Talk:Criticism of Franklin D. Roosevelt

message: Garner, a racist white congressman from Texas,  was his VP for 8 years , needs to be included — Preceding unsigned comment added by 98.38.155.134 (talk) 20:53, 29 November 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  Picked racist for VP 

message: This is a very political subject, and I think it's very important that the current consensus of the economic community and any responses to these criticisms also be established.   — Preceding unsigned comment added by Aewehr (talk • contribs) 03:53, 26 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Criticism Of New Deal Policies 

message: I'm surprised to find nothing here about this topic, not even a link to Yalta Conference. Surely FDR's relationship to Stalin must be among the most serious criticisms of his administration?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.206.87.116 (talk) 19:21, 3 January 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Yalta Conference and Eastern Europe 

message: Going to the FDR criticism page I certainly expected to see a discussion of the accusations that FDR allowed Pearl Harbor to be bombed as a pretext for the US entering WWII. Maybe there's another page dedicated specifically to this (don't know, don't really care) but I would think that there if there is then there should certainly be a link to it on the FDR criticism page. Seems to me this page is less about presenting vaild criticisms of FDR and more about fellating him. Just a thought.
I'd recommend adding criticism of his courting of isolationists to his later internationalism and critics of his record on civil rights (see FDR on Civil Rights page).  There was also a lot of criticism of his haughty, aristocratic demeanor.
Of course, it couldn't win his critics an election. Or get their bills passed or policies enacted. Sam 01:12, 25 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Pearl Harbor Criticism 

message: Rjensen (del unsourced smear by father of Big Lie)
: Ok, Goebbels praises FDR New Deal.ogg is the video from which this image was excerpted.  That Goebbels said this remains a fact, evidenced from the video.  Although Joseph Goebbels held the position of "propaganda minister", this activity is comparable to "public relations" in other major governments at the time.  Not that everything Goebbels said was a lie, but rather, he sought to present Nazi government works in a sympathetic light.  The make-work programs of Reichsarbeitsdienst and the Works Progress Administration were extremely similar in practice, as authoritarian attempts to control unemployment, whether the projects themselves were the Autobahn or Mount Rushmore. 71.162.255.58 21:06, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Better read up a bit on Goebbels--favorable references to him will get an editor in real trouble. What exactly was he praising? the design of Mount Rushmore? Rjensen 21:14, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: From the video, "I am very interested in social developments in America. I believe that President Roosevelt has chosen the right path. We are dealing with the greatest social problems ever known. Millions of unemployed must get their jobs back, and this cannot be left to private initiative. It is the government that must tackle the problem."  Specifically, he's excusing government control of the economy on the same grounds FDR used for the New Deal.  Yes, this is something of a red herring because it doesn't answer the diagnostic question of whether government control of the economy yields expected or desirable results, and instead frames the issue as "we're doing what you're doing".  However, the criticism remains that the governments of FDR and the Nazis sought to address their unemployment problems in a very similar way.  Goebbels' reputation doesn't refute this.  71.162.255.58 21:28, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: You read too much into political rhetoric.  What was Goebbels trying to accomplish in 1936?  Is this a politican looking to cozy up, to associate himself with Roosevelt to keep America neutral and isolationist?  One trying to appeal to people who would naturally be opposed to him to avoid their full opposition? If you want to show that the two governments addressed social programs in similar ways, compare the two social programs.  This is a quote that is appropriate for a discussion of Goebbels more than Roosevelt. Or, if you want to address a more interesting question, you might think about the debate over the extent to which Roosevelt may have bought some of the isolationist position and some of the German overtures, a question on which you'll find some folks around here have strong opinions. But, for that debate, the picture is somewhat remote in relevance. Sam 22:00, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: The image/video seemed to me to compliment the observation that the FDR regime and the Nazi party shared a common prescription of government intervention in their respective economic regions for a common public demand to address the problem of unemployment. 71.162.255.58 23:12, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

text: The sectiuon is about FDR & Fascism. Goebbels mentions FDR but not fascism so there is no relevence to this article. Rjensen 22:07, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Agreed here. Sam 22:33, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  Goebbels does also imply fascism vis-a-vis government authoritarian control of the otherwise private (i.e. Free) marketplace.  I would defer to further reading from the Austrian school for analysis of "FDR the Fascist". (A little of which has been flushed out in the article.  There was also an extensive debate in the Talk:Fascism in the past.) America's Great Depression 71.162.255.58 23:12, 9 July 2006 (UTC)

text: Obviously Goebbels will not literally call FDR a fascist anymore than he would call Hitler a fascist.  Rather, a diagnosis of fascism would be inferred from FDR and Nazis using the same means to address the same problems.  The Goebbels quote then becomes relevant for underscoring their agreement in methodology.  71.162.255.58 23:20, 9 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: "would be inferred from" = original research and not allowed on Wiki. We are NOT allowed to make inferences from historical documents. Rjensen 01:55, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  That's an interesting way to interpret the "no original research" requirement.  I took it more to mean that conclusions couldn't be written as such (i.e. conflating editing with authoring).  e.g. An encyclopedia requires "These people describe FDR as a fascist." not "FDR was a fascist."  However, at this time, I can imagine how the metadata of mere co-inclusion could be interpreted as a kind of "original research".  So, until a secondary source links together the primary source (i.e. Goebbels) to criticizing FDR (i.e. this article), I'll accept that the Goebbels media runs enough risk of possibly constituting "original research" to not include it at this time. 71.162.255.58 02:28, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

text: It is not true that the New Deal unemployment policies resembled those of Germany. They used very different techniques like suppression of labor unions and heavy military spending. When Hoover raised the fascism issue he meant that FDR was controlled by big business and the Chamber of Commerce. Rjensen 02:43, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  FDR also sought to limit the power of labor unions (he granted unions legal powers through the National Labor Relations Board, thus regulating/institutionalizing them) and vastly increased military spending because he "ran out" of civilian projects for make-work programs while unemployment (>14%) persisted.  (And the military provides a bottomless government spending sinkhole, especially once government spending was untethered from the gold standard in 1933.)  However, FDR did also spur corporatism through the Agricultural Adjustment Administration (AAA) and National Recovery Administration (NRA). 71.162.255.58 03:44, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

text: in reality FDR vastly increased the power of labor unions. he did not start large military spending until 1940. The NRA lasted only 2 years and was gone long before Goebbels spoke.  The AAA is an interesting case --we still have its subsidies to this day, but I doubt Goebbels knew much about it. Rjensen 04:00, 10 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Deletion of Goebbels praising New Deal methods 

message: I feel like this article has a lot of material that it could work with, and that it needs a serious re-writing/re-structuring.  I'd like to see all of the criticisms broken down, as well as some references to possible support for FDR's decisions as a contrast, and to further inform the reader about the argument.
:The article is about "criticism" of FDR, and is in no need of balance in that regard.  While the criticism should be reasoned and not simply accusations without merit, there is no need to "counterbalance" the criticisms with defenses of the same.K. Scott Bailey 02:16, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  Cleanup/rewrite 

message: Why is there no mention at all in this article about Roosevelt's blatantly unconstitutional expansion of central executive power that has more or less kept its bloated bureaucratic form up through the present?
::that's because the Constitution never said anything about the AAA, CCC, WPA, or SEC. Rjensen 02:40, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: is that why the supreme court ruled many of those programs unconstitutional?  96.242.168.61 (talk) 06:05, 22 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Rjensen, that is not the way the Constitution is drafted. Those programs were ruled unconstitutional because no authorization for such activities can be found in the Constitution. So your observation that nothing is said about the AAA, CCC, WPA, and SEC is exactly why they are unconstitutional.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.206.87.116 (talk) 19:32, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

text:  Yes.  Aren't there supposed to be rules about this discussion? Is the discussion page on Wikipedia supposed to make political arguments about figures discussed in the content page? -- RDK.
Disagree.   Facts are facts, opinion is opinion.   That you do not like what the constitution says and favor continued violation of it does not make calling it a blatent violation of the constitution wrong. Montestruc (talk) 21:09, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: "Facts are facts"??? -- not in Wikipedia. The only "facts" allowed here are noncontroversial statements that are very widely known (like "FDR was president 1933-45")  Beyond that--and in this case--Wiki relies only on published RD-reliable sources. That means editors need to cite their RS to be credible in these discussions. Say, a law textbook. Rjensen (talk) 21:27, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Unconstitutionality 

message: This article has had a  tag on it since early 2007, but there has been no discussion on it here.  On the article that this was proposed to be merged with, Opposition to Roosevelt, the consensus was in favor of not merging.  Accordingly, I have removed the merge tag.  If you still feel that the articles should be merged, please put the tag on this article again and state your reasons. Bry9000 (talk) 22:24, 31 January 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Merge tag removed 

message: I'm not sure all of these sources actually criticise him as a Fascist. Dougweller (talk) 10:53, 2 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Section Criticism of Roosevelt as a "Fascist" 

message: Why is she characterized as an "historian", I thought she only had a bachelors in English?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 108.184.185.8 (talk) 02:24, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: she does research and writes serious history, and is called upon by the media as an expert on the 1930s. That makes her a genuine  amateur historian. Rjensen (talk) 05:31, 29 April 2014 (UTC)
replies: text: However when she moves beyond narration and stories and into historiography, she is out of her depth. She simply is unfamiliar with the advanced work that is being done.  So I dropped this passage added by LesLein:  Shlaes wrote that Roosevelt's policies were often inspired by socialist or fascist models abroad.  She stated that a number of New Dealers such as Rexford Tugwell were heavily influenced by Mussolini's Italy and especially Soviet Russia.  She wrote that few New Dealers were spies or communists, but they were naive about the economic benefits of Soviet and European collectivism.  According to Shlaes, fear of being accused of McCarthyism has long prevented historians from looking into the Soviet's ideological influence on American domestic policy in the 1930s.  Shlaes acknowledges that Hoover and Roosevelt may not have had better alternatives; their policies may have spared America some facsimile of Mussolini's fascism or Stalin's communism.  Shales states that "The argument that democracy would have failed in the United States without the New Deal stood for seven decades, and has been made anew, by scholars of considerable quality, quite recently. ref Amity Shlaes.  The Forgotten Man:  A New History of the Great Depression.  New York:  HarperCollins (2007) , pp. 6-7, 13-14. /ref  Rjensen (talk) 23:55, 23 August 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Amity Schlaes 

message: I am not sure that it can be called criticism, but shouldn't there be a section on his and Eleanor's varied sex lives- since these were controversial if not grounds for criticism.Royalcourtier (talk) 07:47, 25 April 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sex life 

message: Many people ignore the major shift in American political philosophy starting in the 1880s as a reaction to the civil war and it's outcome.  The progressive movement was a virulent reaction against the traditional American classical liberal abolitionist sentiment.   The article uses the term "liberal" when discussing pro-FDR historians that is simply not appropriate.   Progressive is the accurate term.
FDR and Wilson whom FDR served as undersecretary of the Navy and T. Roosevelt were all closely associated with the progressive movement, and were opposed to, and antagonistic toward traditionally Liberal American political thought. Montestruc (talk) 21:06, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
replies: text: "Liberal" is the term for FDR used in the great majority of RS (reliable secondary sources).  Wiki defers to the RS according to WP:RS  As reported in An encore for reform: The old progressives and the New Deal by Otis Graham (1967), the majority of "Progressives" from the 1910s opposed FDR and the New Deal (like Al Smith, Frank Knox, WR Hearst), and a minority supported him (like George Norris, Harold Ickes).  Rjensen (talk) 21:18, 29 July 2017 (UTC)
thread_title:  Meta - bias in terminology 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

message: This article is mistitled. Instead of "Criticism of Franklin D. Roosevelt," it should be called, "Every Joker Who Ever Had Anything Negative to Say About the New Deal Or Franklin Roosevelt for the Last 90 Years."
If the article is supposed to cover criticism of Roosevelt at the time he was alive, then the article should be limited to materials that date from that time.
If the article is supposed to cover anybody's opinion who ever argued with the New Deal, or Keynesian economics, or Roosevelt's leadership during WWII, then the article should simply be deleted. Criticism of the New Deal should be posted in an article about the New Deal; criticism about Keynesian economics should be posted under a subject-appropriate article; et cetera. I suspect that many of the sources cited in this article -- sources that are "relevant" because of the unbelievably broad, unfocused topic -- would never survive group editing in the particular subjects that the sources are actually talking about, e.g., the effect of Keynesian economics in the Great Depression.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by MithraUnconquered (talk • contribs) 00:18, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
replies: text: In my opinion it is a good article. It is well written without hyperbole; each section is narrowly focused; and the reliable sources are used effectively. Rjensen (talk) 00:50, 7 June 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Completely unfocused bonfire of every borderline opinion available. 

message: Personally, he comes across to me as a Netanyahu coalition propagandist. However, I know it needs to be pointed out through reliable sources and a neutral point of view. I hope we can work together in finding articles about him.2601:449:4582:B3C0:7DDD:81C:9C6C:D06E (talk) 01:25, 27 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  I question the reliability of Rafael Medoff, and hope to find some criticism