In "Confessions of a Recovering Democrat," Burt Prelutsky punches through the myth about Franklin D. Roosevelt to say what he really accomplished:
The fact is, Roosevelt simply introduced an American form of Communism, one the country was willing to swallow. There were no gulags or show trials; instead, there was an alphabet soup of new federal departments and bureaucracies, whose sole purpose was to diminish the power of the states and its citizens. FDR tried and pretty much succeeded in turning the federal government into a grotesque, power-crazy, creature that was all mouth and no brain. Compared to Roosevelt, Dr. Frankenstein was small potatoes.
Roosevelt can’t even be credited with leading the country out of the Great Depression. If anything, as others, including Amity Shlaes in her terrific book, “The Forgotten Man,” have pointed out, his economic policies undoubtedly prolonged the nation’s agony. In a move that would have delighted such knuckleheads as John Edwards and George Soros, FDR kept increasing taxes during the 1930s. Only an old time lefty or a modern-day Democrat would ever imagine that the solution to a financial malaise would be to increase the tax burden on businesses and individuals. It took World War II, not Roosevelt’s left-wing machinations, to get America back on its feet.
Like Prelutsky, my folks were registered Democrats, and they also worshipped the ground FDR walked on. That was the spin the elitists put on things, and in that simpler age when good people thought they could trust our institutions, people believed it.
Yet the truth is, FDR's policies exacerbated the Great Depression, and dealt a tremendous blow to the freedom and small government America was intended to operate by. This country has not been the same since FDR's administration...and it has been to our detriment.
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