet]

18. I know that he fought to keep women from being able to vote.. Even

jailed some sufragettes under very harsh conditions. It was a big scandal at the time, and when it was exposed, that led to women finally gaining the right to vote. He was no friend to women. I think there is a movie called 'Iron-Jawed Angels' (iron and angels are correct, not sure about the jaws part) that chronicles the struggle for women to be able to vote under Wilson's administration.

[JHBowden]

19. The most successful president ever

Wilson's presidency established women's suffrage, the eight-hour workday, the federal income tax, the Federal Reserve System, the FTC, the Clayton Anti-Trust Act, the ban on child labor, reduced the tariff, and won a world war on top of it. Wilson also was a racist and resegregated the executive branch and looked the other way during lynchings, but he did accomplish a lot more than most presidents have.

[hunter]

22. Ass backwards and into the daylight...

...in the very same way Ronald Reagan "tore down" the Berlin Wall, Woodrow Wilson did accomplish a lot more than most presidents have.

But I hate the way Americans write history in the context of presidential administrations. Saying that Woodrow Wilson "won a world war" is an absurdity. The Great War Wilson supposedly "won" was a bloody awful disaster followed by a Great Depression and the Great War, part two.

It's just a start, but here's a little on how Wilson "won" the war:

Wilson sponsored the Espionage and Sedition Acts, prohibiting interference with the draft and outlawing criticism of the government, the armed forces, or the war effort. Violators were imprisoned or fined. Some 1,500 people were arrested for violating these laws, including Eugene V. Debs, leader of the Socialist Party. The Post Office was empowered to censor the mail, and over 400 periodicals were deprived of mailing privileges for greater or lesser periods of time. The Supreme Court upheld the Espionage and Sedition Acts as constitutional. Leaders and members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), known as "Wobblies," were especially singled out for attack. In one incident, Justice Department agents raided IWW offices nationwide, arresting union leaders who were sentenced to jail terms of up to twenty-five years. The IWW never recovered from this persecution.

http://www.americanpresident.org/history/woodrowwilson/biography/DomesticAffairs.common.shtml

When you are reading mainstream histories of Woodrow Wilson, it is always most remarkable what is not said...

Under a Wislon sort of presidency many of us writing here on DU would be imprisoned, and some of us would be dead.

At his core Wilson was a white supremacist and a fascist. After Nazi Germany so profoundly demonstrated the horrific dangers of this sort of fascism, most accounts of Woodrow Wilson's "legacy" have been cleaned up and sugar coated.

[Jack Rabbit]

20. A good place to start would be Wilson's Fourteen Points

This was Wilson's proposal for a more peaceful world that would follow World War I. He delivered the Fourteen Points in an address to a joint session of Congress January 8, 1918.

I. Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.

II. Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

III. The removal, so far as possible, of all economic barriers and the establishment of an equality of trade conditions among all the nations consenting to the peace and associating themselves for its maintenance.

IV. Adequate guarantees given and taken that national armaments will be reduced to the lowest point consistent with domestic safety.

V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.

VI. The evacuation of all Russian territory and such a settlement of all questions affecting Russia as will secure the best and freest cooperation of the other nations of the world in obtaining for her an unhampered and unembarrassed opportunity for the independent determination of her own political development and national policy and assure her of a sincere welcome into the society of free nations under institutions of her own choosing; and, more than a welcome, assistance also of every kind that she may need and may herself desire. The treatment accorded Russia by her sister nations in the months to come will be the acid test of their good will, of their comprehension of her needs as distinguished from their own interests, and of their intelligent and unselfish sympathy.

VII. Belgium, the whole world will agree, must be evacuated and restored, without any attempt to limit the sovereignty which she enjoys in common with all other free nations. No other single act will serve as this will serve to restore confidence among the nations in the laws which they have themselves set and determined for the government of their relations with one another. Without this healing act the whole structure and validity of international law is forever impaired.

VIII. All French territory should be freed and the invaded portions restored, and the wrong done to France by Prussia in 1871 in the matter of Alsace-Lorraine, which has unsettled the peace of the world for nearly fifty years, should be righted, in order that peace may once more be made secure in the interest of all.

IX. A readjustment of the frontiers of Italy should be effected along clearly recognizable lines of nationality.

X. The peoples of Austria-Hungary, whose place among the nations we wish to see safeguarded and assured, should be accorded the freest opportunity to autonomous development.

XI. Rumania, Serbia, and Montenegro should be evacuated; occupied territories restored; Serbia accorded free and secure access to the sea; and the relations of the several Balkan states to one another determined by friendly counsel along historically established lines of allegiance and nationality; and international guarantees of the political and economic independence and territorial integrity of the several Balkan states should be entered into.

XII. The Turkish portion of the present Ottoman Empire should be assured a secure sovereignty, but the other nationalities which are now under Turkish rule should be assured an undoubted security of life and an absolutely unmolested opportunity of autonomous development, and the Dardanelles should be permanently opened as a free passage to the ships and commerce of all nations under international guarantees.

XIII. An independent Polish state should be erected which should include the territories inhabited by indisputably Polish populations, which should be assured a free and secure access to the sea, and whose political and economic independence and territorial integrity should be guaranteed by international covenant.

XIV. A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike.

Many of these points address specific issues arising out of the war and related events, including the Russian Revolution. Other points regard an adjustment of colonialism, a system that properly belongs in history's dust bin. Still others have relevance in our time.

At Versailles, Wilson urged a more moderate approach to the defeated nations, Germany and Austria-Hungary. The treaty was much harsher than Wilson desired.

Most famously, he urged in the last point "A general association of nations must be formed under specific covenants for the purpose of affording mutual guarantees of political independence and territorial integrity to great and small states alike." This became the League of Nations in 1919 and today's United Nations.

The harshness of the Versailles Treaty built resentment in Germany that was exploited by demagogues, including Hitler. The failure of the United States to join the League of Nations weakened the international structure of the world following the war.

The world might have been a better place had Wilson's advice been heeded.

[hunter]

24. These are NOT fine words...

Read between the lines. Who is the captain of this ship?

Look at item two, Absolute freedom of navigation upon the seas, outside territorial waters, alike in peace and in war, except as the seas may be closed in whole or in part by international action for the enforcement of international covenants.

In other words, whoever has the biggest navy makes the international covenants, and these will be our demands.

That's certainly how Germany and Japan read it...

Wilson was always very good at putting lipstick on the pig; frankly and in the public view.

[WearyOne]

21. Many thanks DUer's !..who needs history books when one can

come here for the truth !:yourock: