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Damon W. Root reviews Kevin J. McMahon's Reconsidering Roosevelt on Race and Jim Powell's FDR's Folly.
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|9.15.04 @ 11:37AM|#
John Kerry has joe to leap to his defense... let's see if anyone here will take up the Don Quixote role for FDR.
|9.15.04 @ 12:02PM|#
A good review, generally. I think Root ultimately gets hoisted on his own petard with this:
"McMahon�s ambitious attempt to salvage FDR�s record on race is clever, but his focus on the long-term and secondary effects of Roosevelt�s judicial nominees and policies fails to convince in the face of the direct negative outcomes the New Deal produced for many American blacks."
Root's focus on union racism fails to convince in the face of the direct positive outocmes the New Deal Supreme Court, and unions once they ceased to be racist, produced for many American blacks.
Prior to the New Deal, black workers had to contend with the fact that unions were both racist and ineffective. In the short term, Roosevelt's labor laws made them effective, and in the long term, the Democratic Court drove out the racism (for the most part).
|9.15.04 @ 12:05PM|#
Mr. Damon writes "Powell reports that reduced acreage particularly affected sharecroppers, whose estimated annual cash income fell from $735 in 1929 to $216 in 1933." Will someone please tell Mr. Damon and Mr. Powell that the AAA was passed in 1933, and therefore could not have affected sharecroppers' income in prior years? Why, precisely, should FDR be blamed for events that occurred when Herbert Hoover was president? In fact, the New Deal made the Depression bearable, rather than curing it. It was (obviously) the massive deficit spending of WWII that did the job. Unfortunately, the public works projects of the magnitude needed were beyond the political imagination of the time. As for FDR harming the situation of blacks, why did they vote for him? Were they stupid? Mr. Powell's book is lame revisionism. FDR, with all his faults, will remain a hero. The American people voted for him for the same reason they voted for Ronald Reagan. Because he was right.
|9.15.04 @ 12:19PM|#
I don't have the expertise to take issue with the other arguments, but I am skeptical of the notion that ending the Lochner era was somehow bad for blacks. Partly because I think that the author misconstrues the holding of Buchanan v. Warley; here is the quoted text:
...the 14th Amendment "operates to qualify and entitle a colored man to acquire property without state legislation discriminating against him solely because of color."
To me this passage does not imply a ruling based on the amorphous liberty of contract, but one based on the 14th Amendment's specific prohibitions. I would have to read the entire case to be sure though.
|9.15.04 @ 12:35PM|#
GG,
You are supposed to switch into JB mode and point out that "hoisted on his own petard" should be "hoisted by his own petard."
|9.15.04 @ 1:16PM|#
As for FDR harming the situation of blacks, why did they vote for him? Were they stupid?
I dunno, why do blacks still vote Democrat, when the Democratic party's policies are directly harming them? Are they stupid? No, probably just misinformed. It happens; I'm quite sure every person on this board is misinformed on some issue or another. It's pretty common, you know.
Look, people don't always act in their best interest. They act in what they think is their best interest. The two don't always coincide, and it's almost always impossible to tell the difference. Why did Americans in general continue voting for FDR, when his policies prolonged the depression and were transparently demagogic? Well, maybe, just maybe, they thought they were doing the right thing and had no way to know better.
fyodor|9.15.04 @ 1:22PM|#
"Although both libertarians and their critics frequently associate libertarianism with a states� rights position, liberty of contract demonstrates how an expansive reading of the federal Constitution that sometimes overrides states� rights can be quite consistent with libertarian principles."
I'd be perfectly happy if the states' rights and libertarianism were seen as the entirely two different philosophies that they are. They may have a good deal of overlap of constituency, but the actual ideas they represent, even the issues they address, seem rather separate to me.
|9.15.04 @ 1:37PM|#
Grylliade, your idea about people misunderstanding their own interest has a problem. By your logic, 90% of black people not only misunderstand their interests, but do so in exactly the same way.
Is it possible, maybe, that black people's understanding of their own interests is superior to your understanding of their interests?
fyodor|9.15.04 @ 1:37PM|#
Despite my general agreement with the economic analysis of Root and Powell, I have a problem with the use of analysis that shows that a particular policy was bad for poor people in general to show that the badness of the policy was somehow targeted to blacks in particular. Aside from the fact that not all blacks are among the poor, such commentary seems to imply that blacks were treated in a discriminatory or prejudicial manner when what Powell is really talking about is a philosophy that hurt poor people in general, regardless of race. Sure, show how statist policies ostensibly intended to help the poor really didn't, but don't graft on the race factor after the fact. (Addressing policies that are meant to help a particular race, such as affirmative action, is another matter.) That said, I wonder if that was ever Powell's intent, since the title of his book says nothing about race, or if Mr. Root adopted that angle for his review as an arbitrary way to tie the two books together.
fyodor|9.15.04 @ 1:47PM|#
joe,
Surely you must know by now that libertarians are not swayed by what 90% of any group of people think!
All self-deprecating humor aside, nor should they be. At what percentage of agreement within a group would you say that a particular position is proven to be in that group's interest? Such a percentage does not exist. Truth is simply not determined by how many people agree with a POV, although the cowards amongst us will continue to speak as if majority agreement does prove truth -- that is, when the majority agrees with them!
|9.15.04 @ 1:54PM|#
"Truth is simply not determined by how many people agree with a POV,"
Indeed.
At one time, most people believed that the earth was flat - that didn't make it so.
|9.15.04 @ 2:24PM|#
joe, grylliade, etc.:
Regarding voting:
(a) Disenfranchisement was so significant in many places that blacks voting wasn't particularly common in the 1930s (e.g., the American South, some northern states - Oregon's small black population is a good example, etc.)
(b) Many communities of blacks stayed solidly Republican throughout the 1930s and 1940s; e.g., the community in Atlantic City that white Republican bosses their stroked for votes.
|9.15.04 @ 3:13PM|#
It is said that blacks who could vote in 1928 and 1932 voted for Who-but Hoover.
This was probably based on recollections of the reversals that blacks suffered with the elections of Cleveland and then Wilson. However bad conditions had been the Republicans were considered responsible for emancipation and a certain amount of patronage for blacks (eg blacks were appointed to run the customs houses in at least two southern ports - a sort of early affirmative action perhaps :) ).
Post WWI the Reps seem to have lost whatever interest they'd ever had in civil rights but it was 40 yrs before the dems picked up the ball.
There's probably some truth in Al Sharpton's assertion that if the republicans weren't going to give them the 40 acres and a mule they'd promised African-Americans might as well start riding the donkey. (Whether it's true or not it was the best rhetoric to come out of either of the conventions).
|9.15.04 @ 4:04PM|#
Grylliade, your idea about people misunderstanding their own interest has a problem. By your logic, 90% of black people not only misunderstand their interests, but do so in exactly the same way.
Is it possible, maybe, that black people's understanding of their own interests is superior to your understanding of their interests?
It's not only possible, I'd say it's even likely. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I think that the short-term interests of blacks is served by voting Democrat, since that's the way that they're going to get the most goodies from the government. Long-term, I think that such policies are bad for blacks, because it perpetuates the myth that blacks can't lift themselves out of poverty. I believe that black leaders perpetuate this myth to stay in power; not that that's what they tell themselves, but in the end I think that's what it's all about. I think that blacks' long-term interests would be best served by not being bound to one party or another as a group; I certainly don't think that Republicans have the best interests of blacks at heart, but I don't think the Democrats do either. So yeah, I might be wrong; it's very, very possible, it's happened before, and it'll happen again. But I still think I'm right. :-D
|9.15.04 @ 6:05PM|#
There's at least one good thing to say about FDR, at least when he was Dr. New Deal. Once the Democrats got in, a man could get a drink without breaking some stupid law.
Give me another six months, and I'll come up with another one.
Kevin
(In Brew City)
|9.15.04 @ 11:19PM|#
kevrob,
FDR wanted the US to fight the Nazis while most of America remained pacifist (indeed, almost pro-Nazi in the case of some like Lindbergh's "American First" movement). Ever see some of Dr. Seuss' political cartoons about the American Firsters? Vicious and amusing.
|9.16.04 @ 3:26PM|#
Good point, Gary.
There's a book called "Dr. Seuss Goes to War," that contains Theodore Seuss Geisel's editorial cartoons from a NY newspaper 1938? until his signed up in the Army in 1941.
Great stuff, and the future Dr. Suess is clearly evident in them. In one, he uses an elephant to symbolize India, and it is totally a Dr. Seuss elephant! Some of them have big, complicated, nonsense machines, just like in "The Grinch."
Totally worth finding.