ViRedd says--PS: Please read the links. Two of my favorite writers.
I read them. The one thing I get from them is that things don't change, and Power just doesn't appear. Just like in "V for Vendetta", people create problems that they have the solution for, and allow others to suffer while they use the dilemma to prove to us how important they are. Really though, how does one revolt against this? I just posted a thread on the paradox of freedom, which kinda sums up my opinion on what the problem boils down to.
And yes, there is a sanctity in the name of FDR...I can remember once getting fiery hell rained down upon me because, in an argument against federal powers, I called Abe Lincoln some choice names, one of which was "cocksucker". I have read all of Lincoln's public speeches, read many of his letters and followed his legislation, and I honestly think that Lincoln really messed up this country.
But when you read your history, formulate an educated opinion, you are simply shot down. Lincoln "freed the slaves", is the immediate reaction. How then could I think he was an asshole?
Simple, Lincoln didn't free the slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation only outlawed slavery in the Confederate states, not the loyal border states. The people who freed the slaves were the slaves themselves who rebelled and escaped, and the abolitionists constantly pestering their congressmen. Lincoln wanted to abolish slavery in order to cripple the south and to gain support from the abolitionist movement as another rally cry for the troops. I have extensive southern roots from my mother's side, and no one in my family even knew anyone with slaves. If Lincoln really wanted to abolish "Slavery" he would have done more for the immigrant miners or the mill workers up north who had to pay for their own equipment from the company store on the few pennies a day they earned. Lincoln detested Unions. What Lincoln did was cement the ever growing Federal powers to steal legislative control from the States. Yes, he had some good, righteous ideas, but he wasn't the saint that history paints him as. Don't forget, he was one of the original founders of our beloved Republican party...
Anyhow, I had to back up my cocksucker claim briefly before I got called a racist again. I think the problem is that every president did good things and bad, and these men are not sitting alone in a room. They have brain trusts and the checks and balances of a whole government. I agree with FDR's choices to spend, because he was trying to spend it on an infrastructure...that is until the war. I wrote my history thesis on Vaudeville, and I learned a lot about the New Deal learning about Vaudville's death throws. You can argue, but I see many correlations between FDR and Regan--spend money to get money moving. People bitch about dropping the gold standard, but gold is too rare for a population growing at the rate we were. I don't think consumer confidence is a better idea to back currency, but at the time, it sounded like a good idea, at least to rich people.
And ultimately, you can't run for president if you don't have money, and you wouldn't want to be president if you didn't have dreams of power. Poverty and oppression are foreign concepts to the upper class. They know they have to fix them, but, much like the dishes in my sink right now, they will have to wait.
