Presidential Polls

“THE ROOSEVELTS” 14 Hour Documentary Series For Seven Straight Nights, September 14-20, By Brilliant Documentarian Ken Burns!

Ronald 6 Comments

One of the greatest documentarians of the modern era is Ken Burns, who has done magnificent and brilliant work on such topics as “The Civil War”, “Baseball”, “The Dust Bowl”, “Jazz”, and many other wonderful topics, is now taking on a massive challenge with his 14 hour series over seven nights on “The Roosevelts”, an in depth study of Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and Eleanor Roosevelt.  The series is on for seven straight nights from September 14-20 on PBS.  And why September 14?  Because that is the day 113 years ago, that TR succeeded to the Presidency upon the death of William McKinley, from an assassin’s bullet eight days earlier!

This blogger, who in 1981 published a book on the New Deal, has always found FDR his favorite President, and has also admired TR, and really appreciative of First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

This is a must series for all Presidential “junkies”, and considering that the two Roosevelts are in the top five of any legitimate Presidential poll of scholars at number 2 for FDR and number 4 for TR, this is a series any intelligent and interested person should watch, and it will also be available for DVD sale immediately.

This is a premiere series, unlikely to be surpassed in quality and excellence any time soon!

FDR’s Worst Domestic Mistake: 72nd Anniversary Of Japanese American Internment Order

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Franklin D. Roosevelt is rated in most polls of scholars as our second greatest President, right behind Abraham Lincoln, or if placed third, behind George Washington as well.

FDR did so much good for us in the years of the Great Depression, with his wide variety of New Deal programs, and he also took us through the travails of World War II.

But he made a horrible mistake, when he issued Executive Order 9066 on this day in 1942, 72 years ago, allowing the building of prison camps, specifically for Japanese Americans, but also for some German Americans and Italian Americans, on the basis that they might be a “Fifth Column” working for the nation of their family’s origin.

About 110,000 mostly Japanese Americans were locked up in internment camps, and if they tried to escape, were shot and killed by guards. They were kept there until the middle of 1945, for no crime other than their ethnicity.

Many of the young Japanese American men went off to fight in Europe in World War II, and won more medals, honors, and awards for their bravery in battle, than any other unit of the war effort.

It took until 1988 for President Ronald Reagan to sign legislation granting compensation to the approximate 50,000 such victims still alive.

On the 31st anniversary of Executive Order 9066, President Gerald Ford signed legislation in 1976, declaring that executive order null and void for the future, with the memory of the miscarriage of justice that had been visited on Japanese Americans.

Never again should any such executive order be issued against any ethnic, racial, or religious group, but one can be sure that there are many right wingers who would love to do the same to our Muslim population, or our Latino population.

This mistake by FDR, giving in to hysteria, was upheld shamelessly by the Supreme Court in Korematsu V. US in December 1944, a low moment for the Court, but not the only one it has done in its long history!

Civil liberties of people should never be breached in the name of hysteria and panic!