07-02-2022, 07:12 AM
(07-01-2022, 02:57 PM)JasonBlack Wrote:(06-30-2022, 06:47 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Washington, Lincoln, FDR -- the man who defined the Presidency, the one who saved the Union, and the one who saved Western Christian civilization (if with the aid of his good buddy Sir Winston Churchill): A+. Washington may have lacked the expertise, but other than that, (consider the times) the more that one diverges from Washington's practice, the more trouble one gets into.I only have have a few minutes until I'm done with my lunch, but briefly, I'm curious as to what actual policies you from FDR. Even as a staunch right winger, I have to give credit where credit is due with regards to leadership, but I honestly can't think of a good policy he delivered, which, imo, is a crucial factor to consider if one is going to give someone an A+.
1. Backing the banks. This was critical. Banks were the places through which the money flowed, whether collections of receivables, disbursements of payables, payroll of most people,. and loans of all kinds other than shylock fraud. If the banks failed, everything would go to barter, which would have burned millions more after the devastation of bank runs... putting America back on barter.
2. Social Security. It got elderly people out of industrial work in which old people were especially prone to crippling and fatal accidentws not only for themselves but for co-workers.
3. more openness to union organizing. To be sure, some people curse unions as a hardship for those industrialists who would be more efficient if only labor were cheaper and more easily expendable -- but unions gave workers a stake in capitalism.,
4. Public works put America back to work, and New Deal projects include some inconceivable in the 1920's like the Tennessee Valley Authority still useful today.
5. Taking as tough a stand on the fascist aggressors as was possible.
6. Ending the hypocrisy and icorruption of Prohibition.
FDR saved American capitalism from its worst tendencies in the most critical time, one in which capitalism could have failed in America.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.