"laissez-faire robber baron system" - These two were never really connected. The robber barons became that way because 1) government subsidies and 2) government overlooking the illegal things they did to steal land (and maybe other resources). So it was in no way laissez-faire (which is really just Biblical economics). https://fee.org/articles/james-j-hill-transforming-the-american-northwest/
Side note on the Churchill thing: I think that if the critique on offer had been "Churchill was a flawed leader," everyone would have been okay with it. However, that was not the critique that was made.
There's a part of me that has trouble trusting anyone that placed so much unwarranted faith in Communists, both in his administration and in Stalin himself. It causes me to me very viscerally sense that FDR is not "our guy."
But my late father, who lived and breathed "Better dead than Red," still respected FDR as a wartime leader, which makes me think the rest of us ought to be able to as well. Yet this seems rather different from "reclaiming" him.
Churchill was the rare individual who amidst the doubts and temptations of the interwar era was never deluded as to the evils of Nazism or Communism, who never trusted Hitler OR Stalin. In this respect, he was better than FDR. But other than that, maybe he was a bit of a one-trick pony. He didn't see where the puck was going, didn't chart a realistic course for how Britain or the Conservative Party would fit into the new world order. FDR did better on these accounts.
But it feels hard to blame Churchill here -- Britain either had the Empire, or it was a backwater within a backwater. A tough pill to swallow for someone who did, in fact, grow up proud of the Empire. Would our instincts be any different in his position? America was destined to become hegemon of the free world, and FDR helped fulfill that destiny, which may deserve some credit. But he didn't create that destiny.
I’m 54. A life long limited government conservative. That you don’t understand why conservatives wouldn’t like FDR makes me think you’ve never been exposed to any serious political conservatives, only the Republican adjacent religious “conservatives” of the pro life movement.
Sweep away barriers to building housing, transport and energy and build a broad prosperity. You could see Noah Smith, Matt Iglesias, Ezra Klein, Joe Lonsdale, Elon Musk and Marc Andersen all signing onto something like this in the US.
There's a lot standing in the way of a new FDR here but it would be cool if it happened.
This is a well written piece but you have not convinced me (a rare miss coming from you!) We can discuss this more in Deerfield (I'll be at the Touchstone conference) but I think Amity Shales' book influence me quite a bit when it comes to the New Deal:
I highly recommend her book (and her writing in general.) Of course, Milton Friedman was also critical of the New Deal and argued that Roosevelt's response to the Depression was not helpful as the problem was a monetary one:
Amen. Shales’ book brings real historical accuracy to the myth of FDR. We read didn’t get out of the depression until WWII. And if you read John Toland’s book “Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath” you will learn more about Roosevelt’s duplicity. https://www.amazon.com/Infamy-Pearl-Harbor-Its-Aftermath/dp/1538461900
Oh not this nonsense. Toland ignores all of the actual stunts FDR pulled to get us involved in a war with Germany, and then jumps onto this weird conspiracy theory that because Roosevelt, not being an idiot, understood that Pearl Harbor would be attacked in the event of a war with Japan and that we were probably going to war with Japan really soon, he therefore knew about the Japanese plan to attack Pearl Harbor before declaring war.
I’m not sure what the nonsense is. Of course FDR wanted to get us into the war against Germany. But that was not the thrust of his book. It is a well-documented book by an eminent historian about how Roosevelt and others in his administration knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor with a naval aerial attack and withheld the information from the two flag officers on the ground who were preparing for possible sabotage. They - to include Roosevelt - covered it up through several investigations during the war.
I never understood the logic of this theory. If the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and we shot down a lot of their planes and suffered fewer losses, we would still be in a position to declare war on Japan. Suffering a terrible loss of navy ships was not necessary.
If you read Toland's book, he believes that the US needed a stinging attack that would rouse the nation to declare war. If we were waiting on the Japanese and they suffered a major defeat with most of their planes destroyed and we had no ships sunk and very limited causalities it would have been harder to go to war. The other problem which the intelligence people always worry about was that we had broken their Purple code which helped us win in the end. Churchill had a similar event when the Allies had broken the German's code and the Brits knew they were going to bomb Coventry and did not prepare.
Would we have eventually gone to war with Japan - probably. Would it had been right after Pearl Harbor?
A reminder, Hitler declared War on the United States, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. FDR did not promote war with Germany, there were too many Americans who wanted the USA to stay out of the war, until Germany Attacked their patron saints the Soviet Union.
FDR is complex. He was a WASP blue blood who was a product of Endicott Peabody's Groton school (America certainly needs more headmasters like Endicott Peabody who founded Groton to shift the upper class focus on vulgar self-interest to purposeful service). FDR was not faithful in his marriage and is similar to Trump in that he defied the elites of his day to focus on common Americans.
This is absurd, as FDR brought communists into the federal government and essentially gave away Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union after WW2 because of the travesty of Yalta. He was also a drug addict and an adulterous man, along with his adulterous wife, BOTH were morally corrupt. FDR was also a racist who sent thousands of Japanese Americans to internment camps, along with confiscating their businesses, when they had done NOTHING to betray their new country either before or during WW2.
A UK leader who was also a mixed bag who along with FDR gave away Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union in the agreement in Yalta. He led the British Government also had Soviet Spies, some who it took until the 1960s to expose. But, he was better than Chamberlain, and he led well, in the British role in WW 2 to help destroy the Nazis of Germany and the racists warmongers of Japan in the Pacific. Churchill and his government never imprisoned people with Japanese ancestry, who lived in the Pacific former British empire.
My father ran as a New Deal Democrat for the Massachusetts State House in the 1930s. He lost because at that time Massachusetts was a very Republican state even during the New Deal. But before he died in the 70s and watching what the New Deal did to the nation, he would joke that the reason they put the large marble monument on Roosevelt’s grave was to make sure he didn’t get out. Let’s keep FDR in the grave.
The New Deal was almost as effective at strangling the USA, as was Stalin's forced Famine in Ukraine that killed millions of his own people. It was a Soviet sponsored program, particularly with the Soviet Spies and agents who were involved in it's design and effects.
"laissez-faire robber baron system" - These two were never really connected. The robber barons became that way because 1) government subsidies and 2) government overlooking the illegal things they did to steal land (and maybe other resources). So it was in no way laissez-faire (which is really just Biblical economics). https://fee.org/articles/james-j-hill-transforming-the-american-northwest/
Churchill sucks. FDR sucks. On a long enough time span it seems like conservatives always want to claim the victories of progressives as their own.
Side note on the Churchill thing: I think that if the critique on offer had been "Churchill was a flawed leader," everyone would have been okay with it. However, that was not the critique that was made.
There's a part of me that has trouble trusting anyone that placed so much unwarranted faith in Communists, both in his administration and in Stalin himself. It causes me to me very viscerally sense that FDR is not "our guy."
But my late father, who lived and breathed "Better dead than Red," still respected FDR as a wartime leader, which makes me think the rest of us ought to be able to as well. Yet this seems rather different from "reclaiming" him.
Churchill was the rare individual who amidst the doubts and temptations of the interwar era was never deluded as to the evils of Nazism or Communism, who never trusted Hitler OR Stalin. In this respect, he was better than FDR. But other than that, maybe he was a bit of a one-trick pony. He didn't see where the puck was going, didn't chart a realistic course for how Britain or the Conservative Party would fit into the new world order. FDR did better on these accounts.
But it feels hard to blame Churchill here -- Britain either had the Empire, or it was a backwater within a backwater. A tough pill to swallow for someone who did, in fact, grow up proud of the Empire. Would our instincts be any different in his position? America was destined to become hegemon of the free world, and FDR helped fulfill that destiny, which may deserve some credit. But he didn't create that destiny.
I’m 54. A life long limited government conservative. That you don’t understand why conservatives wouldn’t like FDR makes me think you’ve never been exposed to any serious political conservatives, only the Republican adjacent religious “conservatives” of the pro life movement.
Provocative and persuasive. I mean, Coolidge is better, but still.
This in the UK suggests the kind of thing a new FDR could accomplish: https://ukfoundations.co/
Sweep away barriers to building housing, transport and energy and build a broad prosperity. You could see Noah Smith, Matt Iglesias, Ezra Klein, Joe Lonsdale, Elon Musk and Marc Andersen all signing onto something like this in the US.
There's a lot standing in the way of a new FDR here but it would be cool if it happened.
This is a well written piece but you have not convinced me (a rare miss coming from you!) We can discuss this more in Deerfield (I'll be at the Touchstone conference) but I think Amity Shales' book influence me quite a bit when it comes to the New Deal:
https://www.commentary.org/articles/james-piereson/the-forgotten-man-by-amity-shlaes/
I highly recommend her book (and her writing in general.) Of course, Milton Friedman was also critical of the New Deal and argued that Roosevelt's response to the Depression was not helpful as the problem was a monetary one:
https://www.federalreservehistory.org/essays/great-depression
Amen. Shales’ book brings real historical accuracy to the myth of FDR. We read didn’t get out of the depression until WWII. And if you read John Toland’s book “Infamy: Pearl Harbor and Its Aftermath” you will learn more about Roosevelt’s duplicity. https://www.amazon.com/Infamy-Pearl-Harbor-Its-Aftermath/dp/1538461900
Oh not this nonsense. Toland ignores all of the actual stunts FDR pulled to get us involved in a war with Germany, and then jumps onto this weird conspiracy theory that because Roosevelt, not being an idiot, understood that Pearl Harbor would be attacked in the event of a war with Japan and that we were probably going to war with Japan really soon, he therefore knew about the Japanese plan to attack Pearl Harbor before declaring war.
I’m not sure what the nonsense is. Of course FDR wanted to get us into the war against Germany. But that was not the thrust of his book. It is a well-documented book by an eminent historian about how Roosevelt and others in his administration knew that the Japanese were going to attack Pearl Harbor with a naval aerial attack and withheld the information from the two flag officers on the ground who were preparing for possible sabotage. They - to include Roosevelt - covered it up through several investigations during the war.
I never understood the logic of this theory. If the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor and we shot down a lot of their planes and suffered fewer losses, we would still be in a position to declare war on Japan. Suffering a terrible loss of navy ships was not necessary.
Any explanation?
If you read Toland's book, he believes that the US needed a stinging attack that would rouse the nation to declare war. If we were waiting on the Japanese and they suffered a major defeat with most of their planes destroyed and we had no ships sunk and very limited causalities it would have been harder to go to war. The other problem which the intelligence people always worry about was that we had broken their Purple code which helped us win in the end. Churchill had a similar event when the Allies had broken the German's code and the Brits knew they were going to bomb Coventry and did not prepare.
Would we have eventually gone to war with Japan - probably. Would it had been right after Pearl Harbor?
Given the plusses and minuses, it doesn't make sense to me. Sorry. A sneak attack in 1941 brings war.
A reminder, Hitler declared War on the United States, after Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. FDR did not promote war with Germany, there were too many Americans who wanted the USA to stay out of the war, until Germany Attacked their patron saints the Soviet Union.
Read this book for background:
https://amzn.to/3ufF7cd
Whittaker Chambers knew what was going on, and described the situation well in his book Witness.
Except for the part where none of what you said is true, sure.
What was covered up was bureaucratic incompetence, not deliberate duplicity.
OK…sure
Interesting observations. I, too, am scheduled to be in Deerfield this week and would very much like to be in this conversation.
FDR is complex. He was a WASP blue blood who was a product of Endicott Peabody's Groton school (America certainly needs more headmasters like Endicott Peabody who founded Groton to shift the upper class focus on vulgar self-interest to purposeful service). FDR was not faithful in his marriage and is similar to Trump in that he defied the elites of his day to focus on common Americans.
My friend Luke Nathan Phillips had a lot to say on FDR and the New Dealers from a similar angle. See: https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2023/08/lives-of-the-new-dealers/
Good luck for that actually happening!
Every President we've had appeared with and in
specific circumstances, never to be repeated!
This is absurd, as FDR brought communists into the federal government and essentially gave away Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union after WW2 because of the travesty of Yalta. He was also a drug addict and an adulterous man, along with his adulterous wife, BOTH were morally corrupt. FDR was also a racist who sent thousands of Japanese Americans to internment camps, along with confiscating their businesses, when they had done NOTHING to betray their new country either before or during WW2.
I'm curious what you think of Winston Churchill
A UK leader who was also a mixed bag who along with FDR gave away Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union in the agreement in Yalta. He led the British Government also had Soviet Spies, some who it took until the 1960s to expose. But, he was better than Chamberlain, and he led well, in the British role in WW 2 to help destroy the Nazis of Germany and the racists warmongers of Japan in the Pacific. Churchill and his government never imprisoned people with Japanese ancestry, who lived in the Pacific former British empire.
My father ran as a New Deal Democrat for the Massachusetts State House in the 1930s. He lost because at that time Massachusetts was a very Republican state even during the New Deal. But before he died in the 70s and watching what the New Deal did to the nation, he would joke that the reason they put the large marble monument on Roosevelt’s grave was to make sure he didn’t get out. Let’s keep FDR in the grave.
The New Deal was almost as effective at strangling the USA, as was Stalin's forced Famine in Ukraine that killed millions of his own people. It was a Soviet sponsored program, particularly with the Soviet Spies and agents who were involved in it's design and effects.