New Read for Those Who Seek Balance

[Randy4Candy]

As is my usual practice in the mornings, I am sitting on the couch scratching my balls, drinking coffee, browsing through Eccie and watching "Morning Joe." Yeah, yeah, I KNOW it's on MSNBC but you TPunkin' Fauxies just get the fu*k over it.

One of the guests they had on was the author of "Freedom's Forge," Arthur Herman. According to him, his book deals with how the American War Effort for WWII actually got off of the ground. It sounds like an interesting read in that it details how FDR and Big Business, who BTW (news flash) literally hated each other, got together in 1940 to begin to save our collective asses.

I haven't read a line of it but will download it later today to begin to do so. I think it will provide an interesting perspective and facts about the need, and perhaps the mechanics, for cooperation between conflicting political convictions.

Here's a couple of links for any of you who are interested:

Printed:
http://www.amazon.com/Freedoms-Forge.../dp/1400069645

E-book:
http://www.randomhouse.com/book/2085...-arthur-herman

No extra charge for this PSA...

[Texas Contrarian]

Just read it last week; in my opinion an excellent book.

The author points up the leadership roles played not only by FDR, but by business leaders who were an innovative, creative, and patriotic lot.

Just a few years earlier, around 1936, FDR had alienated many of those leaders, calling them "princes of greed" and vilifying them for what he deemed destructive rapaciousness.

Various controls and levies such as a large income tax increase, a new undistributed profits tax, wage and price controls, etc., had hampered prospects for recovery from the Great Depression. Cole and Onanian, as well as many others, have done good work on the history of the era.

But by 1940, all that was over and there was a new spirit of cooperation between the president and business leaders, and it enabled us to achieve victory against fanatical and technologically advanced enemies.

Those were very tough men and we all owe all of them a great deal of gratitude. Arthur Herman tells the story very nicely.

Here's a very short (just over one minute) video clip of the author making a key point:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n4EsDam7LXQ

[Randy4Candy]

Originally Posted by CaptainMidnight

The author points up the leadership roles played not only by FDR, but by business leaders who were an innovative, creative, and patriotic lot.

...

But by 1940, all that was over and there was a new spirit of cooperation between the president and business leaders, and it enabled us to achieve victory against fanatical and technologically advanced enemies.

Those were very tough men and we all owe all of them a great deal of gratitude. Arthur Herman tells the story very nicely.

Yep, it's a real shame that we humans have to have our backs up against a wall (and our balls dangling millimeters above the bottom of the frying pan) before everyone settles down and gets their eyes on the prize. Obviously, less entertaining (except for the balls near the griddle aspect) and sells a lot less advertising buuutttt........

[CuteOldGuy]

Spirit of cooperation? Sure, when the companies involved can make out like bandits. Yes, we needed to defeat the Axis powers, but let's not attribute a spirit of patriotism and generosity on the major corporations. In fact, it was back then that the US corporations learned they can control the government, so we have had very profitable wars ever since. It was this very situation that caused Ike to warn us about the military industrial complex.

I am certainly not opposed to winning WWII, but c'mon. We started a whole new industry based solely on armaments. Government has supported this industry by trying to police the world. The end result is that we are slowly becoming what we have been fighting against.

Yes, there is a "spirit of cooperation" between government and business, and against the people.

[joe bloe]

We were able to win WW II largely because of the miracle of American productivity. The amount of airplanes, ships, tanks, guns, etc that we were able to produce made all the difference. I read someplace that our increases in productivity dwarfed the increases by Great Britain, Japan and even Germany. Japanese general Yamamoto said that he feared that by attacking Pearl Harbor they may have awakened a sleeping giant. The sleeping giant of American industry was awakened for sure.

[joe bloe]

Originally Posted by Randy4Candy

Yep, it's a real shame that we humans have to have our backs up against a wall (and our balls dangling millimeters above the bottom of the frying pan) before everyone settles down and gets their eyes on the prize. Obviously, less entertaining (except for the balls near the griddle aspect) and sells a lot less advertising buuutttt........

We humans are not ordinarilly inclined towards sacrificing for the common good. But something happens psychologically, in times of shared threat, that changes our usual inclination. People start working together instinctively. It's sort of nice. There's a sense of community that emerges due to the fact that everyone has a common certain. We saw it after 911 where everyone started flying the flag. We even see it in Houston in preparing for a coming hurricane or recovering from a hurricane.

It would be nice if the willingness to sacrifice for the common good was triggered by our current debt crisis. Unfortunately, the nature of the problem doesn't seem sufficiently imminent to cause most people to switch over to the altruistic mode. If we wait until the debt problem is a total crisis, it will be too late to deal with.

[JD Barleycorn]

Yes, I heard about this book last week on FOX news and before that on the Bill Cunningham show on the radio. Sounds interesting but still tying up loose ends from the semester for pleasure reading yet.

As for the common good, I remember shortly after 9/11 when everyone unified against the common threat. What happened to the left then? I remember seeing a cartoon showing an elephant and an donkey rolling up their sleeves saying "together again old pal" and "time to clean up". A short year later the elephant shows up in military uniform and the donkey is in tie dye with a protest sign.

[trynagetlaid]

That was America's greatest generation. Most of them were youngsters during the depression and experienced hardships most of us can only imagine.

Unfortunately, the baby boomers (their children), turned into a bunch of spoiled greedy pawns of the rich. As long as I have my two-story house, two-car garage, country club membership, and lake house, fuck you and the horse you rode in on.

Their kids can't do anything to turn the tide because they can't even get decent jobs that would afford them the opportunity to effect changes. The greedy baby boomers shipped all the jobs overseas, in the name of corporate profits and the almighty dollar.

If this mess has a chance to be cleaned up, it will be difficult without an 'Arab spring' type uprising.

[CuteOldGuy]

Civil disobedience, peaceful protest on an enormous scale.

[Guest123018-4]

Read up on Jesse H. Jones; he was the mastermind behind it all.

[Texas Contrarian]

Originally Posted by CuteOldGuy

Spirit of cooperation? Sure, when the companies involved can make out like bandits. Yes, we needed to defeat the Axis powers, but let's not attribute a spirit of patriotism and generosity on the major corporations. In fact, it was back then that the US corporations learned they can control the government, so we have had very profitable wars ever since. It was this very situation that caused Ike to warn us about the military industrial complex.

I am certainly not opposed to winning WWII, but c'mon. We started a whole new industry based solely on armaments. Government has supported this industry by trying to police the world. The end result is that we are slowly becoming what we have been fighting against.

Yes, there is a "spirit of cooperation" between government and business, and against the people.

COG, I view this a little differently.

Just scattershooting a few thoughts:

Tooling up for World War II was very difficult and very expensive. Even though we were the world's preeminent industrial power, we were woefully unprepared for war. In 1940, it was far from certain that we would even enter the war on a large scale, and far from certain how long, difficult, or expensive the war might be. But we certainly realized that we needed to be prepared.

Once the war was over, it was similarly expensive and difficult to retool for civilian production. But demand for the weapons of war declined to near zero in 1945. I don't think it was preordained that the earlier efforts morph into anything like what was later called the military-industrial complex, or by some the military-industrial-congressional complex.

At the end of World War II, I don't think many people anticipated the path that the Cold War would soon take, or the costs associated with the buildup. As I recall, for a period during the 1950s, we spent about 10% of GDP on defense. It was obviously necessary to maintain a strong counter to the Soviet menace, but was it necessary to spend as much as we did during the 1950s? I don't know, and I think it would be interesting to hear the views of those more knowledgeable about military history and defense issues.

But whatever may be the case regarding the earlier postwar period, I certainly think that in a number of ways, in terms of inappropriate diversion of resources that could have been put to higher and better uses, we soon started going way beyond what was necessary in order to ensure national security.

[Randy4Candy]

COsFb, wholly shirt, man. The "grizzled, cynical, 'realist'" part has already been played in hundreds of movies by better actors.

You might want to refer to this post:

http://www.eccie.net/showthread.php?t=452235

[TheDaliLama]

"Balance" is code for more taxes.

Let's see the cuts first.

[CuteOldGuy]

Let's see. Shortly after WWII, we decided to enter a war that we had no intention of winning, thus securing long term demand for armaments. (Korea, 1950) Then came the "Cold War" and we simply had to build more and stronger weapons, lest the Soviets outarm us. Then came the VietNam war, another war we didn't plan to win, which was a gold mine for defense contractors.

After we surrendered in VietNam, there was an era of peace, but we still had the Soviets. Then they collapsed. So along comes GW Bush, who insists on lining the pockets of war profiteers by starting two wars, which would seemingly never end. Now with Iraq sort of over, and Afghanistan winding down, finally, we are looking at ways to bomb Iran and Syria. This world policeman gig is pretty good for the Wall Street and Defense industries. Kinda hard on families, but a buck is a buck, you know.

Seriously, the American people rose together in WWII. It truly was our greatest generation. But it was quickly co-opted by corrupt businesses and politicians, who played on our patriotism in the name of profit and control.

The America of today is nothing like the America of 1940. Some of that is good, a whole hell of a lot of it is not. The civil rights movement was wonderful in how it advanced civil rights for minorities, now only to have those same rights being taken away from all of us. At least it's fair. Tyranny knows no color. Except green.

[Texas Contrarian]

My take on the history of this period is that when Eisenhower, in 1961, warned of the dangers of the military-industrial complex, he wasn't speaking of what had happened, but rather what could happen absent public vigilance against potential abuses.

In fact, he did not in any way oppose the existence of a large and permanent armaments industry. Indeed, he stated that we had been "compelled to create a permament armaments industry of vast proportions."

Since he had been Commander-In-Chief for the prior eight years, he must have felt that the Cold War buildup was necessary, and he was clear on the point that we could "no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense", which of course is what had happened two decades earlier.

What Eisenhower warned against was the rise of misplaced power. Although it obviously appears that his judgment was prescient, it still seems to me that the risks of which he warned could hardly be considered preordained by the mobilization of the early 1940s.