Why You Should Be Pissed at Revisionist History

Posted by admin on January 8, 2009 under Economy, Environment, Politics | Comments are off for this article

Have you heard the one about the Great Depression? How it was “the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor, not the economic polices of FDR,” that got the US out of the great depression? To hear them tell it, FDR made the depression worse. Pretty funny, huh?

George Will and the other Far Right Wingnuts have been telling that chestnut on Fox News a lot in the last few weeks. The problem is they’re not joking. They’re trying to re-write history, again.

They’re using spurious arguments and outright baldface lies to attack the economic policies of President Franklin Roosevelt, the man who lead us out of the greatest depression the U.S. has ever seen.(Source)(Source)(Source)(Source)

                                                                                 Ben Bernanke                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                        
“Only with the New Deal’s rehabilitation of the financial system in 1933-35 did the economy begin its slow emergence from the Great Depression.”

To hear these Wingnuts tell it putting starving people back to work in meaningful jobs that built the infrastructure of modern America, was a bad idea. Regulating banks and investment companies that had gone completely off the rails, that idea was to these poor deranged souls, nearly criminal.

But why are they attacking FDR now? Why attack an American icon, the man who brought us 40 hour work weeks, Social Security, the FDIC, , what’s the point of bashing him? The reason is clearly that they want to oppose the recovery efforts of President-Elect Obama, who’s crafting a New Deal like plan of his own to rebuild our economy and save the country.

So do their “arguments” have any merit at all? Not according to George W. Bush’s Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Ben Bernanke, “Only with the New Deal’s rehabilitation of the financial system in 1933-35 did the economy begin its slow emergence from the Great Depression.”(Source)

Daniel Gross, NYT Columnist and author put’s it this way:

“The financial infrastructure laid down by the government in the New Deal helped pave the way for the immense growth seen in America’s capital markets, banking system, credit industry, and housing markets over the past 70 years.” (Source)

George Will and the Republican political machine are using revisionist history in the most cynical way imaginable. They’re deliberately lying about the rescue plan for the economy, for their party’s own political gain. It’s so shockingly vile, that I wouldn’t have believed them capable of stooping so low.

They’re beating up FDR as a way to bash Obama. He’s too popular to attack directly, so by attacking the policies of FDR the Right Wing Noise Machine sets about undermining policies of a President who hasn’t even taken office yet.

Clearly there are no depths too low for them.