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FDR’s Timeless Warning; Randy Shannon; Progressive Democrats of America – PA 12th CD Chapter; October 13, 2012.
You can learn more about BCR’s leftster management here.
From 2004 to 2008, the BCT published at least 17 letters from Mr. Shannon. I found none since 2008. You can find my critiques of those letters here, here, here, here, and here. In addition to what you learned about Mr. Shannon’s positions here and in his letters to the editor, consider the following exchange on a fellow BCR member’s Facebook wall (9/27/11).
Lefty #1: “Capitalism has to go. Merely taxing/regulating always fails in the end.”
Mr. Shannon: “Divide and conquer. Take down the crazy bankers first.”
The most recent previous Randy Shannon piece I critiqued was “Banksters Turn against Obama.”
Mr. Shannon posted a video entitled “FDR: Warning about Today’s Republicans” but provided no commentary. The video is an excerpt from Mr. Roosevelt’s speech before the Democratic State Convention (9/29/36). The person who uploaded the video to YouTube wrote, “FDR tells the truth about the leaders of the modern Republican party. Somehow, in 1936, he foresaw what would be happening NOW.”
Here’s what FDR said in that video clip.
“Let me warn you and let me warn the Nation against the smooth evasion that says ‘Of course we believe these things. We believe in Social Security. We believe in work for the unemployed. We believe in saving homes. Cross our hearts and hope to die. [audience laughter] We believe in all these things. But we do not like the way the present administration is doing them. Just turn them over to us. [audience laughter] We will do all of them. We will do more of them. We will do them better. And most important of all, the doing of them will not cost anybody anything.’ [audience laughter]”
As a conservative, I’m glad to see the video. If I were a knowledgeable lefty, I wouldn’t be happy at all. FDR would be crazy to give that speech today. Here’s why.
Regarding Socialist Security, it’s a mess by design. If honest, even someone who believes in SS (and its spawn Medicare) has to concede it could have been done in such a way that participants got a much better return and the government had no financial involvement.
Regarding “work for the unemployed,” after FDR had been in office for nine years, the U.S. was still solidly in the Depression. The unemployment rate was still a very high 14.6% in 1940 (down from 24.9% in 1933) and didn’t get below 10% until 1941 (9.9%) just before World War II. Even FDR’s Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau conceded, “We have never made good on our promises … I say after eight years of this Administration we have just as much unemployment as when we started … And an enormous debt to boot.”
Regarding “saving homes,” Fannie Mae was part of FDR’s New Deal and was a major enabler of the 2008 subprime mortgage mess that led to the recession.
Mr. Shannon doesn’t appear to recognize the words FDR attributed to Republicans are the very words used by FDR himself and Democrats via the New Deal to take responsibility for retirement, providing employment, and keeping a home from you and me and give that power over our lives to government. They were also the words used by LBJ and Democrats to sell the Great Society programs (Medicare, Medicaid, etc.), Jimmy Carter and Democrats to sell the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, and Barack Obama and Democrats to ram through Obamacare without a single Republican vote. It’s not a mistake we read people claim “Under [Obamacare], checkups are free.”
There are plenty of ways to deal with society’s challenges without selling our souls to government. Conservatives know that, and so do lefties.
To close, here’s a speech JFK presented to the Economic Club of New York on December 14, 1962. While Mr. Kennedy didn’t get everything right in this speech, he got pretty close in his discussion of tax-rate cuts. I’m relatively confident you won’t see any of today’s Democrats/leftists call attention to this speech.
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity. <g>
© 2004-2012 Robert W. Cox, all rights reserved.