Discussion On FDR

- When the Supreme Court ruled many of his New Deal policies as an unconstitutional over-extent of executive power, he (unsuccessfully) attempted to extend the   Supreme Court to 15 justices so that they could override the previous rulings. This was just a part of his attempt to keep power for much longer than any one man ever should.

- He refused to sign a piece of legislation that would prevent police officers from lynching African-Americans. This was a part of his redlining policies, where he would deny African-Americans some basic human rights just to stay on the good side of the Southern Democrats (aka Dixiecrats).

- He nominated Hugo Black to become a Supreme Court Justice, who was a well-known and prominent member of the Ku Klux Klan.

- He sat by and watched, and even approved, of harsh legislation that prevented Jewish refugees from Germany to enter the United States, resulting in those refugees being sent back to Germany to suffer from the Holocaust.

Many see Franklin D. Roosevelt's internment as a bad decision, and a terrible response to Pearl Harbor, but for some reason, it doesn't seem to have any effect on how many view his presidency. But, in my opinion, this alone is enough to knock him out of the top 3. He literally authorized the internment of an approximated 120,000 Japanese Americans, the vast majority of whom were innocent and probably loyal American citizens! In those four years that Japanese-Americans were interned, Japanese-American children missed out on years of valuable educational time, and couldn't live normal lives like normal children. Innocent Americans were kept behind barbed wire in miserable conditions for 4 years. EO #9066 was what made us a little more like those we were at war with. Such a disgusting disregard for innocent fellow humans shouldn't have ever happened, and should never, ever happen again.

Okay. Let's talk about the New Deal. Was it really that amazing? First off, let's talk about the First New Deal. Most historians can agree that it didn't work. The First New Deal may have helped some Americans find jobs, but by the end of it, the Depression was still in full force. But then came the Second New Deal. Although the Second New Deal did generate change, it honestly wasn't much different from the First New Deal, other than a redistribution of wealth (sounds pretty Marxist to me), and the controversial NIRA (meant to protect laborers), which was struck down as unconstitutional because it placed over-reaching restrictions on the free market.

Granted, many can agree (and I am one of them) that the Second New Deal eventually did slowly start working. But then, as those programs were still taking effect, FDR decided to just cut the deficit. This caused yet another recession. As the "Roosevelt Recession" was still happening, American involvement in WWII (starting with the Lend-Lease Act) began, causing a need for war machine manufacturing and other important jobs. This brough employment level to nearly 100%, and, almost overnight, ended the Great Depression.

So, in my opinion, we will never truly know whether or not the New Deal programs would have worked. That's why we can't automatically give FDR full credit for fixing the Depression, but instead look at what he was able to accomplish before WWII began. And that's the largest growth of federal government power in American history, a growth that was so drastic and so over-reaching that some programs (as I have already stated twice) that were actually ruled as unconstitutional. Also, it caused the government to take on tens of billions of dollars of debt. It is even estimated that from 1933 to 1936, the federal government's debt grew by an insane 50%, only furthering a long, terrible American tradition of debt crises.