FACES AND PLACES: Time misses again (01/09/00)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Time misses again

The great achievement, the drama of the 20th century, is capitalism's brilliant victory over socialism. Today, Lenin's Marxist Socialism is as dead as Hitler's National Socialism. Even China is committed to the free market as the key to human betterment.

Unfortunately, not all of America's opinion leaders, especially those on the left, are willing to acknowledge this fact. Time magazine's selection of the significant persons of the century reflects this type of bias.

I have little quarrel with Time's relatively safe choice of Albert Einstein as the person of the century. He was a brilliant theoretician, an intellectual superstar whose monumental discoveries contributed much to modern science. Nevertheless, he had less influence on the lives of the average American than say Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Willie Carrier, Steve Wozniak, Bill Gates and other innovators whose ideas translated into direct benefits. These men provided greater comfort for the masses; they were also capitalists who created wealth and jobs. Entrepreneurs score no points with the left.

Expectations were that Time would select Franklin Delano Roosevelt, darling of the secular left, as the person of the century. As it was, FDR was Time's second choice, followed by runner-up Mohandas Ghandi. Next came the Dalai Lama, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr., Lech Walesa, Cesar Chavez, Larry Kramer (described as "the famously cantankerous playwright" who "inspired ACT-UP's famously confrontational protests for an AIDS cure") and Benigno Aquino Jr., all identified by Time as "the children of Ghandi." Although noteworthy, all were bit players the 20th century's great drama.

Ghandi and many of his "children" worked in comparatively safe vineyards. As citizens of relatively civil societies, they were protected by the rule of law. Their protests, while extraordinary, cannot be compared to the heroism of a Solzhenitsyn, a Sakharov, a Lukianenko and a Sharansky, denizens of a thug society who risked life and limb every time they raised their heads.

As for the bad guy of the century, it was no contest. Time nominated Hitler, everyone's standard villain. Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot and Castro were hardly mentioned.

If Time was truly objective, liberal icon Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the most overrated president in U.S. history, would never have even been considered. According to Doris Kearns Goodwin in Time, "He raised the edifice of the American century by restoring a nation's promise of plenty and by intervening to save a world enveloped in darkness." Oh yes, FDR was an optimist ("nothing to fear but fear itself"), but happy face aside, he did nothing of the kind!

As John T. Flynn suggests in his classic "The Roosevelt Myth," President Roosevelt was a closet socialist, the father of American welfarism. Believing in central planning and the view that governments need to prime the economic pump, FDR embarked on a taxing and spending program that actually exacerbated the Depression. His New Deal I and New Deal II spent more money, created more federal agencies and raised more taxes than all previous administrations combined. His heralded bureaus were abysmal failures.

Most of the jobs created during FDR's first four years were government jobs, a strategy that increased the national debt from $22 billion when he took office, to $37 billion just five years later. All for naught. In 1932 there were 11,586,000 people unemployed and 16,620,000 on relief. In 1939 there were 11,369,000 people unemployed and 19,648,000 on relief. Few Americans were "hopeful" about the future in 1939 - especially not American business leaders and investors, the traditional pump primers, who were scourged by the administration as greedy and indifferent to American interests. By hiking the corporate income tax, the estate tax, and the personal income tax (the top rate was 90 percent), FDR smothered financial risk-taking in the 1930s. According to economist Lawrence Kudlow, between 1929 and 1940 economic growth averaged less than 1 percent annually; unemployment averaged 20 percent; "technological innovation was virtually non-existent."

Historians now agree that America's "promise of plenty" was not restored by Roosevelt's economic policies. World War II ended the Depression. Was FDR instrumental in precipitating war at a time when most Americans were against it? Was he aware of Japanese plans to bomb Pearl Harbor? Some historians believe he was. Despite his lies to the contrary, FDR wanted a war and was determined to get one. In his recently published book "Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor," Robert B. Stinnett writes: "As heinous as it seems to families and veterans of World War II, of which the author is one, the Pearl Harbor attack was, from the White House perspective, something that had to be endured in order to stop a greater evil - the Nazi invaders in Europe ..."

If Pearl Harbor was an egregious betrayal of American trust, FDR's behavior at Yalta was equally so. Americans, the British, the nationalist Chinese and the Poles were misled by an American president whose hubris led him to believe that Joseph Stalin was a democrat. Surrounded by Soviet agents and fellow travelers in his government, believing he knew what was best for world, Mr. Roosevelt happily turned over all of Eastern Europe to Stalin, a mass murderer unparalleled in recorded history. Before Stalin met FDR the Soviet empire included 102 million people. When Stalin died in 1953 almost 1 billion humans lived under communism. FDR was Stalin's principal enabler!

FDR did not intervene to save "a world enveloped in darkness." On the contrary, his insufferable ignorance and dangerous arrogance at Teheran and Yalta plunged the world into the long, black night of the Cold War, an era that lasted for the next 45 years.

Ironically, the only president that really did what Time believes FDR accomplished, was Ronald Reagan. After the "national malaise" of the Carter administration (double digit inflation and interest rates), Mr. Reagan restored America's "promise of plenty" with domestic policies that led to 17 years of uninterrupted prosperity. According to Nobel recipient Robert Mundell, "Reagan's tax rate reduction and deregulation cleaned out the economic barn. The benefits of these policies continued spilling over in the 1990s." And it was Ronald Reagan who truly saved "a world enveloped in darkness" with foreign policy initiatives that culminated in the collapse of the "Evil Empire." Unfortunately, Mr. Reagan is a man of the right, which automatically excludes him from greatness.

I am saddened by Time's retrograde approach. It's a reflection of a tired and outdated liberalism that rightly belongs in the dustbin of history.

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: [email protected]

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