Was FDR a progressive?

[lasersailor184]

The pure ignorance of history is astonishing.  First, it wasn't the entrance into WW2 that pulled us out of the depression.  It was the beginning of it that did.

And your grandfather might think that FDR saved his life, but the plans put into to place only lengthened the hardships, at an extreme cost to everyone around.


It's not even up for debate whether or not FDR should have acted sooner against Germany and Japan.  Any numbnuts who has even spent 5 minutes reading the history of war knows that you can't self-involve yourself in an on going war unless you have been transgressed upon.

Every single war that has ever happened that we've won, we went in with a hostility committed against us.  About 3/4 of the time, it was a true hostile action.  The other quarter was a falsified act.  All the wars we haven't won have been because the transgressions were probably falsified.

How far would the revolution have gotten had Britain done nothing to piss us off?  How would the wars gone, had not the Maine or Lusitania been sunk (legitimate or not)?

[Mr No Name]

Originally posted by storch
FDR was a communist

Absolutely, that's why he turned over half of Europe from control of one murderous dictator to a murderous communist dictator

[Vudak]

Originally posted by lasersailor184

And your grandfather might think that FDR saved his life, but the plans put into to place only lengthened the hardships, at an extreme cost to everyone around.

Well it's pretty easy for whiney little kids like you and me to say that, but then it is rather suprising when the old folks who had to live through harsh times actually like the guy.  If most weren't dead, I think you'd find the majority thought he did a great job (they reelected him three times, after all).  And they're the ones who had to live and deal with his things.

What you're doing is complaining about how his ideas have been run with/tampered for the past 60 years.  

I don't mean whiney little kids as a personal insult to you, btw...  It's just I think that's a common description of our generation as a whole.  We've never been cold, hungry, or miserable.  Yet all we do is complain

[FrodeMk3]

It's not even up for debate whether or not FDR should have acted sooner against Germany and Japan. Any numbnuts who has even spent 5 minutes reading the history of war knows that you can't self-involve yourself in an on going war unless you have been transgressed upon.

The Yangtze incident of 1937. The gunboat Panay.
Reason and cause were both there. Our entry into the Second World War was inevitable. Production of war material for Britain and France did not take off until 1939, and none of the initial orders were a huge economic boost. It wasn't until our direct involvement, when we needed to rapidly equip an army 15-20 times it's prewar size, plus our allies, that we really took off.There weren't any mass hirings in the defense industry before then. That, was what took America out of the breadline, and back to work.

Gonna add some info about FDR, as well, from the same source:

http://www.millercenter.virginia.edu/Ampres/essays/fdroosevelt/biography/9

Sorry, wish I had put this in my first posting.

[lasersailor184]

Originally posted by Vudak
Well it's pretty easy for whiney little kids like you and me to say that, but then it is rather suprising when the old folks who had to live through harsh times actually like the guy.  If most weren't dead, I think you'd find the majority thought he did a great job (they reelected him three times, after all).  And they're the ones who had to live and deal with his things.

What you're doing is complaining about how his ideas have been run with/tampered for the past 60 years.  

I don't mean whiney little kids as a personal insult to you, btw...  It's just I think that's a common description of our generation as a whole.  We've never been cold, hungry, or miserable.  Yet all we do is complain

I don't associate myself with the current generation.  Mainly because I've got the average beat by about 50 IQ points.


Of course the old folks liked him.  They gave up their long term health for some instant gratification.  FDR didn't solve anything.  He just propagated the circumstances until an external source stepped in and fixed the problem.  

Imagine it like if I came up to you and said, "I can give you 5 thousand dollars now, or 50 thousand dollars 5 years from now."  That generation picked 5 thousand dollars over 5 years, and while it made them happy, it fixed nothing.

[Shuckins]

Laser my friend, you've got no clue as to what made my parents' generation tick.

My grandfather was a sharecropper.  During the height of the Dust Bowl drought, he netted only 25 dollars off of his crop in 1932.  A pair of boot laces cost 5 cents...and he couldn't afford it.  He tied his work boots up with the string used to bale hay.

A low-interest government loan, an "FDR" loan if you will, allowed he and my grandmother to buy a small farm of their own.  There was no house on it, just a ramshackle old barn.  They and their pre-school age children lived in a tent during the weeks it took him to tear down the barn and build a house from it.

Twenty-five percent of the work force of the United States was unemployed by 1932.  Those people didn't want handouts, although they needed them to survive.  They weren't bums.  They wanted WORK.  They didn't sell out anything.  

Roosevelt's administration was faced with an almost insuperable task;  bringing the nation out of the worst depression in its history.  Having spent my life listening to the elderly citizens of the Mississippi delta talking about the hard times they lived through, I could only laugh when Al Gore equated the depression of 1992 with it.  

Something had to be done, and Roosevelt attempted to do it.  He tried to relieve the suffering and provide jobs.  The New Deal might not have ended the Depression but the suffering was lessened, and the people's faith in their government was restored.

The Roosevelt legacy is a good one....whatever abuses of its programs might have taken place since.  Sure, the Second World War brought us out of the Depression, but the nation was already on the road to recovery.

FDR deserves to be ranked as one of our greatest Presidents.

[tedrbr]

Originally posted by lasersailor184
It was FDR that initiated the "Social Solutions" we have right now that are crippling this country.

He may have started them, but what we have today only vaguely resembles what he began.  We've had over 70 years of politicians in Congress and Presidential Administrations to tack on more and more "bread and circuses" to many of the social programs, as well as outright pork barrel programs, of the country.  

Blaming FDR for the social burden today is like blaming the Continental Congress for the buffoons we've got in the Capital Building today.

[Rolex]

Originally posted by Mr No Name
Absolutely, that's why he turned over half of Europe from control of one murderous dictator to a murderous communist dictator

That was Churchill. He passed a note to Roosevelt at Potsdam with his plan to parcel out Europe with Stalin. Roosevelt glanced at it and said it was fine by him, but he should get rid of the piece of paper. Roosevelt didn't want to get involved in post-war Europe. He thought Europeans should do it.

[storch]

Originally posted by Rolex
That was Churchill. He passed a note to Truman at Potsdam about his plan to parcel out Europe with Stalin. Truman glanced at it and said it was fine by him, but he should get rid of the piece of paper.

it was roosevelt and his communist state department.

[lasersailor184]

Originally posted by Shuckins
Laser my friend, you've got no clue as to what made my parents' generation tick.

My grandfather was a sharecropper.  During the height of the Dust Bowl drought, he netted only 25 dollars off of his crop in 1932.  A pair of boot laces cost 5 cents...and he couldn't afford it.  He tied his work boots up with the string used to bale hay.

A low-interest government loan, an "FDR" loan if you will, allowed he and my grandmother to buy a small farm of their own.  There was no house on it, just a ramshackle old barn.  They and their pre-school age children lived in a tent during the weeks it took him to tear down the barn and build a house from it.

Twenty-five percent of the work force of the United States was unemployed by 1932.  Those people didn't want handouts, although they needed them to survive.  They weren't bums.  They wanted WORK.  They didn't sell out anything.  

Roosevelt's administration was faced with an almost insuperable task;  bringing the nation out of the worst depression in its history.  Having spent my life listening to the elderly citizens of the Mississippi delta talking about the hard times they lived through, I could only laugh when Al Gore equated the depression of 1992 with it.  

Something had to be done, and Roosevelt attempted to do it.  He tried to relieve the suffering and provide jobs.  The New Deal might not have ended the Depression but the suffering was lessened, and the people's faith in their government was restored.

The Roosevelt legacy is a good one....whatever abuses of its programs might have taken place since.  Sure, the Second World War brought us out of the Depression, but the nation was already on the road to recovery.

FDR deserves to be ranked as one of our greatest Presidents.

Up until this point, I had defended the american education system saying that it was not as bad as some people say it is.  On top of that, I've defended the american people when foreigners and domestics insulted our intelligence.

And this is the first time I will say it.  They were right.  You specifically, and damn near singlehandedly have proven me wrong.

Just the pure garbage coming out of your mouthes proves how little we actually know about ourselves.

[Rolex]

You're funny, intellectually-lazysailor.

Roosevelt instituted programs that were necessary at the time because of the depression and enormous division of wealth in the country. Subsequent poor stewardship of the programs, and failure to adapt to the current times of every adminstration and congress by the administration and congress is their fault, not his. Saying that Roosevelt's administration was communist is just wacky extremism.

[storch]

not at all an extremist view.  cordell hull was a communist sympathizer as was henry wallace.  his administration was complete compromised at all levels by the nkvd and he personally delivered eastern europe to the bolsheviks.  his administration is one of the worst in American history.

[mandingo]

haha, thanks all, i just plagiarized all your stuff for my high school essay.

[Shuckins]

Storch, there was little doubt Henry Wallace was a communist sympathizer.

Cordell Hull was accused of being a communist sympathizer during the McCarthy Era.  As was the case with so many of those accusations, they were based on little more that innuendo.  Hull, as Secretary of State during World War II, was placed in the position of having to make unpleasant policies with our communist Allies.  The only thing he could realistically be accused of is misconstruing the intentions of Mao's communists in China.  Hull pressured Chiang to leave them alone, for he wanted them in the fight against the Japanese.

 

Laser,  lighten up.  You're using the classic "You're ignorant because you disagree with me" argument as a counterpoint to my post.  Embrace the possibility that you might actually be mistaken about some of your conclusions.

What right do any of us have to belittle the generation that endured the hardships of the Great Depression?  Perhaps we need another one, if for no other reason than to cure us of our arrogance.

Regards, Shuckins

[rpm]

Didn't you pay attention to lasersailer's post? He has you all beat by 50 IQ points. He must know what he's talking about.