Friday, November 16, 2012
Another Peel Off the Roosevelt Onion
You think that the Obama folks have stretched the Commerce Clause? I'm telling you here, it is nothing compared to what FDR and company did during the National Recovery Act. These people actually fined a farmer for (get this) growing too much wheat on his own farm for his own family consumption. The official "reasoning" (as espoused in Wickard versus Filburn) was that, by growing so much of his own food on his own farmland, he was in essence buying less of it on the open market and thereby interfering with "commerce".........................................................................................Look, I can handle a certain amount of government intervention in the market but this was borderline fascism, and the fact that to this day there are still people out there who say that Roosevelt was a better President than Truman is astonishing, I think.
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14 comments:
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Oh the sophistry of your argument.
To this day, that there are still people out there who even care to question that Roosevelt was a great President in the right place at the right time, is astonishing. But hey, keep fighting previous generations' lost battles ...
Thomas Jefferson faced the same type of situation in 1804? with the Louisiana Purchase. (The opportunity to expand USA with a purchase of land from France is no where addressed in US Constitution.) His actions established in Presidential governance the concept that the President can act unless the Constitution specifically denies said action.
(To help all the 2012 election sore losers advocating secession from USA here is a suggestion. Maybe the Supreme Court will allow you to present a legal brief declaring President Jefferson's Louisiana action unconstitutional.)
This is the glory of the Constitution of USA; it is a living document and not a straight-jacket.
EMA Nymton
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Hiccup did you Ema?
Ema darling, I've admitted on many occasions that Roosevelt was a great war-time President (his targeting of women, children, and the elderly notwithstanding) but to say that he was great handler of the economy is laughable. No less a liberal icon as John Maynard Keynes wrote an open letter to the New York Times pleading with Roosevelt to cease and desist with this idiotic National Recovery Act and the Brookings Institution did likewise. And the fact that ANY leader of ANY country would dictate to a free human being how much he can grow for his own consumption is chilling.
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In the 1930's? Now this is current.
Ema Nymton
~@:o?
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I study history, Ema darling.
Truman, JFK, and Clinton were very good Democratic Presidents. The modern-day left would be far better served by emulating them, I think.
But Will, Ema has Hope and Change coursing their arteries and veins, and now she has the Forward meme of the President to cling to. You understand right? I mean it just ain't right to question the politics of Hope and Change or Forward. No matter that reverse is becoming our new forward.
But, the people spoke, so, lets give the President everything he asks for. Cause at the end of the day he won. And at the end of the term only by giving him everything will he, and they (democrat socialists as opposed to rEpublican socialists) accept that if things don't improve it was the Presidents policies.
Off topic a tad but I just felt the need for that closing.
I'm an independent but there's a part of me that wishes that the Dems had maintained control of the Congress in 2010. That way there wouldn't have been any ambiguity and we would know for certain if "it" worked or not (essentially what you're saying here but in reverse).
Les, not to glorify Truman (all of these guys; Roosevelt, Reagan, Kennedy, even Lincoln, are mixed bags, in my opinion) but it was him (along with some help from a Republican Congress) who got us out of the Depression. He did away with rationing and price supports, cut federal spending (the opposites of what the Keynesians wanted him to), and stopped the constant threatening and bad-mouthing of business that had created a strong sense of regime uncertainty. I really wish that the historians would focus more on him and less on FDR.
Ema: it is a wonderfully American thing to question authority, even authorities from the 1930's. On top of that, Will makes very sound points. Your "don't question that great man" logic is both unintellectual and un-American.
"I'm an independent but there's a part of me that wishes that the Dems had maintained control of the Congress in 2010."
I'm glad they didn't. It was the Republican resurgence in the House that helped stopped the Obamacession nosedive. Without them, we wouldn't even have the weak recovery we've had on and off.
Will, Truman was in my estimation one of our finest Presidents. He was a common man with uncommon wisdom. If only we had politicians with his integrity in our time. Unfortunately such it seems isn't to be.
I suspect that you're right, dmarks (I especially find it hilarious that Obama is now taking credit for the slower growth in spending that only happened because of the Republicans). I just wish that the American people had a more clear-cut situation to decipher, that's all.......I totally agree, Les. In fact, I'd probably put him in the top 5.
Also thank you for coming up with a great 1960s psychedelic band name, up there in the post title.
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