'Raw Deal'

Historian makes waves with scathing look at Franklin D. Roosevelt
Burton Folsom Jr.'s book livens up the 'tea party'-driven debate over how to interpret America's past.

by Mark Z. Barabak - February 12th, 2011 - Los Angeles Times

Many tea partyers, for instance, speak as though the Founders favored a small, circumscribed federal government, when in fact some wanted a more powerful Washington than we have today. (James Madison proposed a national veto over state laws.) In a recent speech, Rep. Michele Bachmann (R-Minn.) extolled the Founding Fathers' efforts to end slavery, when they actually made inequality the law, passing legislation counting blacks as three-fifths of a person.

This is an interesting article about an extremely controversial topic. The views in the paragraph above indicate the amazing dichotomy of filters through which so many left wing zealots view history. As an example, the obviously liberal writer acts as if the anecdotal evidence that a few founders philosophized about concepts that might support a more powerful government -- was not trumped by the fact that those views did not prevail. It is especially ignorant to try and count Madison among those who favored a powerful central government. The writer (and left wing historians in general) also misstate the loss of the argument by the slave states (who wanted to count their slaves in full for representation and settled for getting three fifths of their number counted) as if it was general agreement by our nation that slavery was just and blacks were not full people. This bigoted misrepresentation is loved by the left.

In fact, as history proves to those who are not biased, most of our founders opposed slavery. At the time of our nation's creation slavery was tolerated in a minority of our states. The majority of states opposed slavery. The creation early in our nation's history of the Abolitionist movement, which banned the importation of slaves, generated laws in the North for the end of slavery, and which was winning the battle to end slavery in the South so effectively that it triggered secession, is ignored as an American attribute by the same bigoted historians who laud its goals. They act as if the abolitionist movement was not embraced by America.

As proof, it is generally ignored by the left that nearly half a million white Americans died to end slavery. Those American soldiers wrote letters home, copies of which still exist in large numbers in museums, about their pride in risking death for the war against slavery. The majority of our nation, America, considered slavery an evil. However those who hate our economic system of free enterprise, practice an unparalleled deceit when they blame our nation for the very scourge that we fought a war to end. A perfect example of this is the snarly pretension that Michelle Bachman is wrong when she notes, it was not America that embraced slavery, but a minority of states who the majority of Americans opposed.

By what logic of hypocrisy is America still punished for the sins of those we fought and defeated?

The same applies to economic issues. Left wing historians ignore the speed and success by which Calvin Coolidge ended the recession of 1920, a recession more severe than the one that Hoover and Roosevelt failed miserably to end. Coolidge's success led to the roaring twenties and one of the greatest periods of wealth creation and increased standard of living for the middle class that has ever happened. Coolidge accomplished that by getting government off the backs of the people.

The failure by Roosevelt to end the recession of 1930 is directly attributable to his taxing productive citizens for giveaways that produced nothing but government edifices. It is time that the lies of the left be addressed. It is still arguable whether truth will prevail, but at the very least, it is no longer being suppressed.