Democrats -- Just Like They Used to Make Them
May 21, 2003
By Toby Westerman
Copyright 2003 International News Analysis Today
www.inatoday.com
The image of a smiling, confident, commanding - and above all politically successful - Franklin Delano Roosevelt dominates the May 19 issue of Time Magazine. The message of the article is that the Democratic Party should continue to present its traditional liberal social message to the American people, but combined with a strong concern for national defense.
The myth behind Time's message is that the Democratic Party was at any time from Roosevelt to the present, actually capable of an effective overall commitment to national security.
Superimposed upon FDR's image is the cover title, "Why They Don't Make Democrats Like They Used To (And How to Fix It)." The Time article declares that future Democratic presidential candidates should, "fire the consultants, find some core values, and speak from the heart."
National defense is a key issue for Democrats. "The Democrats may never be able to outdo the Republicans on patriotism and national defense, but they do have to be credible in those areas," states the Time article. Liberal Democrat advisor and "activist" Donna Brazile describes national defense as a "threshold question," according to Time.
Unstated, but ever present, is the towering figure of Franklin Roosevelt, the one Democratic political leader who combined liberal political ideology with inspiring wartime leadership, according to Time.
The difficulty, the fatal difficulty is that Roosevelt was effective against only one kind of enemy, and the present Democratic Party is at least as ineffective.
While Roosevelt could unite a nation against fascism, his administration - and the national defense - was completely open to penetration by Communists working for the Soviet Union.
Roosevelt's ambition to restructure the U.S. economic system, and his vision for a postwar United Nations, found deep resonance with Communists active in the U.S.
Harry Hopkins, architect of Roosevelt's social welfare policy and FDR's most trusted advisor, was considered "the most important of all Soviet wartime agents in the United States," by Soviet intelligence itself, according to Herbert Romerstein in his seminal work, The Venona Secrets.
Hopkins' contact with the Communists in the U.S. apparently extends back to the early 1930s, according to Romerstein.
After Germany attacked the Soviet Union in June, 1941, Communists enthusiastically joined what they called the "democratic front," also referred to as the "Roosevelt camp of progress," according to Bella Dodd, a former Communist organizer and member of the Communist Party's National Committee, in her book, School of Darkness, the story of her life in the Communist Party.
Roosevelt implemented his postwar plan for world government even before World War II ended, and launched the first session of the United Nations in April 1945, with key Roosevelt advisor Alger Hiss as Secretary General.
Hiss was also a Soviet spy, as was Harry Dexter White, U.S. Treasury representative to the same initial U.N. meeting.
Observers note that the Roosevelt administration laid the groundwork for a tradition not only of continually expanding federal powers, but also weakness on U.S. security issues, and a willingness to surrender U.S. sovereignty to international interests.
The Democratic Party led the assault on U.S. intelligence gathering capabilities in the 1970s, crippling U.S. counterespionage efforts for decades. The disastrous attacks of September 11, 2001, are directly connected to the crippling of American counterespionage efforts in the 70s, according to authorities in the intelligence field.
The years of the Clinton administration witnessed the steep decline in military preparedness resulting from the precipitous "draw down" in the numbers and quality of U.S. armed forces, revealed in Dereliction of Duty, by former presidential aide, Lt. Col. "Buzz" Patterson.
As U.S. forces shrank, America's commitment to various international and U.N. peacekeeping operations grew, although the foreign interventions had little to do with the conduct of U.S. foreign policy.
The inability of leading Democrats to produce a coherent plan for national defense against terrorism, while continually criticizing President George W. Bush's policy to counter terrorist threats and actions, is in the Democratic Party's time honored tradition of general incompetence in the field of national security.
The Democratic Party's haplessness in defense policy grows as questions concerning socialism, communism, and the United Nations arise in America's continuing debate on security issues.
Copyright 2003
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