I recently took a cross country road trip across the south of America. As I visited many places, I got a huge American history lesson that I never learned in school. I have found a lot of things out about FDR that has made me doubt his status as one of our greatest presidents. The New Deal made a recession into the Great Depression and his subsidies to farmers and sugar producers led to high fructose corn syrup and all the synthetic crap in our American foods, which makes us by far the unhealthiest food in the world. I didn't think my view of him would change too much when I visited New Orleans of all places.
If you're like me, New Orleans would not be the place you'd think of getting a World War II history lesson. When I went there, I was looking forward to the Jambalaya, Gumbo and Cajun food. I must say that it was the best food on the trip. I had the freshest seafood I've had anywhere in the United States, and I've lived near a giant body of water my entire life. As I was randomly wandering around the city, I happened upon the D-Day museum. I must confess I was surprised to find this in New Orleans. I went inside and looked around and then in the main room, I saw a carrier boat with a caption. "Why is the D-day museum in New Orleans? Because as President Eisenhower stated to Dr. Stephen Ambrose 'Andrew Jackson Higgins is the man who won the war for us. Without Higgins designed boars that could land over open beaches the whole strategy of the war would have to be rethought.'
Fact, in September 1943, the very middle of the war, the American navy totaled 14,072 vessels of these 12,964, or 92% of the entire U.S. Navy, were designed by Higgins industries."
I had never heard of Higgins. Some people know about Higgins boats, but did they know he was from New Orleans? Did they know that he had 7 factories in New Orleans building ships? Did they know that they produced a navy ship every hour? I certainly didn't. It appalls me that in my American education, I had no idea of Higgins. This guy should be as famous as General Patton!
Back to FDR. Although I believe he forced the Japanese to attack us at Pearl Harbor by refusing to speak to them and he desperately wanted us to get into war. I have to hand it to him. At the start of the war, the American army was a small fraction of the German and Japanese armies. We were ranked 18th in the world, behind Romania (Guess World War I didn't raise our ranking too much). I don't give him any credit for the 1% unemployment. He initiated a draft, sent most of the workforce to war and had the rest, mostly women, replace them. Forcing them to war so they are no longer considered unemployed doesn't impress me much. He then went about multiple ads and campaigns telling Americans to sacrifice and give back to the war effort. The point is though....it worked. American production exploded. We popped out ships, planes, ammunition, tires, etc. etc. anything that our boys at war needed. Heavily supplied with the might of American work ethic and production, we won the war.
Unfortunately America isn't producing anymore. Maybe it's because we are the greatest nation so we can export that out and focus on the higher business aspects much like a lawyer focuses on preparing his argument in case but his secretary and paralegals do the research and typing for him. The american work ethic isn't dead though. If one travels the world, you see that people in other countries not only don't work as hard as we do, they brag about it and look down at us for living to work. It was FDR that started this culture of work within us. But 85% of American entrepreneurs are either immigrants or children of immigrants. We are losing our sense of pride as hard working producing machines. Could you imagine telling someone now to not get new tires because the army needs it more than you do? That is exactly what World War II ads said. No, we had wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the only thing we may have been asked to sacrifice was slightly higher gas prices...and yes we bitched about that!!! that is why the World War II generation calls themselves the greatest generation. But I am an advocate of selfishness but I believe Americans need to remember what led us to greatness; our work ethic and our ability to produce quickly and efficiently.
Autographed copies of my book the World Hasn't Progressed in 5,000 years can be bought at the bottom of this page
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