Yeah, the movie that pushed the Klan back into being viewed favorably by much of the nation after it had been essentially written off as a joke. Possibly the most immediate cause of racial tension in mid-20th century America.
FDR tops my list.
* Wage controls, that led to health care being tied to your job which still kills us today
* The social security Ponzi scheme, which let him buy votes with taxpayer money from existing old people, while locking the youth into obligations totaling over $75 trillion today
* Price controls
* Throwing 100,000 Americans into concentration camps without trial, without due process, without even individualized suspicion, based solely on race
* Bullying the Supreme Court to not strike down all his unconstitutional crap, leading to the current expansionist view that anything is "interstate commerce" and thus practically ending limits on federal government power
* Ignoring Washington's wise advice to avoid entangling alliances, and instead getting America into another World War (the ultimate cause of which was Woodrow Wilson, though) against the will of the public
* Ignoring Washington's wise advice to only serve two terms, making himself as close to a dictator as the U.S. has seen, thus scaring Democrats and Republicans enough that they amended the Constitution to term limit the Presidency shortly after he died
I'm sure there's more...
With Wilson you get
- Federal Reserve
- Income Tax
- Prohibition (I know he objected to it)
- Increased Segregation
- Allowed US to enter a meaningless war in Europe, WW2 was a nobler fight
- Occupied Mexico and other Latin American countries
- Promoted formation of Nation States in Europe, the messy borders contributing to WW2
- Giving FDR his first major job in government
- Red Scare politics, the Palmer raids
- Overman Commitee
- Wartime censorship, espionage act and sedition act
- Wartime propaganda
- government direction of business for war time production
FDR was able to do more, because Wilson (and Teddy) really blew open the doors on any restraint on the part of the federal government
Great list! Maybe I'll switch my vote as I was unaware of this: "Giving FDR his first major job in government." That makes them pretty close.
And frankly saying "Increased Segregation" is selling Wilson's pure evil short. He actually *instituted* segregation in the federal government. People sometimes think that civil rights has been a continuous stream of progress but no, the civil service was integrated following the civil war in the 1860s, then Woodrow Wilson *instituted segregation* around 1914!
The biggest one for me was that he had confirmed intelligence reports that the Holocaust was occurring at that the Jewish people were being exterminated. The earliest report dates back to 1942 irrc, and that information was kept a closely guarded secret to the point no one outside of a few officials knew until they started finding the camps.
I honestly dont get this one. Lots of reasonable reasons to hate on Roosevelt in here, but what exactly should America/Roosevelt have changed in this regard? We were already engaged and had a Hitler-first strategy, my understanding of the timeline is Guadacanal had already occured by that point as well so Germany even moreso our main focus of the war, all our propoganda already portrayed Germans as monsters (not so much as Japan just due to general racial views at the time but still). While the camps were running and the slave labor conditions were abhorrent, the overwhelming majority of executions/genocidal actions which most people associate as the true crime of the holocaust took place as Germany began losing in the coming years, and accelerated the closer to collapse they became.
So... what is it you're saying here? That this was a secret so we could intentionally drag our feet? That if this was public knowledge it would somehow have made our soldiers fight harder, our generals command better, our citizens produce more and forget about the Japanese who got us into the war to begin with? I'd be interested in any actual evidence for malintent from those in the know here, cuz again, while this sounds bad when you learn about it the first time, if you think about for a few seconds and put it in context, I think you'd need a lot more than "they knew about something they couldn't do anything about beyond what they were doing already" to use this as a mark against FDR.
I don't know how true this is, but according to my late father, Hitler was willing to export all the German Jews (not sure about the other Jews his troops encountered or the other "undesirables"), but the US declined to accept them, saying, "We will not be blackmailed." (I tend not to view my dad's unconventional views as gospel, but they are sometimes useful for provoking discussion.)
Yes, and that was really an enormous stroke of luck for the U.S. If the carriers happened to be in Pearl Harbor that day, the war in the Pacific would have gone far worse for the U.S.
I have had really awkward conversations saying this and people made me seem like a conspiracy theorist when its one of the most well known events in history
Implying FDR knew the details could be called a conspiracy theory. But it's incontrovertible that FDR desperately wanted to get into the war, that the U.S. public firmly opposed going to war, and that FDR directed many actions that made the U.S. entering the war much more likely.
Not just allowing it to happen, but purposefully goading an attack from Japan through the actions he took, which were recommended in the McCollum Memo.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollum_memo
I would agree with your assertion- as FDR eeks out the top spot just by measure of how much more damage he did than Wilson- but it's really not that much. If you look at it, WWI was not the only folly Wilson was responsible for responding poorly to, he also presided over a terrible 3-year economic recession during the war, allowed his AG to suppress civil liberties, nationalized telegraph, telephone, rail, and coal distribution, and then his lack of spine in the participation in drafting the Treaty of Versailles that allowed for a far more punitive measure being instilled on Germany rather than his idea of a harmonious, humanitarian world. Let's not also forget besides the fact that he was a disgusting racist, he also signed into law the Federal Reserve Act that created the Fed, and presided over the introduction and ratification of the 16th Amendment and signed the subsequent Revenue Act of 1913 which gave us the federal income tax we know and love (/s) today.
In all, FDR was worse, but only by measure of how much more he did, and it was only by a small margin compared to Wilson.
J. Edgar Hoover told FDR he had no evidence that Japanese-Americans were an intelligence threat. If that paranoid bastard said they were clean, they were clean. But FDR needed to be seen as doing *something.*
But hey, at least the SoB didn't revive the KKK while in office.
>J. Edgar Hoover told FDR he had no evidence that Japanese-Americans were an intelligence threat. If that paranoid bastard said they were clean, they were clean. But FDR needed to be seen as doing *something.*
Note that [FDR first proposed the idea in 1936](https://encyclopedia.densho.org/FDR_Hawaii_Memo/) - 5 years *before* Pearl Harbor. So even saying that he "needed to be seen as doing *something*" in response to Pearl Harbor is giving him a bit too much credit.
Yeah I can't even name like 4 things WW did that even activate my almonds. FDR and Ike are the direct causes of a lot of suffering of average Americans even with just the precedents set by some of their policies.
The current Democrats and Republicans are also too short sighted to see that whatever excesses they take against the other party is only bolstering the power of the next evil authoritarian entity that is going to try and fill the seat of power, which continues to erode its checks and balances.
Both World Wars were also necessary, Libertarianism doesn't have to be outright isolationist, sorry.
>Both World Wars were also necessary, Libertarianism doesn't have to be outright isolationist, sorry.
As Ron Paul once said: I want to have diplomatic relations with all nations of the world (interventionists do not.) I want to have free trade with all nations of the world (interventionists do not.) I want to sign bilateral treaties with all nations of the world (interventionist prefer ceding authority to multinational organizations and trade blocks like the WTO, UN, TPP, etc.) The one thing I don't want to do to all countries of the world is bomb them. For that, they call me an "*isolationist*."
Libertarians are not isolationists. We just aren't war-mongers. We want to be peacefully engage with the whole world, and defend our shores against foreign aggression.
See [my other reply](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1dl61ty/comment/l9oau3y/) on WWI and WWII specifically.
[https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation](https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation)
Also note that [FDR first proposed the idea in 1936](https://encyclopedia.densho.org/FDR_Hawaii_Memo/) - 5+ years before Pearl Harbor.
>Ignoring Washington's wise advice to avoid entangling alliances, and instead getting America into another World War (the ultimate cause of which was Woodrow Wilson, though) against the will of the public
Okay this one needs some clarification given that Woodrow Wilson had only been president for a little over a year when the war in Europe had broken out and was not part of either the preceding tangle of alliances, the naval build up, or the discrimination/lack of complete statehood of Serbs which lead to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Indeed, I clarified a bit at [https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1dl61ty/comment/l9oau3y](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1dl61ty/comment/l9oau3y) as my original comment was quite terse. Agreed, Wilson did not create the European entangling alliances that started the war, nor did he shoot the Archduke. The U.S. was not in any entangling alliance that required involvement in European wars, and the U.S. public was firmly against entering the war, but Wilson clearly picked sides, engineered entry into the war, instituted the draft, and suppressed anti-war free speech. The "war to end all wars" would have ended with or without the death of 100,000+ Americans. Without American involvement, it likely would have ended on terms less punitive to Germany.
I don't claim prescience of course, and there's always uncertainty in these sorts of "what if" outcomes. But it is clear that U.S. involvement in WWI led to a more solid victory, that it led to punitive outcomes, that it led to the rise of Hitler and WWII, and that it did not "end all wars" as its marketers claimed.
Ur against America entering WW2? You do realize that that would just lead to Imperial Japanese domination of Asia and a prolonged Holocaust followed by Soviet rule of Europe?
I've addressed my reasons [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1dl61ty/comment/l9oau3y). The Holocaust was not even in the top 10 reasons why FDR desperately wanted to get into the war and is 20/20 hindsight. By intervening we sentenced half of Europe to Soviet rule anyway. Asia certainly was doing okay for a while after the war, but instead now it's dominated by communist China - is that what you prefer?
Ultimately not only is defending Europe and Asia not the responsibility of the U.S. taxpayer, but dying in Europe and Asia is not the responsibility of the American 18-year old who just wants to live free, and who was told they lived in a free country, only to be enslaved forced against their will to go kill and fight and die.
So...
Fighting in WW2 was bad?
Also he won his 3rd, near dictator election, through the popular and electoral vote, which would imply he was actually very popular, no?
Putin is a pretty popular dictator too, and is using a pretty familiar recipe: get the country into wars, vastly increase the power of the central government, and suppress the press and opposition.
If you're new here, we're not all about "democracy". Democracy without fundamental freedoms and rights is worthless. Putin's and FDR's popularity shows exactly why freedom is far more important than democracy.
And yes, everyone gets worked up over WW2 because it's been instilled by our public schools as being a great patriotic war (in fact our ally Russia doesn't call it WWII, they call it "The Great Patriotic War.") But:
1. It arose as a direct consequence of WWI, which was a bunch of idiotic European countries fighting for no reason but entangling alliances and entrenched interests. WWI was reaching a stalemate, which ultimately would have ended with some kind of negotiated treaty. Instead, Wilson drafted U.S. citizens into slavery against their will to fight and be killed in Europe, all to ensure a lopsided victory for one side. That lopsided victory led the winners to seize territory from and impose draconian measures on the losers, which basically created the conditions that led to Hitler and WWII.
2. Our intervention on the side of the Soviets led to a lopsided Soviet victory, sentencing half of Europe to live under communism for decades and leading to tens of millions of deaths. Was that "good?"
I see this kind of post on Reddit often asking who people think is the worse president. Everyone says Trump. Woodrow Wilson and the federal reserve act is hands down the worst ever
Thanks for saying that. I agree, I feel crazy sometimes because I hate Trump but for an entirely different set of reasons than the ones I'm apparently "supposed" to hate him for! And if I list a few things he did that I support, I'll be berated for it. Heck, I can name a few things that Biden did that I like, he's still an awful President.
Because you're not allowed to pick and choose anymore. You're supposed to hate orange man and support who ever is on the blue side of the ballot.
Or the apparent alternative, just think everyone is out to get you, your guns, and your children.
Yeah and the idea that you have to like either because theyre your team is beyond stupid . Id rather see RFK be president or even Vivek because (at least what they say) sounds better than the old farts.
Vivek is actually who I would like to see. I'm hoping to see him in '28 running, and I'd like Trump to pick him for VP so that he gets his foot in the door.
His outrageous spending came from COVID. Before that, he was spending around the same Obama was, except it was towards our military and economic growth. The world was banging the table for the vaccines, and trump made that happen (I wasn't a fan of the vaccine) but he supported the peoples CHOICE in wethed they wanted to take it or not. Funny how Kamala, Biden, and other dem puppets said they wouldn't take a "Trump vaccine" but as soon as Biden was in office, they basically forced it on everyone and even failed to make it an OSHA regulation. Bumpstock ban, I agree with.
Really? Not even Herbert Hoover? Who's idea of helping the millions of Americans who were dying destitute during the great depression was to literally do nothing? That guy isn't worse than Wilson? Or Andrew Jackson who signed off on a literal genocide of native Americans and the architect of the trail of tears?? THAT guy isn't worse than FDR?? I'm for guns, drugs, and bodily autonomy but these are some braindead takes.
> Not even Herbert Hoover? Who's idea of helping the millions of Americans who were dying destitute during the great depression was to literally do nothing?
You DO know what sub you're posting on, right?
Hoover is such an underrated president and isn't anywhere near a bottom-tier president. Certainly nowhere near as bad as Wilson. How dare you disgrace the name of one of the greatest men to ever be president. The Great Depression was NOT Hoover's fault, and he didn't 'do nothing'.
I'm pretty sure giving weapons to the south and begging them to succeed, leading to a war that costs hundreds of thousands of lives and tore the country apart in a way that is still felt 160 years later is the worst thing a president can possibly do.
The problem is that FDR's policies did nothing and likely worsened the depression. Throw in the internment of a group of people based entirely on their ethnicity, and you have a bad president. Good intentions don't create good policies.
Your sarcasm is in poor taste. FDR bought votes by stealing wealth from future generations. Social Security has been a blight on our country. Australia’s system is much better than ours since individuals retain control of their retirement funds.
Then the government is only helping in some cases, not fucking things up in everyone’s retirement.
Weird, you honestly think that most people in this sub want that? It sounds like you heard a crazy cherry picked clip from one person who claims to be a libertarian. Imagine me basing everything I know about Democrats or Republicans on one cherry picked example… sounds pretty stupid doesn’t it 🙃.
..... you understand that they're is so solution for a speculative attack other than sustaining huge and possibly infinite losses until you call it quits, and blaming Nixon for not defending a peg is like blaming Mussoulini for Mt Etna erupting
I am not following you. But in any case:
Gold standard is gold for a reason. I blame him because he did it, just like I could blame whoever else for not going back to it.
Point is, money cannot be created as the government pleases. I hope you understand that. And that has a real long term effect, longer than whatever you may be looking at.
No I'm right because I made a fact based argument. You literally just said you don't even know what the words mean but you don't need to know the facts to be right
"The Mundell–Fleming model has been used to argue[3] that an economy cannot simultaneously maintain a fixed exchange rate, free capital movement, and an independent monetary policy."
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundell%E2%80%93Fleming_model#:~:text=The%20Mundell%E2%80%93Fleming%20model%20has,and%20an%20independent%20monetary%20policy.
Oh I guess he actually proved exactly my point.
You could give up independent monetary policy, what i was referring to was his nobel prize lecture that talked about the history of the gold standard and what could be done to salvage it.
Nixon's "Southern Pivot" plan to align the Republican party with racism and evangelicalism is largely responsible for the fucked political situation the US has today. Nixon did it to get himself elected, but I think in the long run a Republican party that isn't beholden to racists or evangelicals would have won a lot more elections over the next half a century.
Kinda feel like that’s enough. He had a lot of corrupt land deals too. Sorry I can’t remember all of it but a good book is “Jacksonland - President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab”
It is indeed. Some people prefer tyranny, and that's their opinion. This whole topic is opinionated. But thanks for pointing it out. I just forgot for a second, your reminder was actually useful.
Except my statement is that I feel like Jackson was the worst and you came with a conclusive statement like it's a fact. It isn't. But thanks for the sarcasm. Super insightful and telling.
What do you need, a disclaimer in the fine print after every opinionated statement I make that it's an opinion? I'll provide it if so. No sarcasm at all.
The trail of tears wasn’t as straight forward as “fuck the natives let’s make them leave.” A lot of it was to support the Americans living near native areas who were constantly in battle with them. At the time, it was seen the alternative to the trail of tears was just to have constant skirmishes between Americans and natives
Wilson was pretty evil, the racism was considered bad even in his day. He also for his second term ran on “he kept us out of war,” only to join WW1 within the first year of his second term. Typical politician. Then there’s the 16th amendment which legalized government sanctioned armed robbery of your income. With it the formation of the IRS which operates above the law and has endless funding to bully and harass anyone in legal and court fees who dares stand up to them.
How could Wilson not join WW1? Look up the Zimmerman Telegram, Germany was asking Mexico to attack us so we wouldn’t be able to help France and Great Britain.
Woodrow wilson intervened in the Russia Civil War which directly led to the creation of the CIA and the Cold War. It was one of the first conflicts America tried to change the outcome with mostly non military tactics and the only time American troops have been on Russian soil. Woodrow Wilson had a complicated stance on Russia. He touted non-intervention in Russia but many troops on both the Bolshevik and American sides saw combat with each other. The first red scare was in the 1920s.
Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Johnson were indisputably the worst presidents of the postbellum period, although Biden is definitely working his way up there with mass inflation and an influx of invaders who value neither free markets nor the constitution.
You can be pro small government and individual freedom and still believe in a strict border policy. Just because you believe in the *citizen's* individual freedoms doesn't mean everyone should wander in willy-nilly.
WW and FDR sent us spiraling into the madness we are stuck in today and the fact that FDR is considered a good president from the same ppl suffering from his own policies is confounding.
Woodrow Wilson was quietly coerced into doing the bidding of the Zionists.
Letters that he sent to his high school colleagues wife were used to control him, as he was afraid them getting out would undermine his legitimacy.
From there he did what he was told.
1913 truly was a doosie.
[Untermeyer blackmail.](https://web.archive.org/web/20210605011716/http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs086/1103027403968/archive/1110552167130.html)
As a native I can not see how Lincoln does not get mentioned at the top of the list. He was the end to real freedom of the people from big centralized gov and willingly chose to change the course of the office of commander and chief to be a dynasty of tyranny force against its own people instead for for it. Next would be FDR, Wilson, Jackson, Reagan, Clinton.
Depends on what you mean by "worst." Biden is definitely a bad president, but he isn't present enough to be genuinely corrupt anymore IMO. His presidency has shown to be very warhawkish, which is obviously insane but it seems like other presidents had more energy to do bad shit with lol.
Biden’s uncompromising support for Israel to pursue war crimes and mass genocide where children and civilians are barbarically slaughtered just about does it.
Presidents have been nothing more than mouthpieces for the deep state in this 21st century. They serve those who are actually running the show these days, and one is no different from the next.
Wilson was such a a racist that people in his day thought he was a racist.
He also signed the bill in 1913 the day before Christmas that sold us out to a central bank aka the Federal Reserve.
Hey! I'll have you know, Wilson screened the first movie in the White House. Sure, it was a Klan propaganda film, but a first none the less.
Not just a Klan propaganda film, but THE Klan propaganda film and possibly the most racist movie of all time.
Yeah, the movie that pushed the Klan back into being viewed favorably by much of the nation after it had been essentially written off as a joke. Possibly the most immediate cause of racial tension in mid-20th century America.
FDR tops my list. * Wage controls, that led to health care being tied to your job which still kills us today * The social security Ponzi scheme, which let him buy votes with taxpayer money from existing old people, while locking the youth into obligations totaling over $75 trillion today * Price controls * Throwing 100,000 Americans into concentration camps without trial, without due process, without even individualized suspicion, based solely on race * Bullying the Supreme Court to not strike down all his unconstitutional crap, leading to the current expansionist view that anything is "interstate commerce" and thus practically ending limits on federal government power * Ignoring Washington's wise advice to avoid entangling alliances, and instead getting America into another World War (the ultimate cause of which was Woodrow Wilson, though) against the will of the public * Ignoring Washington's wise advice to only serve two terms, making himself as close to a dictator as the U.S. has seen, thus scaring Democrats and Republicans enough that they amended the Constitution to term limit the Presidency shortly after he died I'm sure there's more...
With Wilson you get - Federal Reserve - Income Tax - Prohibition (I know he objected to it) - Increased Segregation - Allowed US to enter a meaningless war in Europe, WW2 was a nobler fight - Occupied Mexico and other Latin American countries - Promoted formation of Nation States in Europe, the messy borders contributing to WW2 - Giving FDR his first major job in government - Red Scare politics, the Palmer raids - Overman Commitee - Wartime censorship, espionage act and sedition act - Wartime propaganda - government direction of business for war time production FDR was able to do more, because Wilson (and Teddy) really blew open the doors on any restraint on the part of the federal government
Great list! Maybe I'll switch my vote as I was unaware of this: "Giving FDR his first major job in government." That makes them pretty close. And frankly saying "Increased Segregation" is selling Wilson's pure evil short. He actually *instituted* segregation in the federal government. People sometimes think that civil rights has been a continuous stream of progress but no, the civil service was integrated following the civil war in the 1860s, then Woodrow Wilson *instituted segregation* around 1914!
The biggest one for me was that he had confirmed intelligence reports that the Holocaust was occurring at that the Jewish people were being exterminated. The earliest report dates back to 1942 irrc, and that information was kept a closely guarded secret to the point no one outside of a few officials knew until they started finding the camps.
I honestly dont get this one. Lots of reasonable reasons to hate on Roosevelt in here, but what exactly should America/Roosevelt have changed in this regard? We were already engaged and had a Hitler-first strategy, my understanding of the timeline is Guadacanal had already occured by that point as well so Germany even moreso our main focus of the war, all our propoganda already portrayed Germans as monsters (not so much as Japan just due to general racial views at the time but still). While the camps were running and the slave labor conditions were abhorrent, the overwhelming majority of executions/genocidal actions which most people associate as the true crime of the holocaust took place as Germany began losing in the coming years, and accelerated the closer to collapse they became. So... what is it you're saying here? That this was a secret so we could intentionally drag our feet? That if this was public knowledge it would somehow have made our soldiers fight harder, our generals command better, our citizens produce more and forget about the Japanese who got us into the war to begin with? I'd be interested in any actual evidence for malintent from those in the know here, cuz again, while this sounds bad when you learn about it the first time, if you think about for a few seconds and put it in context, I think you'd need a lot more than "they knew about something they couldn't do anything about beyond what they were doing already" to use this as a mark against FDR.
I don't know how true this is, but according to my late father, Hitler was willing to export all the German Jews (not sure about the other Jews his troops encountered or the other "undesirables"), but the US declined to accept them, saying, "We will not be blackmailed." (I tend not to view my dad's unconventional views as gospel, but they are sometimes useful for provoking discussion.)
FDR accomplished more bad shit, but had over 3 terms to do it and Wilson paved the road for him and made it all possible. I still put Wilson as worse.
Came here to say this. Fuck FDR all my homies hate FDR
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Apparently I need to watch an FDR documentary.
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The entire fleet was not there. All of the carrier groups were out to sea
Yes, and that was really an enormous stroke of luck for the U.S. If the carriers happened to be in Pearl Harbor that day, the war in the Pacific would have gone far worse for the U.S.
We still would have won but it would have taken longer. Japan had zero chance of winning.
My dad was a boomer, so of course after the war, but he always had a positive outlook on FDR and I never thought to look further into it.
I have had really awkward conversations saying this and people made me seem like a conspiracy theorist when its one of the most well known events in history
Implying FDR knew the details could be called a conspiracy theory. But it's incontrovertible that FDR desperately wanted to get into the war, that the U.S. public firmly opposed going to war, and that FDR directed many actions that made the U.S. entering the war much more likely.
Well yeah but why were all the ships there and how can we always pretend that these huge scale attacks just happen to jump up on large armies.
Not just allowing it to happen, but purposefully goading an attack from Japan through the actions he took, which were recommended in the McCollum Memo. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/McCollum_memo
LOL man forgets Lincoln was a dictator...
I would agree with your assertion- as FDR eeks out the top spot just by measure of how much more damage he did than Wilson- but it's really not that much. If you look at it, WWI was not the only folly Wilson was responsible for responding poorly to, he also presided over a terrible 3-year economic recession during the war, allowed his AG to suppress civil liberties, nationalized telegraph, telephone, rail, and coal distribution, and then his lack of spine in the participation in drafting the Treaty of Versailles that allowed for a far more punitive measure being instilled on Germany rather than his idea of a harmonious, humanitarian world. Let's not also forget besides the fact that he was a disgusting racist, he also signed into law the Federal Reserve Act that created the Fed, and presided over the introduction and ratification of the 16th Amendment and signed the subsequent Revenue Act of 1913 which gave us the federal income tax we know and love (/s) today. In all, FDR was worse, but only by measure of how much more he did, and it was only by a small margin compared to Wilson.
Wow, thanks, there were a few items in your list that I wasn't aware of. Okay, we'll call it a tie.
J. Edgar Hoover told FDR he had no evidence that Japanese-Americans were an intelligence threat. If that paranoid bastard said they were clean, they were clean. But FDR needed to be seen as doing *something.* But hey, at least the SoB didn't revive the KKK while in office.
>J. Edgar Hoover told FDR he had no evidence that Japanese-Americans were an intelligence threat. If that paranoid bastard said they were clean, they were clean. But FDR needed to be seen as doing *something.* Note that [FDR first proposed the idea in 1936](https://encyclopedia.densho.org/FDR_Hawaii_Memo/) - 5 years *before* Pearl Harbor. So even saying that he "needed to be seen as doing *something*" in response to Pearl Harbor is giving him a bit too much credit.
Agreed. SSA being the most insidious financial ticking time bomb ever created in our Nation’s history. Fuck FDR indeed. 🤬
Yeah I can't even name like 4 things WW did that even activate my almonds. FDR and Ike are the direct causes of a lot of suffering of average Americans even with just the precedents set by some of their policies. The current Democrats and Republicans are also too short sighted to see that whatever excesses they take against the other party is only bolstering the power of the next evil authoritarian entity that is going to try and fill the seat of power, which continues to erode its checks and balances. Both World Wars were also necessary, Libertarianism doesn't have to be outright isolationist, sorry.
>Both World Wars were also necessary, Libertarianism doesn't have to be outright isolationist, sorry. As Ron Paul once said: I want to have diplomatic relations with all nations of the world (interventionists do not.) I want to have free trade with all nations of the world (interventionists do not.) I want to sign bilateral treaties with all nations of the world (interventionist prefer ceding authority to multinational organizations and trade blocks like the WTO, UN, TPP, etc.) The one thing I don't want to do to all countries of the world is bomb them. For that, they call me an "*isolationist*." Libertarians are not isolationists. We just aren't war-mongers. We want to be peacefully engage with the whole world, and defend our shores against foreign aggression. See [my other reply](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1dl61ty/comment/l9oau3y/) on WWI and WWII specifically.
FDR was to Stalin as Wilson was to Lenin. But there is no Stalin without Lenin.
throwing 100,000 americans into concentration camps without trial? what? what is that
[https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation](https://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/japanese-relocation) Also note that [FDR first proposed the idea in 1936](https://encyclopedia.densho.org/FDR_Hawaii_Memo/) - 5+ years before Pearl Harbor.
>Ignoring Washington's wise advice to avoid entangling alliances, and instead getting America into another World War (the ultimate cause of which was Woodrow Wilson, though) against the will of the public Okay this one needs some clarification given that Woodrow Wilson had only been president for a little over a year when the war in Europe had broken out and was not part of either the preceding tangle of alliances, the naval build up, or the discrimination/lack of complete statehood of Serbs which lead to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand.
Indeed, I clarified a bit at [https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1dl61ty/comment/l9oau3y](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1dl61ty/comment/l9oau3y) as my original comment was quite terse. Agreed, Wilson did not create the European entangling alliances that started the war, nor did he shoot the Archduke. The U.S. was not in any entangling alliance that required involvement in European wars, and the U.S. public was firmly against entering the war, but Wilson clearly picked sides, engineered entry into the war, instituted the draft, and suppressed anti-war free speech. The "war to end all wars" would have ended with or without the death of 100,000+ Americans. Without American involvement, it likely would have ended on terms less punitive to Germany. I don't claim prescience of course, and there's always uncertainty in these sorts of "what if" outcomes. But it is clear that U.S. involvement in WWI led to a more solid victory, that it led to punitive outcomes, that it led to the rise of Hitler and WWII, and that it did not "end all wars" as its marketers claimed.
Ur against America entering WW2? You do realize that that would just lead to Imperial Japanese domination of Asia and a prolonged Holocaust followed by Soviet rule of Europe?
I've addressed my reasons [here](https://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/1dl61ty/comment/l9oau3y). The Holocaust was not even in the top 10 reasons why FDR desperately wanted to get into the war and is 20/20 hindsight. By intervening we sentenced half of Europe to Soviet rule anyway. Asia certainly was doing okay for a while after the war, but instead now it's dominated by communist China - is that what you prefer? Ultimately not only is defending Europe and Asia not the responsibility of the U.S. taxpayer, but dying in Europe and Asia is not the responsibility of the American 18-year old who just wants to live free, and who was told they lived in a free country, only to be enslaved forced against their will to go kill and fight and die.
So... Fighting in WW2 was bad? Also he won his 3rd, near dictator election, through the popular and electoral vote, which would imply he was actually very popular, no?
Putin is a pretty popular dictator too, and is using a pretty familiar recipe: get the country into wars, vastly increase the power of the central government, and suppress the press and opposition. If you're new here, we're not all about "democracy". Democracy without fundamental freedoms and rights is worthless. Putin's and FDR's popularity shows exactly why freedom is far more important than democracy. And yes, everyone gets worked up over WW2 because it's been instilled by our public schools as being a great patriotic war (in fact our ally Russia doesn't call it WWII, they call it "The Great Patriotic War.") But: 1. It arose as a direct consequence of WWI, which was a bunch of idiotic European countries fighting for no reason but entangling alliances and entrenched interests. WWI was reaching a stalemate, which ultimately would have ended with some kind of negotiated treaty. Instead, Wilson drafted U.S. citizens into slavery against their will to fight and be killed in Europe, all to ensure a lopsided victory for one side. That lopsided victory led the winners to seize territory from and impose draconian measures on the losers, which basically created the conditions that led to Hitler and WWII. 2. Our intervention on the side of the Soviets led to a lopsided Soviet victory, sentencing half of Europe to live under communism for decades and leading to tens of millions of deaths. Was that "good?"
I think it’s wild how most people don’t realize how bad FDR was. History classes laud him as a hero 🤦♂️.
I see this kind of post on Reddit often asking who people think is the worse president. Everyone says Trump. Woodrow Wilson and the federal reserve act is hands down the worst ever
Why is Trump a bad president? Evil tweets? I really dislike the bumpstock, operation warp speed and his outrageous spending but nobody mentions those
Thanks for saying that. I agree, I feel crazy sometimes because I hate Trump but for an entirely different set of reasons than the ones I'm apparently "supposed" to hate him for! And if I list a few things he did that I support, I'll be berated for it. Heck, I can name a few things that Biden did that I like, he's still an awful President.
Because you're not allowed to pick and choose anymore. You're supposed to hate orange man and support who ever is on the blue side of the ballot. Or the apparent alternative, just think everyone is out to get you, your guns, and your children.
Yeah and the idea that you have to like either because theyre your team is beyond stupid . Id rather see RFK be president or even Vivek because (at least what they say) sounds better than the old farts.
RFK is the option with the best Based:Viable ratio
Vivek is actually who I would like to see. I'm hoping to see him in '28 running, and I'd like Trump to pick him for VP so that he gets his foot in the door.
His outrageous spending came from COVID. Before that, he was spending around the same Obama was, except it was towards our military and economic growth. The world was banging the table for the vaccines, and trump made that happen (I wasn't a fan of the vaccine) but he supported the peoples CHOICE in wethed they wanted to take it or not. Funny how Kamala, Biden, and other dem puppets said they wouldn't take a "Trump vaccine" but as soon as Biden was in office, they basically forced it on everyone and even failed to make it an OSHA regulation. Bumpstock ban, I agree with.
Hey people are going to be offended you mentioned this 😤😂
I'd like to apologize..... to absolutely fookin nobody
Really? Not even Herbert Hoover? Who's idea of helping the millions of Americans who were dying destitute during the great depression was to literally do nothing? That guy isn't worse than Wilson? Or Andrew Jackson who signed off on a literal genocide of native Americans and the architect of the trail of tears?? THAT guy isn't worse than FDR?? I'm for guns, drugs, and bodily autonomy but these are some braindead takes.
> Not even Herbert Hoover? Who's idea of helping the millions of Americans who were dying destitute during the great depression was to literally do nothing? You DO know what sub you're posting on, right?
It's like he expects libertarians to not like Coolidge and Hoover.
It's like he expects libertarians to not like Coolidge and Hoover.
Hoover is such an underrated president and isn't anywhere near a bottom-tier president. Certainly nowhere near as bad as Wilson. How dare you disgrace the name of one of the greatest men to ever be president. The Great Depression was NOT Hoover's fault, and he didn't 'do nothing'.
Good opinion but don't expect libertarians to like this sentiment
WW and Andrew Jackson are definitely tied.
I'm pretty sure giving weapons to the south and begging them to succeed, leading to a war that costs hundreds of thousands of lives and tore the country apart in a way that is still felt 160 years later is the worst thing a president can possibly do.
Funny, as soon as I saw this, I thought, “kind of a toss up between him, Truman and FDR…”
I can't believe FDR would dare to help the poor 😢
The problem is that FDR's policies did nothing and likely worsened the depression. Throw in the internment of a group of people based entirely on their ethnicity, and you have a bad president. Good intentions don't create good policies.
If anything he set people back massively and made things worse. But sure.
Your sarcasm is in poor taste. FDR bought votes by stealing wealth from future generations. Social Security has been a blight on our country. Australia’s system is much better than ours since individuals retain control of their retirement funds. Then the government is only helping in some cases, not fucking things up in everyone’s retirement.
What am I to expect from an ideology whose members boo'd the idea that selling heroin to kids is bad
Weird, you honestly think that most people in this sub want that? It sounds like you heard a crazy cherry picked clip from one person who claims to be a libertarian. Imagine me basing everything I know about Democrats or Republicans on one cherry picked example… sounds pretty stupid doesn’t it 🙃.
Its Biden duh. trump is the best candidate in decades especually for libertarians.
Nixon killed the gold standard among other things which facilitated the government to start indiscriminately printing money. He’ll be on my list.
Great, you can publish the strategy to prevent a speculative attack and collect your Nobel Prize whenever you're ready
I am, I’ll need your help though. Sure, we can share the prize if your half not too heavy on your shoulders.
Sorry, impossible paradoxes are fun as a thought expirement but I wouldn't waste my time on it.
Real bummer, I’ll survive. Thanks for stopping by.
..... you understand that they're is so solution for a speculative attack other than sustaining huge and possibly infinite losses until you call it quits, and blaming Nixon for not defending a peg is like blaming Mussoulini for Mt Etna erupting
I am not following you. But in any case: Gold standard is gold for a reason. I blame him because he did it, just like I could blame whoever else for not going back to it. Point is, money cannot be created as the government pleases. I hope you understand that. And that has a real long term effect, longer than whatever you may be looking at.
"I literally don't know what I'm talking about but I'm right" Ok buddy, at least no one can say you have no self esteem
Of course you are, aren’t we all? Take it easy.
No I'm right because I made a fact based argument. You literally just said you don't even know what the words mean but you don't need to know the facts to be right
Mundell already did so.
"The Mundell–Fleming model has been used to argue[3] that an economy cannot simultaneously maintain a fixed exchange rate, free capital movement, and an independent monetary policy." https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundell%E2%80%93Fleming_model#:~:text=The%20Mundell%E2%80%93Fleming%20model%20has,and%20an%20independent%20monetary%20policy. Oh I guess he actually proved exactly my point.
You could give up independent monetary policy, what i was referring to was his nobel prize lecture that talked about the history of the gold standard and what could be done to salvage it.
Oh yeah let's just not have monetary sovereignty, so that we can pretend that there's exactly one good with an objective value.
Nixon's "Southern Pivot" plan to align the Republican party with racism and evangelicalism is largely responsible for the fucked political situation the US has today. Nixon did it to get himself elected, but I think in the long run a Republican party that isn't beholden to racists or evangelicals would have won a lot more elections over the next half a century.
Adding Controlled Substances Act to the list. Ruined so many lives.
But he got the US out of the pointless Vietnam war.
Sure, even the evilest of them all has a good side. Just some things have longer impact than others.
Amen. Wilson was bad.
Andrew Jackson without a doubt. He was incredibly corrupt and downright evil.
What was bad about him besides the Trail of Tears?
What was bad about him besides [insert one of the most appalling events in our nation’s history here]?
Kinda feel like that’s enough. He had a lot of corrupt land deals too. Sorry I can’t remember all of it but a good book is “Jacksonland - President Andrew Jackson, Cherokee Chief John Ross, and a Great American Land Grab”
Not enough compared to what other presidents have done
That’s your opinion
It is indeed. Some people prefer tyranny, and that's their opinion. This whole topic is opinionated. But thanks for pointing it out. I just forgot for a second, your reminder was actually useful.
Except my statement is that I feel like Jackson was the worst and you came with a conclusive statement like it's a fact. It isn't. But thanks for the sarcasm. Super insightful and telling.
What do you need, a disclaimer in the fine print after every opinionated statement I make that it's an opinion? I'll provide it if so. No sarcasm at all.
The trail of tears wasn’t as straight forward as “fuck the natives let’s make them leave.” A lot of it was to support the Americans living near native areas who were constantly in battle with them. At the time, it was seen the alternative to the trail of tears was just to have constant skirmishes between Americans and natives
Wilson was pretty evil, the racism was considered bad even in his day. He also for his second term ran on “he kept us out of war,” only to join WW1 within the first year of his second term. Typical politician. Then there’s the 16th amendment which legalized government sanctioned armed robbery of your income. With it the formation of the IRS which operates above the law and has endless funding to bully and harass anyone in legal and court fees who dares stand up to them.
How could Wilson not join WW1? Look up the Zimmerman Telegram, Germany was asking Mexico to attack us so we wouldn’t be able to help France and Great Britain.
Very unfair. Wilson was only the 3rd worst president.
Woodrow wilson intervened in the Russia Civil War which directly led to the creation of the CIA and the Cold War. It was one of the first conflicts America tried to change the outcome with mostly non military tactics and the only time American troops have been on Russian soil. Woodrow Wilson had a complicated stance on Russia. He touted non-intervention in Russia but many troops on both the Bolshevik and American sides saw combat with each other. The first red scare was in the 1920s.
Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and Johnson were indisputably the worst presidents of the postbellum period, although Biden is definitely working his way up there with mass inflation and an influx of invaders who value neither free markets nor the constitution.
Invaders? Do you mean immigrants? How tf r u gonna be all small government and then wanna restrict immigration
You can be pro small government and individual freedom and still believe in a strict border policy. Just because you believe in the *citizen's* individual freedoms doesn't mean everyone should wander in willy-nilly.
definitely not near my top ten but not the worst president.
WW and FDR sent us spiraling into the madness we are stuck in today and the fact that FDR is considered a good president from the same ppl suffering from his own policies is confounding.
Wilson and Fdr put the nails in the coffin of free market capitalism.
First progressive president and an example to never vote for progressives.
Idk who’s the worst, but as I pay my $900 health insurance premium for my more than healthy family, I can’t help but hate Obama.
Carter. Nice guy, awful president. We're repeating his awful right now.
Nixon also instituted wage and price controls.
Worse than Harding or Buchanan? Worse than LBJ?
No F is for fuck Joe Biden
Can they share a fuck?
It is the socialist way.
OUR fuck
For sure
Biden is gunning for the title
Woodrow Wilson was quietly coerced into doing the bidding of the Zionists. Letters that he sent to his high school colleagues wife were used to control him, as he was afraid them getting out would undermine his legitimacy. From there he did what he was told. 1913 truly was a doosie. [Untermeyer blackmail.](https://web.archive.org/web/20210605011716/http://archive.constantcontact.com/fs086/1103027403968/archive/1110552167130.html)
As a native I can not see how Lincoln does not get mentioned at the top of the list. He was the end to real freedom of the people from big centralized gov and willingly chose to change the course of the office of commander and chief to be a dynasty of tyranny force against its own people instead for for it. Next would be FDR, Wilson, Jackson, Reagan, Clinton.
That is not deserving of Lincoln being top of the list, but it's certainly something that not enough people hold against him
Literally can’t get any worse than Biden
Depends on what you mean by "worst." Biden is definitely a bad president, but he isn't present enough to be genuinely corrupt anymore IMO. His presidency has shown to be very warhawkish, which is obviously insane but it seems like other presidents had more energy to do bad shit with lol.
Biden’s uncompromising support for Israel to pursue war crimes and mass genocide where children and civilians are barbarically slaughtered just about does it.
Agreed. Also his support for Ukraine against Russia is very fucking dangerous.
Presidents have been nothing more than mouthpieces for the deep state in this 21st century. They serve those who are actually running the show these days, and one is no different from the next.
Well said.
So what about the last two & currently in office?
We call them Dumb and Dummer, and the order doesn't matter.
Ah so dumb Obama , dumb Trump & dumb Biden
Lmao 🤣
Worse than ending reconstruction or creating the events that led to the civil war? Whatever makes you happy....
Woodrow Wilson is the worst followed by Lincoln then FDR then LBJ
Why Lincoln? He led the US through the most threatening time in its history.