06/08/05

Everybody -- including Republicans from Ronald Reagan to Newt Gingrich -- has lionized FDR to the point that all that's necessary to clinch an argument for X or Y is to postulate that Roosevelt would have wanted it. It's like discovering a new page from the Bible which speaks to, say, the budget deficit. Hence the batty disputes between various would-be oracles over whether the Great FDR Spirit supports add-on or carve-out private accounts for Social Security. In case you're wondering, the correct answer is: Who cares? The idea that there was this defined, ideologically and intellectually coherent thing called 'The New Deal' is nonsense, as almost any historian worth his salt will tell you. And it's even a little funny that liberals so uniformly admire FDR's 'legacy.' After all, the military-industrial complex and the marriage of big business and government are as central to that legacy as Social Security...

http://www.nationalreview.com/goldberg/goldberg200506081050.asp

from National Review, by Jonah Goldberg


Thomas L. Knapp