FDR is #1!?
Ain't that a bee with an itch
Then again, I shouln't be surprised the Brits think he's great; they think Churchill's great too and he almost single-handedly destroyed the Empire.
Let's look at some things FDR did during his illustrious presidency:
1) Supported more pieces of unconstitutional (as found by the Supreme Court) legislation than any president in history.
2) Tried to pack the Supreme Court
3) Didn't manage to end the depression until he was dead.
4) Purposely tried to start a war with Japan by specifically instructing US diplomats to refuse any diplomatic offer the Japanese brought to the table.
5) Managed to be unprepared for said war.
6) Blatantly violated US neutrality for absolutely no reason other than Anglophilia, all without the consent of the people.
7) Went to war with Germany, at the expense of hundreds of thousands of American lives and untold sums of money, and yet failed to accomplish any of the war's supposed original aims.
8) In addition to not liberating Poland, a dozen more countries, almost all of which preferred the Germans to the Russians, ended up behind the Iron Curtain for half a century.
9) Sanctioned the internment and prosecution of tens of thousands of Americans on the basis of their ethnicity
10) As has been mentioned, signed social suck-urity, the bankrupt retirement program that pays stipends nobody could possibly live decently on, into law.
11) Allied with a monster who killed far more people via systematic methods of extermination than Hitler ever did.
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The really funny thing about all this is that most of the stuff people hate GW Bush for are things FDR did in extremis, and yet people adore him. It just goes to show how effectively the public consciousness can be whitewashed, just as was done with Wilson's presidency during WW1. Wilson accomplished absolutely nothing he set out to do; his own ideals were torn apart by his allies. The League of Nations and the idea of self-determination for all nations were dead before he ever set foot in Paris. He condoned and turned a blind eye to violence and inhumane treatment of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, Italian-Americans, and so on and so forth. He personally referred to what he called "hyphenates" as something resembling a blight upon society on many occassions, and yet nobody remembers
that. Hardly a wonder, just look in a high-school textbook and see if you find any mention of such things. How wise we are to let the state ensure that we all receive a proper education.
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I hate to dog on our British cousins so much because I like them, even if their overriding ambition is to tax all of our tea and quarter their troops in our homes
, but this ludicrousness that seems to govern their public mindset has to stop. If any nation in the world should know a thing or two about the dangers of the fallacies of idolizing great men for no other reason than "inspirational leadership", as the article puts it, and pursuing interventionist policies, it's Britain. What
was easily the greatest empire the world has ever seen was reduced to a shadow of its former self in the span of less than a century, a process which began the moment that the aristocracy tried to "freeze" things as they were, so to speak, through military activity, restrictive trade policies, and later, a socialist outlook.
The US is doing the same thing right now, and it has been doing so for quite some time. It will take longer for us to fail because we have so many unbelievably unfair advantages in terms of geography and economy, but it
will happen if our national attitude does not become more pragmatic in the near future. That doesn't mean elevating arrogant, incompetent powermongers (and especially those who are part of a political dynasty
) to the status of sainthood simply because of their ideals or charisma.
I'd go on, but I think I'm sure I've gone on enough for those who cared to read all that. Thanks in advance to those who have something to add. I know I haven't responded to many posts in the past few months because I've been busy or out-of-state, but I've got some time off so I won't be inadvertently posting stuff and then seemingly ignoring the responses for a while yet.