Why would you suppose I am not being serious ("real")?
FDR (and his allies) dealt a mortal blow to our system of a limited
government of enumerated powers.
His economic policies whipsawed private enterprise, badly hampering
any ability to plan long term and thus to re-invest in the economy
when they don't know the rules or have any confidence that the rules
will not suddenly and arbitrarily change. He took a bad situation and
made it worse, and only the wartime build up put the economy back to
work, and the post war boom was the result not of his earlier actions,
but a function of being the only industrial power still standing.
Matthew
On Aug 3, 2009, at 1:55 AM, Constance Warner wrote:
Oh, do get real. In the 1930's, there was 25% unemployment [much
higher in some places], starvation, ecological collapse, foreign
wars on the horizon, large numbers of internally displaced people,
native fascism, a growing U.S. communist party [partly supported by
the Soviet Union], and an incipient class war. Working conditions
in some places in this country [like my home state] were basically
Early Industrial Revolution--and, if you examine the history, it
really was as bad as you think. Things were going to hell very,
very fast, and it took drastic action to drag the country back from
the brink. Complete recovery took awhile, but the early measures
did help.
The New Deal saved the country from a lot worse situation than we
have at present. In fact, FDR's most notable achievement may have
been saving capitalism; to a lot of people at the time, communism
and similar systems were looking pretty good, compared to the mess
that they blamed, rightly or wrongly, on laissez-faire capitalism
and Wall Street speculators. (And no cracks about "communism is
what we have now," please. As an amateur Kremlinologist with a
special interest in the satellite countries--remember them?--I know
the difference, and so do you.)
I'm a little chagrined that I let myself get baited into joining the
fray. I just have to believe that the statements about FDR ruining
the economy are something in the matter of a joke, or at least an
exaggeration. But in my home state, the scars of the Great
Depression are still visible, so I don't think it's particularly
funny.
And as for worship: I don't care who worships what, really. I'm
actually more concerned about exaggerations and outright lies about
programs like the cash for clunkers program and other proposals of
this administration. I won't even speculate about the motives of
people who lie and exaggerate, because they're sufficiently evident
not to need further exposition here. The economy may be in better
shape than it was last fall, and some of the current programs seem
to be having some effect. But the chances are NOT ZERO that we
could still have another Great Depression; and certain news [sic]
reporters, by trying to tear down any Democratic program they see,
and in particular by lying about those programs, seem to be pushing
us toward the edge of the cliff.
--Constance Warner
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