On Facebook just now, two brilliant women I have long admired, loved and respected posted the following on Facebook:
…One quoted FDR about the President as a “moral leader.” This was intended by my friend as a knock on Trump. She obviously knows next to nothing about Franklin Delano Roosevelt. He cheated on his devoted wife for most of their marriage, ultimately dying with one of his mistresses. He locked up Japanese American citizens in arguably the worst civil rights breach of any American President. He helped the Holocaust to proceed by allowing anti-Semites in his Cabinet to foil the efforts of Jews to escape Nazi Germany. FDR condemned Eastern Europe to decades of brutal Communist rule in gratitude to Stalin. Roosevelt also allowed himself to be elected four times, the last time when he knew he was dying: an odd choice to use in contrast to a President being accused of being a “king.”
FDR was a great President in many ways, but few of our leaders were less interested in morality or ethics than Roosevelt.
.…The other poste that she read Kamala Harris’s book and found it inspiring. I don’t even want to talk about that one…
Ethics Alarms 
I can excuse FDR for this, as the U.S. had to ally with evil to defeat a more imminent evil. This was the same rationale for Operation: Paperclip
I must wonder what the ethics of the U.S. using its newfound monopoly on the atomic bomb to take down the USSR would have been.
There were a few brief years where we had bombs, Russia had none, and the American people didn’t fully understand the horrors of what a massive nuclear strike would be.
It’s an interesting thought experiment wondering what the world would be like post 1950s without the USSR.
We knew Russia was very close to a bomb because our Communists stole the information for him
Bertrand Russel is said to have proposed using the Bomb on Russia:
https://www.heristical.com/p/did-bertrand-russell-advocate-for
The blockade of West Berlin could have been a casus belli for using the atomic bomb against the USSR.
You didn’t even mention the fascist stuff, like having Congress delegate their lawmaking ability to him or the ‘Blue Eagle’ program. The President who did away with Congress is a Democratic hero, but Trump is a king!
Democrats know these things, but they have a double standard. In Minneapolis, the ‘Anti-Ice’ terrorists are putting up roadblocks around the city. They stop all cars and check their license plates to make sure they aren’t ICE (apparently, the city is letting them use the license plate database). They claim ICE are Nazi’s, but ICE isn’t stopping every car and checking for legal status. They know these things, but compartmentalize them away. I think that is why so many of them need psychiatric drugs.
FDR was by far the closest the US has had to a dictator. Democrats and liberals revere him, and the hypocrisy doesn’t seem to register.
Is that hypocritical reverence a feature or a bug? I’d say a feature. ANY Democrat president is revered. Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton, Barack Obama, Joe Biden. Embarrassing, each in his own way.
I don’t think it is hypocrisy. I think it is an actual double standard. It is OK for FDR to have tyrannical powers because he is a Democrat. Republicans are stupid, evil, and ugly, so they are not allowed to have any power at all. Democrats believe in a 2-tiered society, with them on top. It is just like our laws. Laws are for Republicans and little people and they believe that. Silently protest outside an abortion clinic and be sent to prison for ‘violence’. Enter a church during services screaming at people and the judge won’t even issue an arrest warrant. Leave a bunch of classified documents you aren’t supposed to have lying around in your garage rented to a person using drugs who committed a gun felony and ‘yawn’…nothing. Be a former president with files that were cleared and shipped by the National Archivist in a secure room inspected by the FBI and get raided because the National Archivist says you shouldn’t have them. Have a sanctuary city or state violating federal immigration laws or dug laws…”OK by the courts”. Be a state that says they won’t help prosecute any unconstitutional firearms laws “Banned by the courts”.
Remember, the courts just overturned the judicial interpretation of the Civil Rights Act that required a higher standard of proof for a white person to sue for racial discrimination than anyone else. That’s right, the federal courts for decades had a racially discriminatory policy on proving racial discrimination.
https://www.jacksonlewis.com/insights/us-supreme-court-reverses-reverse-employment-discrimination-pleading-standard
This is right. It’s a double standard. More than that, it’s Orwellian double-speak.
Theodore Roosevelt was a capitalist racist, xenophobic expansionist…until they need to quote his progressive statements. Cheney and the Bushes were war criminals…but they are now elder statesmen who exuded class. Remember how McCain was tied to Bush and how Romney was made fun of for his religion? McCain is lionized now and Romney treated as the Voice of Reason in the Republican party. Under any other circumstance, they would treat FDR as a conservative Democrat because he didn’t adequately fight Jim Crow laws in the South. They will even quote the Bible when it suits them.
Anyone and anything can be used by them as a bat with which to bludgeon Republicans. Republicans just can’t do the same. Which is why one Disney star got canned for comparing abortion to the Holocaust and another Disney star didn’t for comparing immigration enforcement to it.
“McCain is lionized now and Romney treated as the Voice of Reason in the Republican party.”
They and the Bushes did (IMO) THE one thing which can absolve anyone of all their past transgressions: Publicly come out against President Trump.
PWS
“FDR was a great President in many ways, but few of our leaders were less interested in morality or ethics than Roosevelt.”
FDR often ranks as the third best President of the USA behind George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. From another post which I have trouble locating my impression is that our host Jack Marshall also has FDR very high on the list of best Presidents of the USA.
My impression is that the importance of morality and ethics is politics is overrated. Jimmy Carter was often praised for his ethics, and he campaigned on this by vowing that he would never tell a lie. He is also near the bottom of any Presidential ranking, as his moral naivety led the USA to be played lick a sucker by immoral powers such as the USSR and Iran.
I am more in favor of Realpolitik, which is an approach to politics that prioritizes national interests, security, and power over ideology, ethics, and moral principles. This is the philosophy that is often associated with Otto von Bismarck and Henry Kissinger. If only GW Bush had practiced realpolitik in the Middle East instead of his idealism about changing hearts and minds!
Most of the talk about ethics and morals related to politics at the social media is just virtue signaling and moral preening.