Is that your best criticism of FDR, that America changed during his presidency?
No, that's the best praise that nuthugger Notarightwinger could come up with.
How about this?
He threatened our very republic, exacerbated a depression, saddled future generations with unsustainable obligations, got into bed with murderous tyrants - all the way down under the sheets, and trampled in the most fundamental way on the rights and freedoms of over one hundred thousand innocent, loyal Americans, including some of the very best and bravest we've ever had. He was absolutely despicable.
His economic policies not only mirrored those of Mussolini and Hitler, but engendered their pride.
From Schivelbusch, “Three New Deals,” ...
1. The
National Socialists hailed these ‘relief measures’ in ways you will recognize:
a. May 11, 1933, the Nazi newspaper Volkischer Beobachter, (People’s Observer): “
Roosevelt’s Dictatorial Recovery Measures.”
b. And on January 17, 1934, “We, too, as German National Socialists are looking toward America…” and
“Roosevelt’s adoption of National Socialist strains of thought in his economic and social policies” comparable to Hitler’s own dictatorial ‘Fuhrerprinzip.’
c. And “[Roosevelt], too demands that collective good be put before individual self-interest. Many passages in his book ‘Looking Forward’ could have been written by a National Socialist….one can assume that he feels considerable affinity with the National Socialist philosophy.”
d. The paper also refers to “…the fictional appearance of democracy.”
2. In 1938, American ambassador Hugh R. Wilson reported to FDR his conversations with Hitler:
“Hitler then said that he had watched with interest the methods which you, Mr. President, have been attempting to adopt for the United States…. I added that you were very much interested in certain phases of the sociological effort, notably for the youth and workmen, which is being made in Germany…” cited in “Franklin D. Roosevelt and Foreign Affairs,” vol.2, p. 27.
3.
English and French commentators routinely depicted Roosevelt as akin to Mussolini. A more specific reason why, in 1933, the
New Deal was often compared with Fascism was that with the help of a massive propaganda campaign, Italy had transitioned from a liberal free-market system to a state-run corporatist one. And corporatism was considered by elitists and intellectuals as the perfect response to the collapse of the liberal free-market economy, as was the national self-sufficiency of the Stalinist Soviet Union. The National Recovery Administration was comparable to MussoliniÂ’s corporatism as both had state control without actual expropriation of private property.
a.
Mussolini wrote a book review of Roosevelt’s “Looking Forward,” in which he said “…[as] Roosevelt here calls his readers to battle, is reminiscent of the ways and means by which Fascism awakened the Italian people.” Popolo d’Italia, July 7, 1933.
b. In 1934, Mussolini wrote a review of “New Frontiers,” by FDR’s Sec’y of Agriculture, later Vice-President, Henry Wallace: “Wallace’s answer to what America wants is as follows: anything but a return tyo the free-market, i.e., anarchistic economy.
Where is America headed? This book leaves no doubt that it is on the road to corporatism, the economic system of the current century.” Marco Sedda, Il politico, vol. 64, p. 263.
