talkpolitics | Speaking of legends instead of facts:

underlankers.livejournal.com posting in

Which US President presided over one of the most infamous racially motivated incarcerations of US citizens in the country's history, for which he is ironically lauded by the opposition that hated him then? Which US President willingly sent Soviet dissidents to certain death at the hands of Stalin's death squads? Which US President successfully hid the effects of a major disease with the collaboration of the US Media? Which US President assumed the most wide-ranging power of any POTUS in the country's history, shamelessly breaking one of the oldest precedents, forcing US soldiers to go fight foreign wars against an enemy who really was none of our business in imperialism against a people that appointed an unpleasant megalomaniac, but he was the problem of that part of the world? Which President used a new and insidious means of communication to spread his shameless propaganda into our HOMES?

Which President was it that shamelessly violated the letter and the spirit of Neutrality Acts passed by the Congress representing the Silent Majority of the American People who weren't in the least bothered by what the aforementioned megalomaniac was doing? Which President yielded to dangerous radicals who exploited without shame a war against that self-same megalomaniacal radical for purely selfish ends? Which US President was it under whom the US government assumed a power that it had never before considered remotely valid, only to extend these immoral and unjust expansions, including (horror of horrors) lifting a dirt-poor mountainous region out of the Stone Age (I kid, but barely) to that most evil and immoral of things, the draft? Under which US President was the HUAC led by a Soviet spy?

The answer is beneath the cut:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franklin_D._Roosevelt

Now, this is the problem with pointing out that Reagan of propaganda-bordering-on-myth is not really the Reagan of real life. This is very much a valid point, but the patron saint of the progressive-liberal state did a lot of things that most modern liberals consider among the most immoral aspects of US society, such as acceptable use of strategic bombing, beginning the Manhattan Project, interning Japanese only on the mainland foreknowing that there was nothing but racism in it (as opposed to the Germans and Italians who actually were pro-Nazi), edit he also was POTUS when HUAC took its full form as a standing Congressional Committee, while expanding the US government's political power in ways that while necessary were entirely unprecedented. Similarly he was an undeclared member of the Allied Powers from 1940 which was very much violations of international law then and now.

So, I'm going to ask a simple question: As it's pretty much a given that Reagan, as an actual human being as opposed to a monomanical ideologue did not match his ideology, what does the real record of Franklin Delano Roosevelt mean? Would it be fair to say that he's actually not that much of a Progressive any more than Reagan was a zealous Conservative?

One more thing:

Remember when Reagan was responsible for losing the Cold War?

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=940DE5DD163FF934A25752C0A96E948260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=1

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

langostino.livejournal.com

Tiny gripe: how did FDR establish a Congressional committee?

From:

underlankers.livejournal.com

He didn't. However, it took shape *as* HUAC under him from its precursor and he wasn't shy about using it or particularly bothered that the US Congress would have an Un-American Activities Committee.

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