I didn’t say that, and I don’t believe that, so don’t put words in my mouth.
The detainment of the Japanese was unconscionable, and easily the biggest mistep of FDR’s career, but he did a LOT of things right for America and the World, and on balance his good FAR outweighed the bad.
FDR’s was the strongest supporter of labor that this nation has ever had, and his New Deal was the best Worker-oriented program in history. Because of his support of labor and unions, we got all the workplace protections that we have today:
FDR’s labor reforms, primarily enacted through the New Deal (1933–1938), established federal rights for workers, including the first national minimum wage, a 40-hour workweek, child labor bans, and the right to collective bargaining. Key legislation included the Wagner Act (1935) for unionization and the Fair Labor Standards Act (1938).
Do you think we got things like paid vacations, sick days, and 8 hour work days because the generosity of Corporations? No, we FORCED them to recognize workplace health/safety/environmental regulations, and treat workers like humans instead of animals, or machines, to be exploited to death, and discarded, and FDR was the president that championed all that, and made it happen.
And don’t forget, he also established Social Security, so we don’t have an Army of old people camping in our streets of every American city.
Then after all that, FDR won WWII, and kept us all from having to learn to speak German and/or Japanese.
So yeah, out of four terms, in which he set American workers on a dignified path for their daily labor, and saved the world from one of the most psychotic nations in the history of the world, he made one bad mistake by succumbing to the fears of the nation during one of our darkest periods. While it should always be acknowledged as a serious mistake, it should never fully define his entire legacy.
I didn’t say that, and I don’t believe that, so don’t put words in my mouth.
Ok, but
he did a LOT of things right for America and the World, and on balance his good FAR outweighed the bad.
The very next paragraph, and the rest of the post, is essentially “I said that, and I believe that”.
Pointing out that he also did things you like is justifying the atrocities he committed. If a man throws people into concentration camps that’s the only thing we should ever talk about when his name comes up. There’s no coming back from that. Your attitude is giving me “Mussolini made the trains run on time” vibes.
I never said that anything “excuses” the mistake of the Japanese Internet camps. I said that they should be acknowledged as the horrific mistake that it was, but ON BALANCE, he was a highly successful president, even with that black mark. That’s not excusing it, it is treating history responsibly, and not trying weaponize it to advance an agenda.
Millions died fighting in WW2, or were gravely wounded, and many were draftees, like my father-in-law, who didn’t want to go, but were forced to. Many, many American families made terrible involuntary sacrifices for the war, and unfortunately, the Japanese were forced to contribute to the war by their involuntary internment.
It wasn’t the best situation, but considering the sacrifices that many Americans made, it wasn’t the worst either. The Japanese internment camps weren’t pleasant, but they weren’t Auschwitz either. Families weren’t being separated as they came off the trains, with some sent to work, and the rest to the gas chambers. I’m sure there were many Americans actually fighting on the front lines of the war that would have been happy to be in an interment camp back in America, rather than having German bullets whizzing by their heads in the Battle of the Bulge or Okinawa.
You are concerned with 100,000 that were wrongfully interned, instead of the millions of lives that were saved by the war, and the Japanese internment was considered a necessary step in the fast-moving preparations for the war. They worried about how deep any Japanese government influence might have reached, and they couldn’t wait to find out when a spy sabotaged their war efforts, so they took a broad stroke to avoid it. Whether that decision was right or wrong, it was a different war, and a different time, and applying your contemporary attitudes to history, without properly considering the historical context, is lazy historical thinking.
Unions, Labor, Social Security, Employment Reforms, End of Child Labor, workplace Health/ Safety/ Environmental regulations, etc. have improved, and even saved, the lives of millions of people, including you and literally EVERYONE you know, and yet you would surrender all of it, because the president who did all that, made a mistake during the worst war in human history.
Apparently the difference between you and I is that I don’t believe there’s room for a “yeah, but…”. I don’t believe in weighing the good and the bad when it comes to evil people.
I don’t care if he passed social security. I don’t care if he sold Stalin and Churchill the weapons they needed to win WW2. I don’t care if he cured cancer, cholera, and the common cold. Just like I don’t care that Hitler built the Autobahn. He’s still fucking Hitler.
FDR illegally seized the property of 100,000 Americans and threw them in concentration camps based solely on their race. End of legacy. Fuck FDR and get his fascist ass face off my dime.
YOU are the problem with America. This mentality is why MAGA controls our nation.
FDR didn’t kill those people, his actions are not the same as Hitler’s. Lincoln suspended Habeus Corpus, and the North operated POW camps that made Nazi Concentration camps look like a resort.
War is an ugly, monstrous thing, and decent people are forced to make immoral decisions. Some are going to be right and some are going to be wrong. We never know until it’s over, and have to live with the consequences. You have no idea if interning those people means that a spy was bottled up, and couldn’t sabotage the war effort toward the Japanese. The internment may have saved the war, but we’ll never know.
What I do know, is that after the war, those people went free. They were NOT detained for life, they weren’t executed. OTOH, Social Security has saved millions of lives, and employment reforms have saved millions of lives, and both have greatly improved the lives of EVERY American worker, every single day. That kind of fundamental improvements in the lives of every American cannot be simply dismissed because of one disagreeable action. ON BALANCE, FDR’s good works far outweighed his worst mistake.
You are one of those shallow political thinkers who only see black & white, and are incapable of processing any nuance, which is unfortunately what politics is all about for many people. They want it to be easy, and morally indisputable, but the world is far more complicated than simple concepts or solutions. Your leaders are not going to be perfect saints, and if you insist that they are, then we are going to have nothing but MAGAs running our country in the future.
Interesting you bring up MAGA. They’re currently building concentration camps. Are you going to hand wave that too? Apparently the dow is over 50,000. Hypothetically, how high would the Dow have to go before you’d forgive trump for building concentration camps? When does it go from “horrific human rights abuses” to “he was a complicated man”? How expensive is it to buy your respect?
several paragraphs of apologism and whataboutism
Having your face on currency is apparently a great honor in this country. I’m not suggesting we end social security or the interstate highway program. But get his smug fascist ass face off the dime. Good countries don’t honor men who throw people in concentration camps.
WTF are you talking about? Who cares about the fucking dime? You’re the MAGA supporting the end of Social Security and all workplace protections because of one mistake made during the biggest war in human history.
You would kill MILLIONS of Americans in the nearly century since WW2, because some people were once inconvenienced during that war. Refugees are an ugly reality of war, and America has been able to avoid it for the most part. This is as close as we’ve come, and at least we learned some harsh lessons from it, that will lead us to avoid such choices in the future. That is about the best you can expect from the limited positive outcomes from any war.
I’m sorry for what happened to the Japanese-Americans in WW2 (for which our government has apologized, and compensated), and I hope we never do anything like that again. But do I think that FDR, and all the lifesaving programs he accomplished should be dismissed because of one disagreeable decision during the worst war in human history? Of course not, that’s just STUPID.
You’re the MAGA supporting the end of Social Security and all workplace protections because of one mistake made during the biggest war in human history.
I support removing this garbage human being’s portrait from the dime and that’s all. You apparently support hand waving atrocious civil rights violations by saying they’re just “one mistake”. So where’s your line? What would trump have to do to buy your respect? Clearly you have a price.
And in your opinion that excuses seizing innocent people’s property and throwing them in concentration camps?
I didn’t say that, and I don’t believe that, so don’t put words in my mouth.
The detainment of the Japanese was unconscionable, and easily the biggest mistep of FDR’s career, but he did a LOT of things right for America and the World, and on balance his good FAR outweighed the bad.
FDR’s was the strongest supporter of labor that this nation has ever had, and his New Deal was the best Worker-oriented program in history. Because of his support of labor and unions, we got all the workplace protections that we have today:
Do you think we got things like paid vacations, sick days, and 8 hour work days because the generosity of Corporations? No, we FORCED them to recognize workplace health/safety/environmental regulations, and treat workers like humans instead of animals, or machines, to be exploited to death, and discarded, and FDR was the president that championed all that, and made it happen.
And don’t forget, he also established Social Security, so we don’t have an Army of old people camping in our streets of every American city.
Then after all that, FDR won WWII, and kept us all from having to learn to speak German and/or Japanese.
So yeah, out of four terms, in which he set American workers on a dignified path for their daily labor, and saved the world from one of the most psychotic nations in the history of the world, he made one bad mistake by succumbing to the fears of the nation during one of our darkest periods. While it should always be acknowledged as a serious mistake, it should never fully define his entire legacy.
Ok, but
The very next paragraph, and the rest of the post, is essentially “I said that, and I believe that”.
Pointing out that he also did things you like is justifying the atrocities he committed. If a man throws people into concentration camps that’s the only thing we should ever talk about when his name comes up. There’s no coming back from that. Your attitude is giving me “Mussolini made the trains run on time” vibes.
Arguing with idiots is so exhausting
I never said that anything “excuses” the mistake of the Japanese Internet camps. I said that they should be acknowledged as the horrific mistake that it was, but ON BALANCE, he was a highly successful president, even with that black mark. That’s not excusing it, it is treating history responsibly, and not trying weaponize it to advance an agenda.
Millions died fighting in WW2, or were gravely wounded, and many were draftees, like my father-in-law, who didn’t want to go, but were forced to. Many, many American families made terrible involuntary sacrifices for the war, and unfortunately, the Japanese were forced to contribute to the war by their involuntary internment.
It wasn’t the best situation, but considering the sacrifices that many Americans made, it wasn’t the worst either. The Japanese internment camps weren’t pleasant, but they weren’t Auschwitz either. Families weren’t being separated as they came off the trains, with some sent to work, and the rest to the gas chambers. I’m sure there were many Americans actually fighting on the front lines of the war that would have been happy to be in an interment camp back in America, rather than having German bullets whizzing by their heads in the Battle of the Bulge or Okinawa.
You are concerned with 100,000 that were wrongfully interned, instead of the millions of lives that were saved by the war, and the Japanese internment was considered a necessary step in the fast-moving preparations for the war. They worried about how deep any Japanese government influence might have reached, and they couldn’t wait to find out when a spy sabotaged their war efforts, so they took a broad stroke to avoid it. Whether that decision was right or wrong, it was a different war, and a different time, and applying your contemporary attitudes to history, without properly considering the historical context, is lazy historical thinking.
Unions, Labor, Social Security, Employment Reforms, End of Child Labor, workplace Health/ Safety/ Environmental regulations, etc. have improved, and even saved, the lives of millions of people, including you and literally EVERYONE you know, and yet you would surrender all of it, because the president who did all that, made a mistake during the worst war in human history.
Apparently the difference between you and I is that I don’t believe there’s room for a “yeah, but…”. I don’t believe in weighing the good and the bad when it comes to evil people.
I don’t care if he passed social security. I don’t care if he sold Stalin and Churchill the weapons they needed to win WW2. I don’t care if he cured cancer, cholera, and the common cold. Just like I don’t care that Hitler built the Autobahn. He’s still fucking Hitler.
FDR illegally seized the property of 100,000 Americans and threw them in concentration camps based solely on their race. End of legacy. Fuck FDR and get his fascist ass face off my dime.
YOU are the problem with America. This mentality is why MAGA controls our nation.
FDR didn’t kill those people, his actions are not the same as Hitler’s. Lincoln suspended Habeus Corpus, and the North operated POW camps that made Nazi Concentration camps look like a resort.
War is an ugly, monstrous thing, and decent people are forced to make immoral decisions. Some are going to be right and some are going to be wrong. We never know until it’s over, and have to live with the consequences. You have no idea if interning those people means that a spy was bottled up, and couldn’t sabotage the war effort toward the Japanese. The internment may have saved the war, but we’ll never know.
What I do know, is that after the war, those people went free. They were NOT detained for life, they weren’t executed. OTOH, Social Security has saved millions of lives, and employment reforms have saved millions of lives, and both have greatly improved the lives of EVERY American worker, every single day. That kind of fundamental improvements in the lives of every American cannot be simply dismissed because of one disagreeable action. ON BALANCE, FDR’s good works far outweighed his worst mistake.
You are one of those shallow political thinkers who only see black & white, and are incapable of processing any nuance, which is unfortunately what politics is all about for many people. They want it to be easy, and morally indisputable, but the world is far more complicated than simple concepts or solutions. Your leaders are not going to be perfect saints, and if you insist that they are, then we are going to have nothing but MAGAs running our country in the future.
Interesting you bring up MAGA. They’re currently building concentration camps. Are you going to hand wave that too? Apparently the dow is over 50,000. Hypothetically, how high would the Dow have to go before you’d forgive trump for building concentration camps? When does it go from “horrific human rights abuses” to “he was a complicated man”? How expensive is it to buy your respect?
Having your face on currency is apparently a great honor in this country. I’m not suggesting we end social security or the interstate highway program. But get his smug fascist ass face off the dime. Good countries don’t honor men who throw people in concentration camps.
WTF are you talking about? Who cares about the fucking dime? You’re the MAGA supporting the end of Social Security and all workplace protections because of one mistake made during the biggest war in human history.
You would kill MILLIONS of Americans in the nearly century since WW2, because some people were once inconvenienced during that war. Refugees are an ugly reality of war, and America has been able to avoid it for the most part. This is as close as we’ve come, and at least we learned some harsh lessons from it, that will lead us to avoid such choices in the future. That is about the best you can expect from the limited positive outcomes from any war.
I’m sorry for what happened to the Japanese-Americans in WW2 (for which our government has apologized, and compensated), and I hope we never do anything like that again. But do I think that FDR, and all the lifesaving programs he accomplished should be dismissed because of one disagreeable decision during the worst war in human history? Of course not, that’s just STUPID.
I support removing this garbage human being’s portrait from the dime and that’s all. You apparently support hand waving atrocious civil rights violations by saying they’re just “one mistake”. So where’s your line? What would trump have to do to buy your respect? Clearly you have a price.
Thing is, you’re arguing with someone who chose to call themself “the_crotch”. This is not someone who appreciates subtlety.
Valid.