In Defense of FDR Bashing

I have come to the conclusion that most liberals have taken down their poster of Jesus and put up a poster of FDR that says FDR SAVES! at the bottom. They've taken the "Mr. Roosevelt is going to save us all." lyric in the Alabama song "High Cotton" to heart but they've forgotten the other lyric "we all picked cotton but we never got rich."

I am not attacking FDR's character or even most of his decisions. All I am trying to convey is that FDR's infrastructure programs (specifically the WPA and the PWA) did not end the Depression. WWII ended the Depression, and WWII was not a public works program dreamed up by the Administration, it was a cultural event into which America was drawn. FDR gains no clout, in my eyes, for ending the Depression by joining the war effort; indeed the ending of the Depression was (in my humble opinion) mostly a biproduct of his policy to end American isolationism, and the demands on American factories to produce war products.

Let's get off the "ending the Depression theory" talk though. What I want to say, and what I briefly touched on (and Megan does as well) yesterday is that FDR's infrastructure policy was in many ways helpful to America, and in many ways unhelpful to America, but what it didn't do was end the Great Depression.

One thing the New Deal did was throw money at almost any project that was perceived to employ people. One of those projects, dam building, is so offensive to me that I can't help but call it out as the single worst decision made in U.S. history between 1929 and 1941. Dams provide a paltry amount of electricity compared to coal and nuclear plants. Dams create large reservoirs, enabling huge populations of people to move to areas that are otherwise unsuitable for human habitation (on a massive scale, anyway). These people then become completely dependent on hydraulic piping from the reservoir for their ever increasing water demand. Dams disrupt the natural flora and fauna of a river, and provide a large reservoir for invasive species to thrive.
Dams were a great idea, back when we needed to divert flow. But the modern gravity fed hydroelectric dam is a terrible offense to nature and a terrible use of resources. And the worst of it is, America's huge dam building efforts of the 30's and 40's became a justification for international dam building. This has sparked a global blitz to destroy basically every migratory river fish population in the world while gaining a fraction of the electricity needed on this planet to support the current population.

Trout and salmon populations have been devastated, millions of people have been displaced, native American and other important historical sites have been flooded, people were killed during construction, and the natural river and stream system of the western half of the United States was permanently disrupted and will probably never recover.

One might argue that great American cities would never have come to be, and the country would be a much less amazing place, if it weren't for reservoir-based irrigation and hydraulic piping. However, is Las Vegas a great American city? What has Las Vegas done for the world other than glamorize instant marriage and condone prostitution, gambling, and mob activities? Now I don't mean to offend anyone living in Las Vegas, or anyone from Las Vegas, but let's face it, Las Vegas is not the first city you think of when you think "positive contribution to American history."

Last but not least, I must make, to be fair, a casual mention to the thousands of miles of gravel roads that were carved across the nation thanks to the WPA. The great plains owe a debt of gratitude to the 8 million workers who spent their time and effort building roads all across the vast prairie, and made it accessible for farmers (many of whom had moved to the city because of the Depression, and the road building project was too little too late). Oh there I go again...



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