I, of all people, know that public schools often function as indoctrination camps. However, it still took me by surprise when, on June 21, the EMC2 students named Franklin Roosevelt as “the greatest president.” There was no right answer to the question I posed to the students, but FDR was definitely a wrong one.
Of course, the students knew that FDR had ordered the internment of Japanese Americans during the Second World War, and faulted him for that. But they still chose him as the greatest president because he “ended the Great Depression” and “led us through WWII.” But such a simple analysis ignores many other crimes of FDR, and, quite frankly, attributes to FDR achievements that were not his.
FDR did not end the Great Depression. In fact, he prolonged and worsened it. Yes, he certainly “took action” in trying to relieve the economic ills faced by most Americans during the 30s, but these actions were misguided. Roosevelt spent more during his presidency than all previous presidents combined, and he instituted hundreds of new programs and regulatory schemes that were ostensibly designed to end the downturn, all to no avail. The unemployment rate was higher in 1938 than it was when Roosevelt was elected, in 1932. It wasn’t until WWII that the unemployment rate returned to semi-normal levels. This was helped, no doubt, by the fact that a fifth of American men were drafted into war. But some of Roosevelt’s schemes were just ghastly: the AAA, for example, operating on the assumption that prices were too low and must be raised by any means, attempted to reduce the supply of crops and livestock provided by the farms. Yes, at a time when people were starving and wearing out their hand-me-downs, FDR drastically increased the cost of food and clothing. This also exacerbated the unemployment problem: some two million farmhands lost their jobs because the government was paying farmers not to grow anything.
Moreover, the massive amount of money that Roosevelt spent on public works projects, which is something everyone seems to love, was financed ultimately by tax dollars. Everyone can cheer when the government spends money, but they all too often forget that every dollar the government spends is a dollar that the government took. Money spent by the Tennessee Valley Authority on new dams was money that couldn’t be spent by American businesses on other, actually profitable, projects. Other New Deal programs, such as the minimum wage, social security, strengthening of labor unions, increased taxes on the rich, nationalized industries, etc., contributed to an atmosphere of what Dr. Robert Higgs has termed “regime uncertainty,” which makes businesses less likely to invest in new projects because they’re worried about what the future holds for the security of their property rights. Indeed, private investment was at an exceptionally low rate throughout the Great Depression. It wasn’t until WWII created reliable income streams for certain industries that investment increased.
Something that all the students probably heard about in school but did not mention during the exercise (that I heard) was Roosevelt’s court-packing plan. During the first years of his presidency, the Supreme Court again and again struck down unconstitutional measures that were passed as part of the New Deal. In response, Roosevelt threatened to add a number of justices to the court, so that the majority would be in his favor. This plan was never instituted, but four justices retired from the court shortly afterward, and so Roosevelt got his majority anyway. This is the same majority that gave us such horrible cases as Wickard v. Filburn, which held that growing some corn yourself on your own property to feed your own animals constituted interstate commerce, and was therefore subject to regulation by the Department of Agriculture. The decisions of the Roosevelt court haunt us to this day.
A crime that most students probably haven’t heard of is perhaps the most important. In April of 1933, Roosevelt ordered the confiscation of every ounce of gold held by private entities in the U.S. He also embraced the Thomas Amendment, which gave him the power to change the gold content of the dollar. The dollar had been set equal in value to about 1/20th an ounce of gold in 1832. For more than a century, there had been zero net inflation in the United States. After the actions of FDR, severing the relationship between the dollar and gold, control over money was held by the federal government, who has manipulated it in such a way that the dollar has lost more than 97% of its purchasing power. Inflation hurts many Americans; its prominence in the American economy began with FDR.
Finally, Roosevelt’s role in WWII was not what it appeared to be. The attack on the Greer, for instance, was provoked; the Greer had been tracking the German submarine for hours before the attack, and fired first. Pearl Harbor was partially instigated by the economic warfare that FDR had been waging against the Japanese through his strictly nationalist trade policies. In fact, there is evidence that FDR was trying to provoke the Japanese to attack, and knew about the impending bombing of Pearl Harbor ten days before it occurred. He also made necessary the use of atomic weapons for the first time in history. The classic justification for the use of the atomic bomb is that it saved more lives than it took, both Japanese civilians and American soldiers. But this is only because the U.S., under Roosevelt’s direction, was demanding total surrender. If FDR had been willing to accept a normal surrender, under which Japan could have kept its Emperor, there would have been no need for the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
I will give credit where credit is due: Roosevelt did end Prohibition. Now people can legally drown all of their sorrows caused by the other results of his reign. “Hurrah!”
No comments:
Post a Comment