Confession of a Recovering Democrat
By Burt Prelutsky
Monday, August 6, 2007
http://www.townhall.com/columnists/Burt ... g_democrat

I grew up in a home in which Franklin Roosevelt was regarded as a saint. Is it any wonder that it took me so many years before I finally saw the light? As a rule, I don’t approve of people who lay their own shortcomings at the feet of their parents, but when I realize that for no other reason than the way I was raised that I actually voted for Jimmy Carter, it’s awfully tempting to blame my folks.

But whoever is at fault, it is certainly high time to acknowledge how much harm was done to this country during FDR’s administrations, and how much spin left-wing historians have put on his record . For instance, he has often been credited with keeping America from going Communist during the Great Depression. But you might say the same about the leaders of Germany, Italy and Spain.

The fact is, Roosevelt simply introduced an American form of Communism, one the country was willing to swallow. There were no gulags or show trials; instead, there was an alphabet soup of new federal departments and bureaucracies, whose sole purpose was to diminish the power of the states and its citizens. FDR tried and pretty much succeeded in turning the federal government into a grotesque, power-crazy, creature that was all mouth and no brain. Compared to Roosevelt, Dr. Frankenstein was small potatoes.

Roosevelt can’t even be credited with leading the country out of the Great Depression. If anything, as others, including Amity Shlaes in her terrific book, “The Forgotten Man,â€