FDR

I grew up in the Ohio Valley in the fifties and sixties. It seemed that half the people I knew were named after FDR. Do you think that God

saw things getting so out of hand that he sent FDR. It defies logic that a guy in those times of so few civil rights and civil liberties. A time

controlled by corporate power and monetarily controlled political and judicial systems could have existed. Let alone become president long enough

to save this nation. Now . Let's not settle for mitigated and compromised solutions. Lets resound this country with vocal and demonstrable support

for Barack Obama. We have his back. Doesn't it seem like he was such an unlikely choice to be elected president. He is almost like the second

coming of FDR. When Barack uttered the words " spread the wealth " I thought that would be the last day of his campaign. It wasn't. Thank God, and

I really mean " Thank God ". I have no other conclusion, no matter how vulnerable to attack or ridicule but to think that this is again divine

intervention.

He rounded people up by 'race' and put them into 'camps'.

I am aware that some DUers are totally cool with that sort of behavior, but I am not.

I am not surprised that a few religious people believe that he was a gift from their God.

What the SamHill are you talking about? The Japanese citizens after the invasion of Pearl Harbor? That was bad, but it was once; it was instigated by the US congress and the US congress had to apologize for it. That does not make FDR a fascist.

:eyes:

Rounding people up by race and placing them into camps is fascist.

I wonder why so many DUers are cool with FDR treating Japanese people this way.

Would they feel the same if FDR treated European or African people this way?

And the Japanese internment was a really big goddamned "once." Calling FDR a fascist is hyperbolic at best, but to either defend the internment or say the president had nothing to do with it takes a special kind of ignorance.

I am sure that you see the humor in your post.

My God the Japanese military attacked our country. Any Japanese American living in our country at the time could have been killed just because they were Japanese. They were sent to camps from their own safety and also at the time I don't think FDR knew for sure if he could trust every single Japanese American. I have never heard any stories that they were mistreated by anyone at any camp. But, without a doubt they were protected from any harm.

Gay people are being beaten and killed, should we lock them up for their own good?

They were sent to camps from their own safety

No, they weren't.

time I don't think FDR knew for sure if he could trust every single Japanese American.

Should we round up all people who have an Afghanistan ancestry and force them into camps? Maybe Middle Easterners in general?

I have never heard any stories that they were mistreated by anyone at any camp.

Many internees lost irreplaceable personal property due to the restrictions on what could be taken into the camps. These losses were compounded by theft and destruction of items placed in governmental storage. A number of persons died or suffered for lack of medical care, and several were killed by sentries; James Wakasa, for instance, was killed at Topaz War Relocation Center, near the perimeter wire. Nikkei were prohibited from leaving the Military Zones during the last few weeks before internment, and only able to leave the camps by permission of the camp administrators.

Psychological injury was observed by Dillon S. Myer, director of the WRA camps. In June 1945, Myer described how the Japanese Americans had grown increasingly depressed, and overcome with feelings of helplessness and personal insecurity.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_American_internment

There is more at the link if you actually care.

I personally believe that if it was Bush, instead of FDR, who committed this atrocity, not a single poster here would try to defend it.

stole all their property and money, shut down their businesses and gave them away to well connected white people to protect them...

Funny how we didn't feel the same sort of paternal instinct to protect the millions of Germans here.
:wtf:

geographically dispersed. FDR actually liked the Japanese prior to the war, whereas, he hated the Germans because of personal experiences with them and the First World War.

Check this out:

http://www.gwu.edu/~erpapers/documents/articles/challengetoamerican.cfm

I can well understand the bitterness of people who have lost loved ones at the hands of the Japanese military authorities, and we know that the totalitarian philosophy, whether it is in Nazi Germany or in Japan, is one of cruelty and brutality. It is not hard to understand why people living here in hourly anxiety for those they love have difficulty in viewing our Japanese problem objectively, but for the honor of our country, the rest of us must do so.

We have in all 127,000 Japanese or Japanese-Americans in the United States. Of these, 112,000 lived on the West Coast. Originally, they were much needed on ranches and on large truck and fruit farms, but, as they came in greater numbers, people began to discover that they were competitors in the labor field.

The people of California began to be afraid of Japanese importation, so the Exclusion Act was passed in 1924. No people of the Oriental race could become citizens of the United States by naturalization, and no quota was given to the Oriental nations in the Pacific.

This happened because, in one part of our country, they were feared as competitors, and the rest of our country knew them so little and cared so little about them that they did not even think about the principle that we in this country believe in: that of equal rights for all human beings.

We granted no citizenship to Orientals, so now we have a group of people (some of whom have been here as long as fifty years) who have not been able to become citizens under our laws. Long before the war, an old Japanese man told me that he had great-grandchildren born in this country and that he had never been back to Japan; all that he cared about was here on the soil of the United States, and yet he could not become a citizen.

How do you figure? (I'm genuinely curious/clueless about this.)

They allowed FDR to be elected only because he was not Hoover and could possibly save Capitalism.

You are absolutely right, the most important thing he did, from their perspective, was to preserve the system so they could continue to steal the product of their serfs.

However, they wanted him gone after one term. I don't think they liked how progressive he was being. This brings me to my most favorite quote ever uttered by any politician since the founding of this country: "They are unanimous in their hate for me, and I welcome their hatred"

Man FDR was awesome.

On one hand, his programs did put people to work who wouldn't have gotten a job. It wasn't just for hard labor, but also in the fields of the arts. I know there's one small project near me that was created through the WPA. If there's one thing the government is good at, it's mobilizing resources (including people). The Glass-Steagall Act was another program he enacted that probably would have prevented the housing bubble if Clinton didn't repeal it.

On the other hand, there was a bit of trial-and-error to FDR's policies. His programs did cost quite a bit of money, which gave us a large deficit at the end. His rounding up of Japanese civilians reminds me of today's Gitmo. Not in the torture sense, but the sense that one group of people represents another group of people's views. His programs such as Social Security, Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac (to name a few) are essentially bankrupt. Of couse, hindsight is always 20/20, so I certainly don't fault him for any wrongdoing.

The weird thing about FDR is that he was attacked on both the right and the left. The right accused him of being a socialist and the left (mainly marxists) criticized him for being too capitalist. But overall, I agree, thank God for FDR. :)