Skip to main content
  • CNSNews.com
  • MRC TV
  • Biz & Media
  • Culture & Media
  • TimesWatch
  • Take Action!

Join Us @:
Facebook
Twitter
Amazon Kindle

Tell the Truth campaign logo
NewsBusters.org logo

May 27, 2012
  • Home
  • Blogs
  • About
  • Forum
  • Contact
  • Donate
  • Search
  • Account
  • RSS

Hot Topics

  • Anti-religious Bias in the Media
  • Same-sex Marriage
  • 2012 Presidential Race
Home » Blogs » Warner Todd Huston's blog
  • Krugman: Scientists Should Falsely Predict Alien Invasion So Government Will Spend More Money
  • Ashley Judd to NBC: Republicans Are 'Really Dumb,' Obama Has 'Flowered'
  • Bozell Column: Canada's 'Scientific' Museum of Smut
  • CBS: 'Troubling Signs' For Obama, Like Bush in '92, But President 'Cannot Control' Economy
  • On and On It Goes: Networks Cover 'Predator Priests' As They Stay Silent on Catholic Liberty Lawsuits
  • NBC's Williams Touts L.A. Banning Plastic Bags As Effort to Keep Them 'Out of the Natural World'
  • Bozell, Carlson Note Media's Silence on Obama Supporter's Bribe to Hush Rev. Wright
  • Very Annoyed Matthews Rips ‘Horse’s Ass Right-Wingers’ Who Cite ‘Thrill Up My Leg,’ Calls C-SPAN Host a ‘Jackass’

Toledo Blade Pleads for Obama to Institute Communism?

By Warner Todd Huston | October 13, 2008 | 00:10

Change font size:  A |  A

The Toledo Blade's lead editorial on Sunday, October 12, is a seeming plea to institute in America a chief communist principle: the "right" to a job. As anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of the Constitution knows, of course, there is no such "right." Nor should there be. But this hasn't stopped the Toledo Blade from pushing this anti-American notion and pleading for Barack Obama to take it up anyway.

Basing its article on the failed ides of FDR, our most socialist president, The Blade revisits Roosevelt's showy, populist idea of creating a "second Bill of Rights" giving Americans a "right" to a job. The Blade calls FDR a "forward-looking president" and extols the unAmerican specifics of his plan as a solution for today's problems, even making it seem as if U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) is calling for the revival of this onerous new "Bill of Rights."

Nearly 65 years ago, a forward-looking President Franklin Delano Roosevelt— searching for recovery of the economy and looking toward the end of a global war on two fronts — presented to the country his idea of a second Bill of Rights dictating the right of all Americans to have jobs, adequate medical care, food, shelter, and education.

The only thing Franklin D. Roosevelt was looking "forward" to was votes. Roosevelt was not a learned man, nor one of great intellect, but he was a genius on getting votes (his failed bid for VP in 1920 aside). Even his Social Security plan -- an idea originally invented in socialist Germany in 1881 -- was nothing but a grab for votes, as he readily admitted. Roosevelt once said his Social Security plan was "never a problem of economics. They were politics all the way through."

Despite FDR's failures, the Toledo Blade urges Barack Obama to take up these anti-American, communistic principles.

Today, when Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama returns to Toledo, The Blade, on its front page, asks Mr. Obama a simple question: Do all Americans who want to work have the right to a job where they live?

Let me answer that for you, Blade: NO. No one is owed a "right" to a job. In order to assure that faux "right" government will have to take over all businesses and dole out jobs to the people. This is not an American principle, but one closer to full blown communism.

The Blade next proves it doesn't have the first understanding of the vast differences between 1944, when FDR floated the second Bill of Rights plan, and today. In 1944 the country had just begun to climb out of The Great Depression and the pain of that time still weighed heavily on most Americans. Few people then realized that FDR's policies were responsible for prolonging the depression, but even with most Americans fooled into thinking FDR was their savior, his cynical measure was a non-starter.

On the other hand, today we are nowhere near being in the same sad economic shape we were in during The Great Depression. In that time unemployment was extremely high. In 1940, for instance, that rate soared to 14.6 percent and in the years just prior it was even worse. (23% in 1932, 21 % in 1934, 19% in 1938, etc.) Keep in mind, those figures in the 1930's and 40's didn't include women as they were not generally considered a part of the work force then. By our reckoning today, those numbers would have been far higher.

Even though claims that we are in as bad a time now as we were during The Great Depression are little else but hyperbole, the Blade thinks differently.

The similarities of the challenges of the 1940s and today have not gone unnoticed.

In today's bad-news economy, many believe the 32nd president's ideas should be invoked again.

Just who is this "many"? We aren't told by the Blade, naturally. It is just a claim made with no supporting proof offered. This is just another case of the “some say” or “experts think” nonsense that we get in the press all the time.

And, of course, we get the canard that FDR somehow saved the country from The Great Depression.

During the Great Depression of the 1930s, President Roosevelt created the New Deal to provide relief for the unemployed, economic recovery, and to reform the country's economic and banking systems.

More and more, though, modern economists and historians are realizing that the acclamations that are so often bestowed upon Saint FDR are little else but hero worship, Democrat spin and lies. Jim Powell, author of FDR's Follies, does a fantastic job demolishing the FDR myth and quotes Pulitzer Prize winning author David M. Kennedy as saying: "Whatever it was, the New Deal was not a recovery program, or at any rate not an effective one."

As columnist Mark Steyn recently joked, it was FDR that put the “Great” in The Great Depression because for the rest of the world it was just a depression.

Some of the ideas that FDR included in his massive take over of the U.S. economy in the inaptly named Second Bill of Rights were as follows:

  • The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of the nation;
  • The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
  • The right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his family a decent living;
  • The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or abroad;
  • The right of every family to a decent home;
  • The right to adequate medical care and the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health;
  • The right to adequate protection from the economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment;
  • The right to a good education.

Again, the only way to assure these impossible "rights" is to eliminate privately owned businesses. And this is exactly what the Toledo Blade is suggesting Barack Obama do once he takes the White House. And with the extensive socialist background that Barack Obama has, we should all fear that he just might like these anti-capitalist ideas quite a lot.

(Image credit: Patriotshop.us)

Share this
  • Warner Todd Huston's blog
  • Login to post comments
  • Printer-friendly version
Donate to NewsBusters

  • 'This is the Supreme Court, not middle school' (Power Line)
  • The Neal Boortz Faux Commencement Speech (Nealz Nuse)
  • Is liberalism dead? (Roger L. Simon)
  • The media's next move on same-sex marriage (Get Religion)
  • Senate Dems pay women staffers less than male staffers (Washington Free Beacon)
  • Left targeting Chief Justice Roberts in attempt to save ObamaCare (IBD)
  • Walker's chance of defeating Wisc. recall looking great (Ace of Spades)

Donate to NewsBusters Today!

This form needs Javascript to display, which your browser doesn't support. Sign up here instead

User Shortcuts

Log in

  • My account
  • My buddylist
  • Log in to check messages
  • RSS feed
  • About NB
  • Contact us
  • Jobs
  • Advertise on NB
Scott Rasmussen
Rasmussen Column: 'Austerity' Talk Is Just Political Cover for More Government Spending
Walter E. Williams's picture
Walter E. Williams
Walter Williams Column: Should Black People Tolerate This?
Cal Thomas's picture
Cal Thomas
Cal Thomas Column: The Media's Religion Deficit
Chuck Norris's picture
Chuck Norris
Chuck Norris Column: IRS Gives Billions in Tax Refunds to Illegals
Michelle Malkin's picture
Michelle Malkin
Michelle Malkin Column: How the Gay-Marriage Mafia Slimed Manny Pacquiao
More >

RSS FeedAmazon KindleFacebookTwitter

Recent comments

  • LOL!
    4 min 56 sec ago
  • ABC, CBS, and NBC.....
    10 min 9 sec ago
  • Real Marriage.
    17 min 29 sec ago
  • when the cameras aren't rolling...
    18 min 33 sec ago
  • First he never does anything
    20 min 26 sec ago
More >

More Like Farcebook
more cartoons
  • NYT Media Reporter Touts PBS, MSNBC's 'Up,' Brian Williams
  • Howard Stern Hasn't Been 'King of Prime Time'
  • All Purpose Weekend Open Thread
  • Female GOP House Members Are 'Literally Battered Women,' Democrat Tells Ed Schultz
  • NPR Celebrates Transgender Olympics Hopeful as Hammer-Throwing 'Jackie Robinson'
More >
NewsBusters

Executive Editor
Matthew Sheffield

Editor at Large
Brent Baker

Senior Editors
Tim Graham
Rich Noyes

Managing Editor
Ken Shepherd

Associate Editor
Noel Sheppard

Contributing Editors
Tom Blumer
Geoffrey Dickens
Dan Gainor
David Limbaugh
Lachlan Markay
Mithridate Ombud
Clay Waters
Scott Whitlock

Senior Contributor
Mark Finkelstein

Contributing Writers
Matthew Balan
Michael M. Bates
Erin R. Brown
Jack Coleman
Kyle Drennen
Douglas Ernst
P. J. Gladnick
Stephen Gutowski
Matt Hadro
D. S. Hube
Kathleen McKinley
Dave Pierre
Amy Ridenour
Julia A. Seymour
Terry Trippany
Rusty Weiss
Brad Wilmouth

Publisher
Brent Bozell

Site Design
Dialog New Media

 

  • Home
  • Blogs
  • About
  • Forum
  • Contact
  • Donate
  • Search
  • Account
  • rss
  • CNSNews
  • MRC TV
  • Biz & Media
  • Culture & Media
  • Take Action!
  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Amazon Kindle
  • Advertise
  • Jobs

Copyright © 2005-2012 NewsBusters. Terms of Use.