It Was Not FDR's Fault

11/21/2002—On a message board, I ran my latest article "Liberals Retain Senate Control". An excerpt of one of my comments posted there was:

"LBJ both directly with socialism, and indirectly by the way he ran the Vietnam War, did more damage to this nation that any president ever has, except perhaps Lincoln, who trashed the10th Amendment and thus gave us the opening for a ballooning centralized government and statism."

"BluesDuke" responded. "And without Franklin Roosevelt (who really established the framework - and turned the Constitution into toilet paper in the bargain)" . . .

I have heard this "it was FDR's fault for getting us into this mess" often. I disagreed that it was FDR. Further research proved that it really was not FDR. Take a look at this chart. Total Fed spending on Human Resources declined in 1950 from 1940 and declined again by 1960.

As I stated in that thread at LibertPost.org, it was LBJ and the Socialist Democrats in the mid-60s and 70s that really started this country down the statism/communism path. You do see a tick down from Reagan's efforts (the drop in the year 1990 in the chart reflects the reduction in the 1980s), only to have the trajectory zoom upward again in the 1990s, (as shown by the sharp increase at the year 2000 mark) when the Republicans in the Senate and House refused to fight Clinton and the Democrats in ballooning the growth of statism. Bush has continued on with spending waste that dwarfs even what Clinton spent on domestic and global welfare.

Contrary to what many believe, it was not FDR who started the destruction of this nation. Social Security was a vastly different program then. The Democrats implemented the social welfare, added hundreds of programs onto the social security system, and turned hard left into statism in the LBJ and post Vietnam years, as clearly shown in this chart of HR spending. The Republicans got down on their knees and watched as the destruction took place, offering a near zero effort to prevent the Democrats' push into statism.

Now, with George Bush in the White House, with Republican control of the Senate, and with Republican control of the House, there still is a rising tide of socialism and global waste spending. In many cases, global welfare programs are receiving more funding than departments dedicated to our own national security.

You doubt that? Look up the amount of money being sent to Africa for schools, food, and AIDS. It is more money than we spend on our own border security!