{"id":6070,"date":"2004-05-29T10:40:36","date_gmt":"2004-05-29T17:40:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/wp\/2004\/05\/29\/perspective-19.html"},"modified":"2004-05-29T10:40:36","modified_gmt":"2004-05-29T17:40:36","slug":"perspective_19","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2004\/05\/29\/perspective_19.html","title":{"rendered":"Perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere\u2019s a myth,\u201d said Pitney, \u201cthat politics was adjourned for the duration of the Second World War.\u201d<\/p>\n

As this article<\/a> points out, even in the midst of WWII — and especially as the war wound down — critics of the FDR administration and its domestic and war policies were not too restrained by the struggle going on.<\/p>\n

Indeed, our local Lancaster New Era noted in an editorial on the eve of the election, Nov. 6, 1944, that \u201cThe surprising thing about this war-time presidential campaign is that it was no different from all the others.\u201d Thomas Dewey, Roosevelt\u2019s opponent that year, spent much of the campaign deriding FDR as a \u201ctired old man.\u201d The Roosevelt administration, Dewey said the week before the election, was \u201cthe most wasteful, extravagant and incompetent administration in the history of the nation.\u201d Dewey, in fact, spent that fall all but calling Roosevelt a communist, insisting that FDR was intent on selling the nation down the river to the reds.
\nBut at least Dewey didn\u2019t criticize FDR on the war effort, right? To have done that in the wake of the failed Market Garden operation, just before the Battle of the Bulge, would have been grossly unpatriotic, right? Judge for yourself:
\n\u201cAmerican fighting men were paying in blood through a prolongation of the battle of Germany for the \u2018improvised meddling\u2019 of the Democratic administration and the \u2018confused incompetence\u2019 of President Roosevelt.\u201d
\nThat\u2019s from an Associated Press article that ran in this very newspaper on Sunday, Nov. 5, 1944, the morning after a major Dewey address at Madison Square Garden in New York City. In it, Dewey derided the \u201cMorgenthau plan,\u201d whereby then-Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau Jr. suggested that after the war, Germany should be reduced to an agrarian economy and the Germans treated \u201cin such a manner so they can\u2019t go on reproducing people who want to continue the way they have in the past.\u201d
\nMorgenthau\u2019s suggestion, Dewey said, \u201cput fight back into the German army\u201d and was \u201cas good as 10 fresh German divisions.\u201d This he called the \u201ctragic consequences of blunder,\u201d which was \u201ccosting the lives of American men and delaying the day of final victory.\u201d<\/p>\n

It’s difficult to tell today, sixty years later, whether the level of vitriol was comparable to today — and some folks will deride the comparison between the War on Terror and the War on the Axis. But it’s an interesting perspective, at least, on the idea that WWII was a period of political rallying behind the flag, where never a criticism could be heard — and that we ought to be likewise today.<\/p>\n

(via GoaF<\/a>)<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cThere\u2019s a myth,\u201d said Pitney, \u201cthat politics was adjourned for the duration of the Second World War.\u201d As this article points out, even in the midst of WWII — and…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_seopress_robots_follow":"","_seopress_robots_imageindex":"","_seopress_robots_snippet":"","_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_robots_breadcrumbs":"","_seopress_robots_freeze_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_custom_modified_date":"","_seopress_robots_canonical":"","_seopress_social_fb_title":"","_seopress_social_fb_desc":"","_seopress_social_fb_img":"","_seopress_social_fb_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_fb_img_height":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_title":"","_seopress_social_twitter_desc":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img":"","_seopress_social_twitter_img_attachment_id":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_width":0,"_seopress_social_twitter_img_height":0,"_seopress_redirections_value":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled":"","_seopress_redirections_enabled_regex":"","_seopress_redirections_logged_status":"","_seopress_redirections_param":"","_seopress_redirections_type":0,"_seopress_analysis_target_kw":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics-law"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":23641,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2011\/11\/11\/retroactive-communal-piety-and-partisan-politics.html","url_meta":{"origin":6070,"position":0},"title":"Retroactive Communal Piety and Partisan Politics","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 11-Nov-11 4:27pm","format":false,"excerpt":"Really? The Right thinks that what we need at the already-constructed World War II memorial on the National Mall is an engraved prayer? I mean, at least they chose something from the period (and by FDR, usually a target for their ire), but adding something after the fact seems unnecessary\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1317,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2002\/01\/28\/mr_cheney_meet.html","url_meta":{"origin":6070,"position":1},"title":"Mr. Cheney? Meet Caesar’s wife …","author":"***Dave","date":"Mon 28-Jan-02 7:25am","format":false,"excerpt":"In classical Roman culture, the wife was consider the head of the household's honor. 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The Library Hotel,...","rel":"","context":"In "ZT & PC"","block_context":{"text":"ZT & PC","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/zt-pc"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":33527,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2013\/05\/03\/dna-art.html","url_meta":{"origin":6070,"position":3},"title":"DNA Art","author":"***Dave","date":"Fri 3-May-13 11:39am","format":false,"excerpt":"A kinda cool idea (if, yeah, a bit creepy). \u00a0But ...'There is, of course, no way of knowing how accurate Dewey-Hagborg\u2019s sculptures are \u2014 since the samples are from anonymous individuals, a direct comparison cannot be made. 'Well, you can't know specifically for any given sample, but as far as\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "~PlusPosts"","block_context":{"text":"~PlusPosts","link":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/category\/blogging\/plusposts"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":9177,"url":"https:\/\/hill-kleerup.org\/blog\/2006\/02\/02\/classy.html","url_meta":{"origin":6070,"position":4},"title":"Classy","author":"***Dave","date":"Thu 2-Feb-06 7:56am","format":false,"excerpt":"More about the Dewey Decimal and the Library of Congress Classification systems than you probably ever wanted to know. 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