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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: nihil who wrote (60409)	8/26/2001 1:42:15 AM
From: JF Quinnelly	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 71178

Anyone of political intelligence who has read the history of the 1920's to 1945 and thought about the choices available will be forced to conclude ... That's what we call "asserting the premise". Get yourself a copy of Copi's Logic and you can learn to avoid this simple error. Or try pulling it on someone who won't notice. I don't know that we would disagree too much on the events of the 30s, but we would disagree on FDR's place in history. I'd rate him as a very poor President, and that far from "saving" the West, he made things far worse. Without his utterly foolish pandering to Stalin, the Soviet Union would never have gobbled up Eastern and Central Europe with 40 years of Cold War ensuing, complete with two very hot wars in Asia. What can be learned from a number of historians is that a large number of FDR's programs were ones that Hoover had proposed but hadn't yet implemented. Herbert Hoover, of course, had administered American aid after WWI, and had kept Europe from starving. Hoover knew all about huge government relief programs, and how to run them, despite all the lies created about him by the New Dealers for the their political advantage. Those smears against Hoover have been among the most persistent in American politics. We can learn that the massive bank failures of the early 30s, which certainly were at the root of the Depression, could have been alleviated if the one politician with legal authority over the major banks had acted to save the banking system- and that man was the Governor of New York, who happened to be Franklin Roosevelt. American Presidents had little influence over the banking system prior to the reforms of the 30s. FDR failed to act not out of malice, but because he was an economic ignoramus, as we can see by his attempts to model the American political economy after Italy and the Soviets. All of FDR's "saving" did nothing to end the Depression- in fact it came back with renewed vengeance in 1936 despite all of his attempts at making America a command economy. What pulled America out of the Depression was the huge war spending from abroad that began in the late 30s. Britain, not the Soviets, brought the Germans to a halt by defeating the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain- while the USSR was still the ally of Nazi Germany, feasting on the carcass of Poland, burying Polish officers in a mass grave in Katyn Forest. But I digress. FDR was spoiling for war. There were three naval engagements between Germany and the US Navy before Pearl Harbor, including the torpedo sinking of an American destroyer by U-boats. Congress and the public didn't see this as a causus belli, apparently thinking that FDR was provoking trouble by pursuing and harassing U-boats. For two years he tried to goad the Germans, but didn't have the success he wanted. He was much more successful at provoking Japan, as we know, with results that surely suprised him. The most fascinating theory Fleming puts forward in his book explains why Hitler declared war on us, shortly after Pearl Harbor. He credits FDR, the master politician, with a timely leak to the newspapers of America's top secret war plan, "Rainbow Five"- a leak which would have been for the sole benefit of one Adolph Hitler, in order to goad him into wanting to fight us. If FDR did in fact do this, it was a truly master stroke of political genius.