This last month brought to public TV in the US, another
of Ken Burns’ epic documentaries, The Roosevelts, a story of how the one
family through Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor brought a can-do spirit to
America – one that is so sorely lacking
in America today. What is even more remarkable is that these people who
tireless worked for those who were disadvantaged were themselves born to wealth
and privilege.
For those who missed it, check out the official site for the documentary which includes
a collection of video clips.
To outline everything they have done would take too much space.
But here is a brief summary with details in the hyperlinks.
Theodore Roosevelt’s
Square Deal centered on improving labor conditions, health and welfare, and
conservation which
included creating the National Park system by reserving pieces of land to be
enjoyed by all of us. And the Panama Canal was
constructed during his time in office.
Franklin Delano
Roosevelt (FDR) inherited a country in the middle of the Great Depression and notably
created the Works Progress Administration (WPA)
to help relieve the historic crushing levels of unemployment.
The WPA built traditional infrastructure of the New Deal such as roads, bridges, schools, courthouses, hospitals, sidewalks, waterworks, and post-offices, but also constructed museums, swimming pools, parks, community centers, playgrounds, coliseums, markets, fairgrounds, tennis courts, zoos, botanical gardens, auditoriums, waterfronts, city halls, gyms, and university unions. Most of these are still in use today.
But perhaps his greatest accomplishments were the creation
of the Social Security Act and
his efforts to get the US ready for World War II in what was largely an
isolationist country.
Eleanor as FDR’s
First Lady worked tirelessly behind the scenes for civil rights, an issue
that her husband was sometimes reluctant to champion because he didn’t want to
lose favor with Southern Democrats he felt he needed to win presidential
elections. But it wasn’t until two years
after Eleanor’s death that segregation of public accommodations was finally
declared to be illegal with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which caused many of those Southern Democrats to then become Southern Republicans (adopting the party of
Abraham Lincoln no less).
When looking at this impressive list of achievements, one
has to wonder how many of these could be accomplished in today’s toxic
political environment. I say few if any.
The Republican conservative movement was once one that also favored helping
and protecting people, e.g. – Eisenhower and the Interstate Highway System and
Richard Nixon creating the Environmental Protection Agency. But in more recent years it has adopted a
much more libertarian philosophy where especially the federal government should
have little more to do than fighting wars.
Helping people who are down on their luck in their minds is best left to
charity. The chronic unemployment that
still lingers on is attributed by many conservatives as workers just being lazy.
But most if not all
of the accomplishments listed above can only be effectively done by the federal
government. There is only so much
that state and local governments can do. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow once did an interesting video to illustrate just this point. I invite the reader to check out one of my
previous postings Government on the Cheap
to see how people are hurt when the government is rendered ineffective by tax
cuts that starve it from needed revenue.
While the federal government can run on deficits created by
tax cuts – like what was done for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan – the state
governments cannot get away with this.
In deeply conservative Kansas, Governor Sam Brownback has tested
conservative theories to the max by deep tax cuts which have led to massive
deficits and cutting of needed services like in public education. Even many Republicans are turning against him
as seen in this Meet
the Press video segment titled The
Anti, Anti-Tax Movement.
While the far-right critics of the New Deal can argue that its
programs were nothing more than make work ones that were not really needed, we
do have a tremendous amount of work that needs to be done. For example, our roads, bridges, and
transportation system along with our power grid are sorely in need of upgrading
and repair to bring it up to 21st century standards. So investing in infrastructure projects like
these is not only necessary but is a
great creator of the jobs that we sorely need. For those of us who believe that good
government can promote the common good for all and not just for those with
money and power, we can only hope that those who are in the endlessly
cutting taxes and government camp have finally overplayed their hand!
