Ken Burns Mollycoddles "The Roosevelts"

Last week, PBS featured a Ken Burns documentary entitled, “The Roosevelts: An Intimate History.”  This film is the hagiography I expected it to be, despite the film maker’s reassurances on the Diane Rehm’s Show.  There were a few exceptions of tepid criticism, George Will comes to mind, other than that, this was the same old Roosevelt sermon.

We’ve all heard the progressive gospels before.  FDR saved capitalism from itself.  FDR was a traitor to his class.  What a load of crap.  Had Ken Burns sought out economists critical of the New Deal, the audience would have had a different perspective. There is a reason why we call it the Great Depression, and it had everything to do with FDR’s fiscal policies.  The true mantra should be, “Capitalism survived FDR.”  Academia, on the other hand, did not.  The historians and professors that littered this documentary are a testament to that.

FDR was not a traitor to his class.  He was a product of his class.  Vanderbilt dominated the transportation industry.  Rockefeller was a titan in the oil industry.  Carnegie forged the steel industry.  These men dominated their field with ruthless zeal.  They didn’t tolerate competition.  They sought to destroy it.  The Roosevelts were no different.

FDR was a failure in every business venture he attempted.  He eventually found his calling: government.  And like his cousin, Theodore, he couldn’t care less about the U.S. Constitution.  Both thought it a hindrance and an obstacle.  The Roosevelts were arrogant patricians.  They disguised their ambitions through the sufferings of the American people.  Power was their product.  Anyone not in government was their competition.

 

We can thank the Roosevelts for America’s bureaucratic state.  It started with T.R. and the Hepburn Act and escalated with the New Deal.  The 1946 Administrative Procedure Act was a futile attempt by Congress to control all these government agencies.  Instead, they aided and abetted this monster.

The Roosevelts are a curse to this country and its founding ideals.  Americans must repudiate this cursed family, or we will be ruled by fascist, like the ones FDR's administration admired.

Source:  http://www.pbs.org/kenburns/the-roosevelts/