5 ms·
FDR is a very interesting case study. He had the country in the palm of his hand and could have cemented his (or his party’s) power permanently, but instead he
by smt88 4mo ago
FDR is a very interesting case study. He had the country in the palm of his hand and could have cemented his (or his party’s) power permanently, but instead he left the republic intact.
- lokar 4mo agoThat’s not what the right thinks. They are obsessed with him and rolling back the new deal.
- hyhatqtv 4mo agoThe New Deal was mostly rolled back a while ago. After all corporatism did generally fall out of fashion for after WW2 (and of course there was quite a bit of opposition of state planning due to geopolitical reasons in the 50s and later)
- lokar 4mo agoSocial security? And the follow-up, Medicare?
- hedora 4mo agoThose are both being actively dismantled.
- myroon5 4mo agoSocial Security and Medicare are ~26% and ~16.5% of the federal budget (excluding the 15% of the budget that's just financing previous years' budgets): https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/federal-spending/ https://fiscaldata.treasury.gov/americas-finance-guide/feder...
- lokar 4mo agoAnd?
- yard2010 4mo agoAs The President told FDR in Rick and Morty: "Try having an historical administration after Facebook goes online, you old-timey bitch!"
- djeastm 4mo agoHmm... Didn't he try to pack the Supreme Court?
- hyhatqtv 4mo agoHe and the congress (and probably most of the country would have supported it) . There is an argument to be made that the Supreme Court was at least partially usurping the powers of the legislative and executive branches to impose its political policies.
- Uhhrrr 4mo agoBefore the court packing threat, they were limiting the federal government's power to regulate commerce within states. Which is a power it doesn't actually have.
- pdonis 4mo agoAnd then they reversed course with Wickard v. Filburn and said it was perfectly OK for Congress to regulate, not just commerce within a single state, but farmers growing their own food on their own land for their own use. So FDR ended up getting what he wanted anyway.
- Uhhrrr 3mo agoYes, they reversed course after the court packing threat.
- jfengel 4mo agoThey have whatever power the Supreme Court decides they have. The Supreme Court decided that was their job, and thus far everyone has accepted it. The Court interprets the Constitution, which is vague enough to mean whatever a bare majority wishes it to mean.
- danny_codes 4mo ago
- hyhatqtv 4mo agoWell actual dictators generally do those things because they need to subvert the constitutional to stay in power. Roosevelt didn’t need any of that in order to make sure he remained president for the remainder of his lifetime. After all there was a constitutional amendment pass soon after to stop any president from doing what FDR did.
- kmeisthax 4mo agoFDR actually kinda did do that. He broke the Washington precedent and ran for President four times, he scared the Supreme Court shitless to the point where they signed off on blatantly unconstitutional land grabs against Japanese emigrants, and the Democratic Party was able to ride high on the fumes of the Progressive movement for decades afterward. We don't think of him as a dictator, because a lot of what he did was ultimately reforms necessary to maintain America as a republic. The alternative would have been Nazi America. But he was still exercising dictatorial power, and he was responsible for massively increasing the power of the Presidency as a result. Hell, part of the reason why Trump is so dangerous is specifically because of the damage FDR did to the checks and balances on the Executive Branch.
- zhoBEENG 4mo agoThank you for this; you are completely correct but this is not the narrative on the streets. He was a tyrant (in the original sense) and dictator who believed in absolute power of the executive, which paved the way for Trump. His federalization program wiped out the America that existed before. Like Trump, he ruled via mob passion. He was America’s Marius.