Speaking of legends instead of facts:

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

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

Comments

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

I'm sure that the Deutscher Amerikaner Bund is quite content to have been forgotten by the German-American community.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

To be fair, he is right. There existed Italian-American and German-American internment during WWII, mainly they were stationed in New Mexico, under executive order 9066. The numbers are however extremely small compared to the Japanese-American numbers. I studied the two FDR executive orders, along with a lot of material around the internment camps, since we have a very known one in Colorado (Camp Amache) and I wrote a piece of work about Gov. Ralph Carr's original documents last year. Ralph Carr being basically the only good politician in America during that time in regards to "enemy aliens". Both his fellow Republicans as well as opposing Democrats had deeply problematic views on immigrants after Pearl Harbor.

If you want to read the stuff I wrote, you can message me privately. It is on the Internet on some University open access databases, but it gives out my real name, so I want to not open it up completely in here.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Carr and J. Edgar Hoover (ironically, very, very ironically). He's right that there was internment of them, however the Germans and Italians interned had connections either directly with the Hitler and Mussolini regimes or were members of fascist-sympathizing movements like the Deutsche Amerikaner Bund. Where the Japanese interned by Order 9066 had no evidence that they were remotely connected to the Imperial Japanese regime, and were on the mainland, where the largest number of Japanese including *real* sympathizers in Hawaii itself were never interned.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

Well, Hawaii was an independent State back then, so maybe that made a difference in federal politics. As for the rest, I haven't studied the German and Italan Americans and their private lives, just the Japanese ones, and as you say, they were very patriotic and devoted to the US in their outlook on the whole situation.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

Actually it was not a state at all but a territory. My point with that is that if the internment *had* targeted actual sympathizers with Imperial Japan's cause the way the internment of Germans and Italians did there would be less to criticize. It did none of those things and was a cheap sop to the racists.

[sealwhiskers.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I meant independent territory, sorry (As I understand it, kept so for many decades by commercial magnates who wanted cheap trade and labor).
In any case, I realized that Hawaii was under martial law after Pearl Harbor, and for a good long while, so maybe that kind of answers the question of internment too.

[underlankers.livejournal.com]

That and those commercial magnates overthrew the Monarchy for what could be termed the most libertarian society in existence bar Somalia. Not entirely. Given that if Japan had somehow magicked up the ability to invade the USA, guess where it would have been geographically bound to strike first?

[jerseycajun.livejournal.com]

Side note: Why keep bringing up Somalia as if it was the natural result of libertarianism when even most libertarians would tell you one of the minimal expected roles of government is to keep the peace?