Liberal idol worship

No one ranks higher in the liberal pantheon than St. Franklin of Roosevelt.
They think of FDR as the savior of America. The main evidence of his wonderfulness appears to be the Blue Ridge Parkway.
Why an ordinary two-lane road that wanders through the mountain is worthy of such reverence is beyond me. It is scenic, granted, and I have driven most of it for the view.
But as proof of the New Deal's effectiveness, it falls woefully short.
Let's consider some facts.
Roosevelt's main advisers, laughably called "the brain trust," made a trip to Russia and were awed by what they saw as great achievements by the communists. (This was at a time when Stalin was murdering millions, and the New York Times was lying about it.)
Roosevelt and Mussolini had a mutual admiration society, exchanging congratulatory letters.
At a time when millions of Americans were unemployed and hungry, the New Deal was destroying food and putting people in prison for lowering food prices.
One unconstitutional action was to prohibit employers from offering lower wages so they could afford to hire people who would have been glad to get the work and get out of the breadlines.
The cynical FDR used the jobs programs he created as political weapons. Little help went to areas that needed it the most, but already voted Democrat. Instead, most went to areas in the West and other places where FDR needed votes.
In the Northeast, Republicans who applied for make-work New Deal jobs were stiffed. It was a Democrat program.
The Depression began as an ordinary recession. The Smoot-Hawley tariff helped turn it into a depression, worldwide. FDR, who had promised not to raise taxes, raised them, and that further worsened the problem.
After a similar recession in the early '20s, taxes were lowered and the economy quickly recovered.
It took America's entry in World War II, which FDR also had promised he would not allow, to bring the economy back.
Even then, New Deal policies continued to cause misery. It was wage and price controls during the war that brought on employer-provided health insurance, which helped exacerbate the current problem in that realm.
FDR's other accomplishment, according to liberals was Social Security. Again, Roosevelt's vision was that it would be a supplement to retirement that only a few would receive. It was constructed so that half of the population would die before receiving benefits.
Politicians after FDR continued to pile on costs and benefits to the Ponzi scheme and today it faces bankruptcy. But that's another story.
The bottom line is that FDR was no hero. He was a politician.