And like a good Progressive your sense of history is unfortunately misguided.
Coming from someone who I've seen argue that Lincoln should had no right to prevent secession, FDR's policies ruined American capitalism in the 20th century (as opposed to thanking him for saving it), that the Federal government did not need to get involved to end Jim Crow and segregation, and that racism against blacks after the Civil Rights Act had nothing to do with the Solid South changing parties (
), I'll take that as a compliment.
You do realize that by the start of the 1940's we were already seeing massive cutbacks to FDR's programs, right? More Republicans went to Washington in order to fight back against FDR's anti-business programs. By 1938 most of the restrictions on prices and labor were gone (and as such, industries saw longer work weeks and more production as the 40's went on). By 1942 FDR moved to liquidate the Public Works Administration. Truman's administration saw tax cuts (pushed by the Republican Congress). It wasn't until the 60's where we saw a new push for large, FDR/Wilsonian like government programs in the disasterous public policy of the Great Society. (If you want to see where the black community was truly mangled by the "white man" look at the well-intentioned government policy of this time). As I said before, the WAR did create many great advantages that America used to become the power we are now. It wasn't the government pushed WAR-EFFORD (i.e. greater government spending, government control of factories and the like) but from the distruction of European capital (factories, labor, land, etc.) and the patriotic spirit that drives production and promotes public sacrifice for the "greater good".
I think you're points on the war are half right. What made us a superpower AFTER the war (besides the nuke) was that we were not ravaged by war on our shores and so had no manufacturing competition. However, we were long, long out of Depression by the mid-late 1940s. You seem to overlook what brought us out of Depression, was MASSIVE GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE ON THE WAR. You're right it happened due to growth spurt in the American spirit of shared sacrifice. But do you know where that saved us from? The moronic Republicans coming to D.C. that caused the Double Dip Recession in 1937 when FDR began cutting back on programs to placate these idiots. Just as Obama is doing now (God help us it doesn't have similar results) despite a slow recovery being earned from massive government programs, the GOP ran successfully on campaigns of "fiscal responsibility," and FDR (like Obama now) cut short the recovery. Lo and behold we sunk back into recession. Then after Pearl Harbor, Americans don't care about the deficit, they want to WIN THE WAR and then the government starts spending at rate where our deficit was over half the GDP.
And guess what? It worked.
Lastly, LBJ's policies (and Kennedy's ideals) hurt the black community. You're so right, they were doing splendidly stuck in poverty in the South without a real ability to have a fair education, vote, or generally not be murdered for talking to a white woman. Those stupid progressives coming in and giving them equal opportunity, better schools, more legal protections and an ability to pay for the health care for the criminally underpaid elderly. Those progressive sons of *****es.
The way you tap dance around historical facto fit your naive view of history is astounding.
(These aspects of the war economy is exactly the creation Progressives wish to create with their "domestic wars" such as the War On Poverty and Global Warming.)
Global Warming/Climate Change is going to be like the shark in the third act of Jaws to your Mayor of Amity Island.
As for war on poverty, last I checked poverty went down in a huge way and the middle class exploded post-FDR, while since "small government" deregulatory policies became the norm since Reagan, the middle class has shrunk, income growth for 90% of the country has stagnated and the last bust that falls on your ideology's shoulders (and "trust the market only" gave us 2008) left us with 10% unemployment.
The fact remains that 1929 was the result of government intervention of the markets.
The government let banks gamble away money they didn't have like Chevy Chase in a bad Vegas movie? I thought it was Coolidge and his hands-off approach that oversaw the collapse of our economy while Hoover watched it unravel.
Hoover's solution was a proto-New Deal that was replaced by FDR's larger more disasterous New Deal which was expanded upon by LBJ's Great Society. It is programs like these (and the Republican Parties failure to destroy them, and willingness to add to them) that created 2008.
This is all sorts of wrong I don't know where to begin.
1) Hoover was not a proto-New Deal. That is asinine. He was the grandfather of the "pull yourself up by your own bootstraps." He let the economy implode because he thought it was better not to intervene as millions lost jobs. Kind of like what you would have done in 2008 I'd suspect if you were in power (thus leaving us open for Great Depression 2.0).
2) The Republican Party since 1980 has not been a party to expand social programs. They have tried to destroy them for the most part and deregulated the markets. It was the Dems (notably the Clinton Administration) who were complicit in this.
3) If you really are going to blame 2008 on "progressives" you have watched way too much Glenn Beck. It was conservative ideology of rmooving red tape from banks, the CFTC allowing for the first time in history Wall Street to speculate on agricultural commodities like it was a horse race, and leaving the derivative markets completely unregulated and handled in the dark, as well as the repeal of Glass-Steigal which had kept banks from becoming over 60% of our GDP by separating finance from investment...that led to this disaster. It was like the perfect storm. The perfect cluster**** of bad **** hitting the fan after 30 years of terrible "deregulate and let the markets decide" ideology.
!
Essentially the next few years should prove one of us right, right? It seems to me that you have an optimisitic look on the future of the American economy where as I think we are heading towards a Depression.
Without more stimulus and cutting government spending which made up 2/3 of GDP growth last year...I think you're right. And if that happens it will be 1937 all over again. But you can pretend otherwise and revise history again I'm sure.
A wise man, Stephen Colbert, once said we don't need facts. You can't trust facts. After all, facts have a well-documented liberal bias. I'm sure you would agree.
